Re: Stereo In General

[dieckeaw@plu.edu]

On Sat, 6 Apr 1996, Al Powell wrote:
> 
> Linus Toy spoke well: "If I want really good stereo, I sit at home in 
> my living room."  If some on this list demand that quality on the 
> road, more power to 'em.  Many do not.

I agree with this.  In the home there is virtually no noise, no 
distractions, and the accoustics are a hell fo a lot better.  BUT, I 
spent too much time on the road, and not enough time at home.  To make 
matters worse, music is a BIG priority in my life.  I am a musician, I 
play in and attend as many live concerst as I can, and I listen to at 
least 6 hours of recorded music a day.  My home system is never off, and 
there is always something playing through it.  Hence, I am a car stereo 
fanatic.  I'd go crazy if i couldn't listen to quality music on the go.  
The popular saying "music sooths ever the savage beast" definately 
applies to me.

> 
> 1)  The speakers used in the system;  we really haven't discussed 
> this, but no matter what the components are, the sound won't be better 
> than the speakers used to reproduce it.

Ah, but would you rather listen to a cheep K'mart shelf system with a 
pair of $2000 audiophileapprovedstateoftheartwhizbang speakers, or high 
quality electronics through a pair of cheep mainstream speakers.  I'd 
choose the latter.  The ultra high resoulution of the expensive speakers 
would be ruthlessly revealing of any faults in the electronics and would 
sound like utter crap, whereas the high quality electronics would allow 
the cheep speakers perform as good as they possible could, and it 
wouldn't sound bad.  Sure, ther would be room for improvement, but it 
wouldn't be too bad. You can take this idea even further by saying that a 
component can only sound as good as the component upstream of it.  
Therefore, the farther upstream you go, the more important the 
soundquality of that unit.  That means that the source makes the biggest 
difference in the sound quality of the system.  If your CD player has 
muddy bass and poor dynamics, you can't make up for it by adding an amp 
touted as bein the bass king with dynamics like it had an onborard 
expander.  They system will still have muddy bass and poor dynamics.  I 
totally subscribe to this idea, to the extent that my CD rig makes up 50% 
of the total value of my system.  Food for thought.

-Adam