Mastering legend Bernie Grundman recently stated in an interview that a component that measures perfectly but has more components in the signal path sounds worse than a component with less in the signal path, even if it doesn’t measure as well.

That’s why the audiophile (unobtainable) holy grail is a straight wire with gain. Meaning just one wire that did all the processing necessary for an audio signal with nothing extra in theory would sound best.

When I was a kid a bought a 10 MXR channel eq I used on 20 foot RCA’s and loved playing around rebalancing tracks from my couch, but analog eq introduces among other things phase shifts. That’s the beauty of using eq in a music server like Jriver, which doesn’t suffer the same issues. That’s where I’d leave eq in a modern audiophile system. If needed for vinyl playback, use a preamp with a tape loop so the eq is only in the signal path when desired.

Regarding phase shifts, some will be unable to hear the degradation because they don’t have phase accurate speakers. It’s one of the reasons I run with Andrew Jones designed concentric speakers. When you hear a phase coherent speaker and play a recording that preserves that phrase info, it’s a real revelation to hear.

Great story! Hope you can get the headphones repaired, but here’s my experience with sennheiser HD800’s with cardas’ best cable, plugged into the balanced outputs of a very high end all tube preamp.

The headphones sound great, but can’t hold a candle to really top end speakers, like my TAD’s. Going to the speakers (with added subs and super tweeters) is like going to high resolution. With the right recording it mimics real instruments, and makes the headphones sound low res in comparison. But headphones are a bargain compared to a $100k+ system.

In the days before the web, almost nobody bought anything they didn’t hear first. Often multiple times. Relying strictly on reviews is lazy. One should first read about products that seem like they fit your needs, then you hear them, either through shows, dealers, or home auditions. The cost of travel to dealers or shows needs to be in your budget, as making mistakes can be costly and time consuming.

Once you have a sound you are after, you can tailor the system to make, for example, a speaker work.

While my speaker of choice, TAD, was the sound I was after, it took quite a few years of better gear becoming available (at least that I could afford) before all my criticisms went away. The speakers were so revealing that I was hearing the problems upstream, since I couldn’t afford a something like a DCS stack. It has taken over 10 years with these speakers to get the system to a point where it is now, and I’m still awaiting upgrades (custom transformers in my DSMKII Dac)

Once you have an established system, If you read multiple people with your same gear touting a component or tweak, then going off online reviews is probably a good bet.

Luckily however, today gear is much more neutral than in the past, so the odds of random components working well together is much higher, IMHO.

I think people entirely forget that aside from the DAC itself, what you’re really listening to is an analog output device. So even if my new Mac Studio had the same cheap chipset as a stand alone Dac, the analog section would not be the same.

I’m suprised people are still enamored with the MBL. I used to dream of buying 101’s, but after hearing them a dozen times at shows perfectly set up, the etched, hard treble really turned me off. Plus they really need MBL electronics, which adds considerable costs and space.

A new speaker i really love are the Alsyvox ribbon speakers. Very expensive, starting at $70k, but if I were in the market, I think that would be my choice.

For now I’ll just have to enjoy my 10 year old speakers, the tad CR1, with Velodyne subs and super tweeters. It’s the speakers Andrew jones is most proud of. I also use his Elac Adante speakers for home theater, which is very low cost used and when paired with top quality gear, can sound fantastic.