Posted by akhilesh [ 204.97.214.168 ] on May 03, 2005 at 23:01:07:

In Reply to: Components beliefs posted by Earl Geddes on May 03, 2005 at 17:34:01:

Nice post, Earl!. And a pleasure to meet you & Duke & Lori!
Here are my 2 cents:
THe most important determinant of god sound is the recording, followed by the speaker-room system, followed by the components. Given today's excellence in digital sources & amplification, i'd agree with your percentage allocation, except in a few instances. Three of these are below:

1. If a component or amplifier is deliberately skewed to sound "pleasant" it will make a difference. For example, in the setup I listen to most nowadays, 90 HZ to around 3300 HZ are driven by a SET 45 amp connected to a vintage driver (8 inches). Is the resulting sound accurate? Heck no! Is it pleasant? In spades!

2. Some DACs and CD players are deliberately rolledoff, or HAVE to be rolled off (Wadia for example) by as much as 2-3 db in the high octave. This can create again, an inaccurate but pleasant sounding effect.

3. Several cables, esp. speaker cables, with appreciable LC or R can skew the frequency response of the amplifier-cable-speaker sub-system. TO some this can sound pleasant.

Overall, ther is NO doubt to anyone who has spent much timein this hobby that the speaker-room interaction makes the bigest difference: since speakers generally have the most distortion, and the most skewed freq response.

thanks
-akhilesh

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