Ranking Sound quality contributors

Assuming a great recording and mastering, how would you prioritize the importance of the various hardware components? Lets leave room treatment out of the conversation, and for those vinyl folks, put the cartridge where you think it belongs. My opinion is based on using digital files.

For me,

Speakers
Analog op amp
( i think that how the analog signal is treated immediately after the DAC is well underappreciated and not adaquetly criticaly reviewed)
Pre/power amp
DAC (no question some are better than others, but more important than speakers?)
Interconnects and wire

 

In my mind, I'm listening for a marriage between cartridge/arm and speakers. Everything in the middle needs to do as little harm as possible. The exception to this is tubes, which add distortion—harmonic or otherwise—which seems to in some ways tell my brain that I'm hearing a recording with some sense of spatiality.

 

Room
Speakers
Amp/preamp
Source
cables

System matching is important. I think spreading the budget around equally is more effective than having one expensive piece with other cheapo pieces, unless one is building a system.

 

Speakers and room interaction
Source
Software quality
Amplification
Cables.

 

Whisky
Room
speakers
source
Amp/pre

 

Speakers/room or a phono cartridge.

I've seen people argue that speakers and phono cartridges don't make the biggest contribution in sound but the only times I ever hear (my system or someone elses) from a casual listener "Wow, that sounds a lot different. What did you do?" happens when either the phono cartridge or speakers/room were changed.

 

Speakers
Room/Acoustic Treatments
Source/format
Amp
Power Conditioner (clean power)
Cables

 

These are always hard to answer. So many different views. I'm surprised no one has made the "source first" argument.

Assuming that we are talking about all decent quality components and not talking about what can mess the sound up easily, like passive radiators too close to the wall or a turntable that can't keep speed or a blatant mismatch between cartridge and arm, cheap amp that clips easily, I would go with the following.

Transducers first, speakers and cartridge will make the most difference. I like big speakers. One of the reasons I have my Cornwalls is because they have that sound and can go right in the corners with no problem.

Next I'd go preamplifier, including phono preamps, and amplifier. Again a mismatch here either in impedance or gain can kill your sound.

Then DACs.

Then cables.

I'd also probably put a RCM up top just behind cart and speakers. If you have a problem with power and annoying ground problems, something like a Torus to clean it up. Where it goes would depend on how bad the problem is.

 

Wife
Speakers
Source
Cart
Pre
Amp
Cables

 

You missed the room. If that sounds bad, everything else will sound bad.

 

The OP said to skip room treatment.

 

Speakers (actives)
Speaker positioning
Source

 

Source (super important! There's an old saying "garbage in - garbage out." If the source isn't good it doesn't matter how good the downstream components are.)
speakers
amps (pre & power)
interconnects/speaker cables etc.

 

Source
Speakers
Cartridge or DAC
Amplification
Mood lighting
Cannabis and/or cocktails (in moderation)
Interconnects
Half-remembered things Steve Hoffman Forum people have posted

 

After wife end thread. Winners. Honorable mention to booze and weed.

For the lower end budgets it's speakers. Then everything else.

 

The problem I have with the source first analogy is this, I'll use digital as an example. Let's say you have a respectable system with a well engineered 600 dollar a piece individual components. Now you decide you're gonna drop 1500 bucks to improve your system. If you put that money into a DAC your going to get minimal, if any, noticeable improvement. If you drop it on speakers you'll get a much bigger difference in sound. Spend the money on a cartridge and again a much bigger difference in sound. Split the difference between speakers and cartridge, a much bigger difference.

 

I think source is the most important until you meet a certain minimal threshold of quality, and then it quickly becomes a lot less important. If all my source component options are decent/good/great. then I don't have to worry as much about them. If my sources are hot garbage, then it really doesn't matter what gear I put in front of it, all I'm going to hear is how bad my source really is.

And really, decent can be as cheap as a Raspberry Pi with a I2S hat (which is about $100 altogether) running SPDIF of some form into a Modi 2 Uber or a U-Turn Orbit.

 

Room
Electricity (in my unfortunate experience)
Speakers/Amp
Source
Interconnects/Speaker wire

 

if we can put psychedelics. id say that any system under peruvianus torch (mescaline) or magic mushroom will show without a doubt that the most important aspect of a system is in the mind. its insane how much more I hear under a psychedelic, its uncanny and truly shocking, like you cannot believe you ears how much details there actually is. it truly brings a lot of joy to me listening to my system under mescaline. id take a ****ty system + mescaline over any system sober. sad but true for me. even a logitech system 2.1 will sound like pure magic, 3d with insane bass and coherent lol. so yeah, mind or lack of ego is number 1

Speakers/Room
DAC/transport
Amp

 

Clean power, without it your done from the start
Speakers
Speaker cables
Power cables
Source player
Pre-amp
Amp
Interconnects
Isolation

 

1. State of Mind
2. Room/ambient
3. Speakers
4. Amp
5. Speaker cable
6. Cart

Software impacts from 2 to 6. Crap in crap out.

Cheers

 

If we only talk about components, the ones that are farthest away from being inert will affect SQ the most. So by a large margin it will be the speakers.

 

1) Speakers have the biggest overall affect but not necessarily the most important differences.
2) Source - UHF magazine once noted that the source is by far the most important part of the chain because no matter how great your loudspeaker it can't FIX a bad source - it can't add back in what the source misses.

This is certainly true of analog sources - you can buy a $200 cart and then bring in a $400 cart and chances are the $400 cart will be vastly better even to your stoned cat who spent the night in the catnip bag.
Their point was that a system say with a $10,000 turntable played on $1,000 speakers would sound better than a $1,000 turntable on $10,000 speakers. I can't deny UHF on this count because I have often heard systems just like this where I would prefer the former.

3) amplifiers. This is equal to 2 depending what it is. If it is SET amplifiers versus (anything else) then it's a tie for number 2. If it is PP versus PP then it's number 3 and if it is is SS versus SS and it's class A then it's number 4 and if it is the usual class A/B SS (the likes of Krell or Bryston) or Class D (the likes of Bel Canto) , then who cares you do not have a hi-fi system, in my subjective opinion.

4) Cables - again depending on the situation - could be 3.

5) Isolation/power - but I find good gear tends not to be so wimpy to need it - but I respect that some stuff benefits and greatly from this - A power conditioner did a fine job with my CD player but my amp didn't need it - Tube amps with transformers are often much better just plugged into walls without anything diddling the power supply. SS is another matter - perhaps something to do with Torroids versus EI or C Core designs. It could be the way the amps control self noise or the particular quality of power coming into your home.

It's all important but the ranking is likely system dependent. A source will be more important - or you will feel it more important depending if you are missing something or know you're missing something. Speakers tend to sound a certain way on casual comparison in a wide number of settings so they're easy to tell apart. The source CD players for instance are far less noticeable because their differences are subtle but over time for instance you may notice one is just the bit too much sibilant. Then that 1% difference may in fact be far more important to you than than two very different loudspeakers that you like.

 

I think these kinds of lists are too reductive to be of much meaning -- I mean, you have have a great pair of speakers and set 'em up with a amp that can't drive em: maybe it's under powered, maybe the amp has an impedance that dips down to like 2 ohms in an area of musical power and the amp can deliver enough current into that load, and suddenly you're blaming the amp or speakers for being bad, when it's more the inappropriate combination that's at fault. Or if you put a cartridge on an arm where there's a poor mass/compliance match, you'll blame the arm or cart for being lousy but it may be just a bad match.

Then I think leaving room treatments -- or the room generally and the set of the equipment -- out of the equation is almost like saying: what's more important to making a car go, but lets leave aside the engine of a minute. The room and the setup in the room will be the dominant factor in what you hear.

But, with in the context of all those caveats, I agree with folks who say transducers -- pieces of gear that convert energy from one form to another -- will be the places where there is the greatest different between components -- speakers and phono cartridges in particular.

After that, the source components, especially the tonearm and turntable if you're using analog -- in that case the differences between good, better and best tables and arms in terms of limiting with self noise and resonances and flexing and ringing, and dealing with environmental sources of noise and ringing, are so disparate between tables at the bottom of the range and at the top of the range, that it's almost like they're different kinds of components all together.

After that, amp, preamp and other amplifying electronics generically. These days most quality solid state electronics of midfi and up design -- not necessarily the cheapest stuff with the poorest noise filtering -- are so low distortion, low noise, and linear -- that most of 'em sound pretty darn good. With tube gear there's still much greater variation between components based on design and construction with it comes to noise and distortion and frequency response.

After that, cables.

But I say, treat the room and get the room right, get the speakers and the listening position set up properly -- and do it with real time analysis software, not just by ear. Get a good pair of speakers and an amp that can drive them properly. And then, if you're using analog, get as inert arm and table as you can afford and as good a cartridge as you can afford that's a good match for the arm's mass, and you'll wind up with decent sound with whatever decent electronics you wind up using. But if you take 10s of thousands of dollars of great MBL electronic and use 'em with mediocre speakers with ringing cabinets and hashy tweeters in an untreated room with no attempt at proper set up in terms of speaker and listening positioning, and a cheap turntable and phono cart, and the sound will be crap