I have always said and will always say the same thing:

Up to a point, there's an easily distinguishable sound and detail difference between cheaper and more expensive gear, given that you don't cheat (i.e. put cheaper gear in expensive enclosure), but that difference indistinguishable well before these "true audiophile" level stuff.

For example: I run a pair of Heco Celan GT302s. They are not something exotic. 100W per channel, adequately detailed speakers with great soundstage. The manual gives you a table: Wattage -> Recommended wire gauge. I got a high quality, 100% copper cable (from Acoustic Research, so nothing fancy) at the recommended gauge, and connected them. You can't convince me to get a better cable. It's pointless.

Do I enjoy the sound I get, hell yeah. Do I need to listen to my system instead of listening to the music, hell no. I feed the amplifier with a good turntable (which is 40 years old, shocker!) and a good CD player (which is pretty entry level for what's out there), and that's it.

That set will nail any person who likes to listen to the music to its chair. That's the aim of a good system. Same for personal DAPs and DACs. If you enjoy what you have, who cares!

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k2enemy 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Up to a point, there's an easily distinguishable sound and detail difference between cheaper and more expensive gear, given that you don't cheat (i.e. put cheaper gear in expensive enclosure), but that difference indistinguishable well before these "true audiophile" level stuff.

I don't understand how that is cheating. Isn't it a better controlled experiment if the equipment looks the same?

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bayindirh 5 hours ago | parent [-]

No, I mean "cheating at the market". Some companies sell literal snake oil for 10x the price, then they make the market unreliable for everyone, and nobody believes a company which really uses more expensive components can get better sound.

If you want a good controlled experiment, create a literal black box, without any distinguishing features, or lose the box completely and give them an output (speakers or headphones) only.

Another bad thing is, sound is so subjective and experience changes between brands a lot. For example: headphone "burn in" is considered an hallucination, it mostly is. However I have bought a set of RHA MA750i earphones which changed from "This is not what it says on the box" to "am I sure that these are the RHAs I hated" in a month, because it's sound character changed so immensely. No other headphone I had in my life did that.

So, everything is so muddy, subjective and unreproducible. When a room's organization or floor carpet density can change its frequency response, you can't control anything. Moreover, every human's ear profile is different, so you can't be sure that their ear is hearing that the same (e.g. one of my ears have a notch in its hearing curve around mid frequencies. we don't know why it happened).

If anybody wants to learn some of the tricks which can be done to get better sound, please watch Mend it Mark's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RJbpFSFziI

While the £25.000 price tag on that preamp is literal snake-oil level and the builder has the audacity to erase the model numbers of the ICs (and OpAmps) he uses, some of the methods he uses are legit and Mark explains them exceptionally well.

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k2enemy 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Got it, thanks for the explanation!

	▲	bayindirh 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Always! Don't mention it. :)

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ssl-3 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Like the Synergistic Audio network router that is quite clearly even labeled as a Mikrotik Routerboard Hex S -- inside of a nice box with a (fancy, admittedly) power supply, and some light pipes glued on so the status LEDs shine differently?

I mean, I like Mikrotik products just fine. I happen to have a Mikrotik Hex S on my desk in front of me as I write this.

But scroll down and zoom in on the money shot here: https://hifi.nl/artikel/32753/Review-Synergistic-Research-Ne...

And then, for comparison: https://openwrt.org/_media/media/mikrotik/rb760igs/pcb_top.j...

The difference in price between the Mikrotik box and the Synergistic box with the board is north of $2,500.

	▲	bayindirh 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		They even tell that the core is coming from Mikrotik in the review, yet the ignorance is... oof. Also, this explains why I hear some birds chirping and bees buzzing in the beginning of the Pink Floyd's High Hopes (from Pulse). It's possible that the sounds from outside imprint on my wireless signal while streaming it. Maybe I should buy this Micro^H^H^H^H Synergistic box and connect via it while listening to music. Of course I'll need Cat8 shielded cables, but it'll clear the sound, probably, I hope. /s

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troupo 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> That set will nail any person who likes to listen to the music to its chair. That's the aim of a good system.

We all know that the aim of a good system is to blow your clothes off ;) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNZ-nEGHDKk