Anyone who appreciates well reproduced music can be considered an audiophile.

This hobby leads us on a long path. Lots of us started out with cheap equipment or hand-me-downs. Over time, we learned how to optimize our listening spaces and upgrade various elements of our systems. We learned about equipment specifications, and the various technologies and media involved.

Keep doing research and experimenting. Learn what pleases you. Most of us will never wind up with a megabucks system, but that’s not really necessary to have a very satisfying musical experience. People are able to enjoy music played on relatively inexpensive used equipment that is chosen for synergy and set up well.

You may encounter some snobs (ignore them), but also others who are actually helpful.

Moving Coil vs. Moving Magnet

It doesn’t have to be a McIntosh, but it helps.

Recordings vary greatly in how they are mixed, equalized and mastered.

It doesn’t matter how much money you spend. However you configure your system, some music may sound sublime, while others are lacking. Most of us “split the difference” and settle on a system which does a fairly good job on most of the music we listen to often. We may add some tonal adjustments when necessary if we aren’t too much a purist.

One solution that can help (if you have the space for it) is to have several kinds of speakers and electronics, choosing whatever best complements the music they are listening to at the moment. I think this approach is a better use of money than attempting to find the holy grail that does it all.

The input to an active loudspeaker (one with an internal amplifier) can easily be be overloaded if driven from the speaker output of another amplifier.

The active loudspeaker expects a “line level” signal of 1 or 2 volts maximum. Even a low powered receiver puts out much more than that .

μ-Ziq vs. The Auteurs - “Lenny Valentino #3”. When the thundering and horribly distorted rhythm kicks in after about a minute, I love to watch the expression on their face.

I imagine auditioning this at a dealer, and them asking them what’s wrong with their speakers.

Maybe your equipment is substandard in some respects. But there is no reason to be nasty about it. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and different people value different aspects of sound reproduction.

When potential customers are treated rudely, it doesn’t serve anyone’s interest. Work with companies and dealers that treat you right. Screw the others.

GIK Acoustics makes a variety of panels for this purpose. Some combine diffusion with absorption. Write to them and they can advise you.

Nice looking system. I love the black equipment and wood cabinet.

It looks like a hard reverberant space. You might want to add a thick rug with underpad between your listening position and the speakers

The Roxy Music “Avalon” SACD has a superb surround mix and a wonderful bonus track "Always Unknowing.

Stands are best, but mounting the turntable on additional isolation is probably a good idea too.

It’s difficult to make a single driver cover a wide range of frequencies without having issues at the extremes of its range (spurious resonances and distortion or falloff in amplitude.) In a multi-way speaker, each type of driver is optimized to reproduce a specific frequency range. A two-way speaker (woofer plus tweeter) can be designed to adequately cover the full range of frequencies from the lowest to the highest.

So why would anyone need a three-way speaker? An interesting thing happens at the crossover frequency (where both woofer and tweeter emit sound.). Being physically spaced apart and constructed of different materials, they may not blend perfectly. And this crossover is often right around where the vocal range is, so it can affect how voices sound. So having a dedicated midrange driver to handle this critical range where most of the melody occurs (leaving the woofer to handle the boom, and the tweeter to handle the sizzle) is a popular solution.

That being said, there are both good and bad examples of each type of speaker. So trust your ears

I’m not sure what you mean. The is nothing inherently psychedelic about high fidelity sound. In fact much so-called psychedelic music employed all kind of effects (Fuzz, wha-wha, reverb, ring modulator, etc.) to alter the sound of various instruments, introduce odd samples, and otherwise stretch your imagination and surprise you with novelty.

If you have the skill, you could remix an existing tune and alter it yourself to make it sound more psychedelic. But there is no simple parameter that can be adjusted or equipment upgrade that will to do this for you.

In my experience, all music can sound psychedelic when you are actually tripping, whereas there is music specifically designed to mimic some of the sonic altercations one might experience while high. I recommend listening psy-trance artists like Shpongle and Infected Mushroom.

I’m not saying that expensive amps correlate proportionally with audible improvements. Sometimes you are paying more for a fancy chassis and a prestigious brand name.

But not all amps are built the same, nor do they sound the same. Some speakers perform noticeably better with amps that can deliver high current. Some amps are overbuilt with better quality parts that will last a long time. Some amps have huge power reserves offering more dynamic headroom. That can make a difference if you have poor house wiring where you notice your lights dim when someting draws a surge of power.

If your system sounds good and there isn’t a glaring problem that is driving you crazy, just try to enjoy it for what it is. Pull out old albums and rediscover them. It’s ultimately about the music.

Stay away from places where you can audition other equipment. Stop reading reviews. “Out of sight, out of mind” works. Vow to live with what you have for at least a year before allowing yourself to even consider an upgrade. At some point making changes provides a differnce but not always an improvement. With any given equipment configuration, some music will sound better, but others less so.

I’ve blown a lot of money over the years trading up. I guess I had to get it out of my system. Well, enough is enough. It’s been stable for at least 8 years now, and although I can think of changes I could make, I ask myself if that’s really how I should spend that money when my system still sounds great. And somehow I’m able to hold off.

Just tilt your head.

My system has evolved over years. I’ve had a chance to try many different configurations and have settled on what pleases me the best. Enjoy the journey.

You will never use your TV’s speakers again.

When frequencies mix in a nonlinear system, sum and difference frequencies are created. When supersonic frequencies are involved, the difference frequencies can dip down well into the audible range, and because they are not harmonically related to the actual musical signal, they sound awful.

In a theoretically perfect system, you could have ultra wide bandwidth recordings without this problem. While few people can actually hear anything above 20KHz (By the time we reach adulthood, most people can only hear sounds up to 15-17 kHZ.), at least there would be no intermodulation distortion products to degrade the music below 20KHz.

Read up on intermodulation distortion. Real systems are not completely linear. Superimposing a high amplitude supersonic frequency on music can indeed cause audible effects. But they are not an improvement.