Gonna see if I can ask this question correctly:
A phono cartridge can change how a vinyl record sounds quite significantly. But if I have to choose between upgrading to a high end cartridge or to a high end stereo, which will make a more noticeable difference and how?
Now with CD’s, what would greatly alter the sound the most? The player or the stereo?
The speakers are also at play in this and even wires and all the pieces like pre-amps, etc. when I’m asking this question.
But what singular piece of equipment can effect how something sounds, and will it change from source to source (cd’s, vinyl, digital, etc.)?
1st will be the room and room acoustics. Room and room acoustic treatments will be the most important part of the audio / acoustics chain. Poor room acoustics can distort the frequency response by more than 20dB. And in the time domain can improperly decay the sound more than a couple HUNDRED milliseconds.
2nd will be the speakers. Frequency response deviations will typically be on the order of 10db or less. With distortions in the time domain less than 10 milliseconds.
3rd: Near the least important components will be the amplifier, cables, and wiring with frequency response distortions less than 0.5dB and time domain distortions well below 1ms.
The cool thing about the room and room acoustics being #1, is that you can improve it incrementally and doesn’t have to be done all at once.
Absolutely. You can put a world class system in an awful sounding room and it will sound terrible, as attested by many a poor demo room at shows.
But I’ve heard some very basic gear over the years in properly designed and treated rooms, and they sounded fantastic, punching way above their weight.
Only problem is you can’t sell a room as a product and the WAF on large studio grade diffusors is extremely low. And most people can’t/wont restructure their listening room.
But yes, the room is probably 50%+ of what you hear in a system, you’re sitting in a giant box after all, the remainder is the system, with the speakers being top of the system chain.
Wow, thanks for the great insight: The room IS a speaker box; and it’s the final acoustic filter and distortion source before the sound enters your ears.
Put it that way and it becomes pretty obvious that the room is either the top factor or a top factor in determining sound quality.
While this is probably true for measuring sound systems the brains ability to filter out the room is quite amazing. If you’ve ever listened back to a recording made in a echoy room vs what you it sounded like at the time its quite incredible.