Listening Gear

[gradus]

I listen to almost everything in the kitchen on the Roberts DAB radio, or in the car. Hardly 'Hi-Fi' but I have long-since abandoned the idea that musical enjoyment depends on the quality of the listening gear. That is not to say that I don't enjoy listening on fancier kit nor that I despise hi-fi but it is a small element in my listening life. I suppose it goes back to enjoying concerts on Medium Wave in the fifties.

[Serial_Apologist]

I listen to almost everything in the kitchen on the Roberts DAB radio, or in the car. Hardly 'Hi-Fi' but I have long-since abandoned the idea that musical enjoyment depends on the quality of the listening gear. That is not to say that I don't enjoy listening on fancier kit nor that I despise hi-fi but it is a small element in my listening life. I suppose it goes back to enjoying concerts on Medium Wave in the fifties.

It was interesting that as my father progressively lost all the upper partials in his hearing, he came to prefer listening to music on medium wave, and always wanted the bass register boosted to maximum! My tendency has been the opposite - I now have to ask visitors if they find my tunings too shrill for them to tolerate.

[pastoralguy]

We're lucky enough to have two friends who run a Hi-Fi shop so, occasionally, we'll take a Chinese takeaway in and listen to music on systems that cost more than our house! Those are always memorable occasions especially since they have an extremely wealthy customer who is forever buying new equipment from them. He usually requests that they 'run in' equipment for him which means a week of continuous play! (I get a perverse thrill from listening a cd I purchased for 50p in the local charity shop played on a £12k CD player!)

[teamsaint]

Most listening in the lounge on my little but much loved Marantz system, which is probably configured all wrong by way of location, correct speaker wire etc.

In my imagination I have rooms full of quad , reel to reel systems, and 60's electronic gear, with random avant garde music being endlessly messed around with, in a glorious creative mess of technology and art, sometime around 1967/8.

Somewhere on a Tuscan hillside........

[Petrushka]

As with most electrical equipment you reach a point where cost and quality reach a limit so I'd guess that a £12k CD player won't be much better than one much, much less than that.

[Dave2002]

As with most electrical equipment you reach a point where cost and quality reach a limit so I'd guess that a £12k CD player won't be much better than one much, much less than that.

I agree about the law of diminishing marginal returns.

[jayne lee wilson]

As with most electrical equipment you reach a point where cost and quality reach a limit so I'd guess that a £12k CD player won't be much better than one much, much less than that.

The most famous £12k CD was - the Linn CD12, which featured in a well known TV advert so strikingly that most people never noticed the advertised product itself.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTs-3n38Qv0

A dealer I used to visit, stylish minimalist furnishings in a swanky basement abode in the business sector, told me that he'd sold seven of them....."not millionaires, just really dedicated, y'know" he said....
A Property Manager I knew back then told me they were always weeks behind with their rent.

Part of the cost is down to overbuild, finish, longevity and reliability. (My own vintage Krell transport/cd player is now 22 years old, still fine and still serviceable.... but parts may be getting scarce..... )
In HiFiNews' very careful review of the CD12, the writer said he was "left with a sense of disappointment"....(there was a certain amount of in-house disagreement...)
However this isn't typical of my own experience, which has tended to suggest that higher costs usually bring better sound, but only if:

1) The component/system matching is carefully assessed on trial (time to consider and return if displeasing).
2) The system set-up is also carefully optimised for a high performance component. You may need to adjust this (and/or your expectations).
3) The component is allowed time to run in!
Etc.
Evidently the amps and speakers need to be capable of revealing any sonic gains, but stability, anti-vibrational treatments, quality of cabling and mains all need to be neutral and revealing enough for any serious upgrade to be worthwhile.
What if I like it, but my ears don't?
I've sometimes had equipment which, while evidently better in itself, wasn't right for my ears or my system. So a degree of agonising before sending it back...

Much of the controversy about high resolution recordings (24/96, SACD etc) is due to systems being incapable (or not fully capable) of revealing the greater detail, definition, space etc., or only showing slight improvements.

I got lucky recently with an ex-dem discounted purchase.... broke my single item limit..... and had it on trial.....the result?
I was surprised (even a little daunted) at the obvious superiority of the machine to anything I'd previously heard. It didn't take long to decide to keep it.

But it soon became obvious that the system balance wasn't quite right when it was playing.....startlingly revealing, but too explicit, too strong in the lower treble....was it on the wrong footers, or platform, or....?....Was it fully run in? Some things sounded marvellous, but....so I left it running for a few more days.....no, still not quite right......
A complex design with many different settings to assess, it needed some thought and patience.
Luckily, a change of xlr interconnect did the trick - I'd never heard a cable make so much difference - ooh, picky!.
So the natural sound order was restored. Sometimes it seems more mysterious, as if a given component needs to get used to the system around it, and vice versa.... but its probably the listener herself taking time to sonically acclimatise. The best designs can be demanding and challenging little beasts!

"We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time".

High end hifi can feel like getting a Grand Prix car to last the whole race AND finish in the top three; when its good, its very very good, but one little detail can spoil everything, with heartache the inevitable result.......

[BBMmk2]

Absolutely JLW. I have in mind to buy some high end hifi at some point but that will have to await. I have a pretty good Denon unit at the moment.

[gradus]

Nice to see a Roberts radio mentioned a few times.

[pastoralguy]

Thanks for the comments about the £12k CD players! (I knew as I wrote it that I'd provoke responses. )

Obviously, yes, the other components need to be of the same quality as the CD player and the cables have to be pretty fabulous too. (Now THERE's a can of worm!) I honestly can't remember what the components were but the amp had a huge price ticket. My friend rigged up a cheepie £4K CD player and I could hear the difference with the machine that was three times the price. Was it worth an extra £8k? Well, unfortunately that's not my privilege to answer since I couldn't afford any of these components!

I suppose that beauty is in the eye, (or ears) of the beholder and if you have a huge income then it's moot anyway. I do know the buyer has very good taste in music. In fact, my friend told him about our listening sessions and my enthusiasm so he left me a pile of SACDs he'd bought in Japan!

[Dave2002]

Luckily, a change of xlr interconnect did the trick - I'd never heard a cable make so much difference - ooh, picky!.

I have been sceptical of changing interconnects and also speaker cables, but I was converted years ago when a CD I borrowed - Colin Davis in Cosi fan tutte - sounded so much better with one cable than the cheaper ones I had originally. However, although the cable I liked cost more, it wasn't really that much more - think £20 (at the time) compared with (say) £5. I am still sceptical of people who want to throw huge amounts of money at cables. I also have never been so convinced that speaker cables make a revelatory difference, though perhaps it does depend on how hard one wants to drive the speakers, as well as the length of the cables.

[Braunschlag]

Can of worms?Cables?
Having already donned my coat AND the door is open I’ll say in my own experience that cables make things sound different, not better (that would be a subjective judgement). I’ve been seduced over the years by various claims and pseudo-science and can honestly say that they really don’t make much difference at all, expectation bias is a big factor (as Russ Andrews’ business model illustrates so well).
I have what I’d call decent gear but I’m not going to reveal what I possess. It works fine for me and,over the years I’ve had far too many items in a pointless search for a non-existent perfect concert hall experience.
By all means buy what you think does a great job, it keeps the industry alive and can significantly enhance your listening experience.
It’s mostly bunkum in the hi fi press but hugely entertaining and vaguely interesting in a cod-science sort of way.
Incidentally, I do most of my listening on ‘phones these days - a pair of B&Os, now there’s a’lifestyle’ admission which would horrify your average so-called audiophile..... I’m going,I’m going:)

[Richard Barrett]

mostly bunkum

I'm with you on keeping the industry alive and well, but, as someone who often works in studios of various kinds, I would ask: if all that esoteric stuff is so good how come you never see any of it in professional recording studios? or, conversely, how come you never see the kind of gear used in such studios recommended by anyone for home use? There's something strange going on there to be sure. (These days I use a MOTU Ultralite Mk4 audio interface for playback from the computer, the CD player and amplifier are from NAD and the speakers from Linn, the latter just about to celebrate a quarter century while everything else is considerably newer.) (And the headphones are AKG K702s, a model I acquired having used a pair belonging to a recording engineer I was working with)

[Pianoman]

I've been on more hifi forums than is good for me over the years, but the one sure thing is that a cable thread, or dac thread, or some such, will surface regularly; that then brings out the science guys, or studio guys usually disparagingly called the 'objectivists', followed by the 'subjectivists', usually so-called 'audiophiles', who have basically spent an awful lot on shiny gear and can 'most definitely hear the differences'. What follows is often very entertaining as one side shows graphs, measurements etc and the other side says 'sod that - my ears tell me it's night and day, even the milkman could tell the difference bla,bla...
Everyone is entitled to spend what they like of their hard-earned, but for my own part I've never heard these magical improvements, especially regarding cd players and cables. Speakers and room, to say nothing of the original mastering, play a far bigger part imo.
The best recent spat showed an expensive Goldmund cd player whose innards were basically a bog-standard Philips mechanism. Mind you, it had a lovely case...

[Bryn]

. . . the headphones are AKG K702s, a model I acquired having used a pair belonging to a recording engineer I was working with.

Re headphones, at home, I use a pair of KRK KNS 6400 I bought at an Eton College jumble sale a few years ago for £5. It was only when I looked them up on the Internet that I discovered they retailed at between a heavily discounted £64 and £90. They do for when speakers are inappropriate. For travel use, I have Bose QC20s. Their noise cancelling is not up to the vibrations on a bus or coach, however. They hunt and pump rather annoyingly, to the extent that I find it better to switch it off and put up with the background noise. They do come into their own when used without input, however, if I simply want a bit of peace and quiet.

Re. interconnects, Richard B. has hit the nail on the head. The ultra-pricey ones do not get used until the home playback stage.