Sometimes I wonder about people who are seeking
with many difficulties components to improve sound - and sometimes it seems to me that people are lost maybe because they have something wrong right from the start and all the tries to improve something by upgrating or matching will not give results.

In public science you learn to be careful when
investing money on something - let's say a big building - when you are finding youself putting more and more money on a "never ending" project.
There are two problems with it, the first, to identify that you are throwing good money on a bad "money sucking" project and the second - to admit that the investment of money was a wrong one from the begining.

I'm telling this because of Vuk's post about the speakers confusion. I may be wrong of course
but I can say it.

Most of us talking about the philosophy of "source first". To me it is not a "philosophy" it is a fact. Improving a sorce seemed to be easy to
identify to my ears and switching speakers (similar level speakers) seemed to be difficult
to identify. It had never bothered me because it seemed to be obvious that the speakers are pronouncing the abilities of the system they are connected with. I went more than once through the experience that speakers with system "x" sounded bad, and sounded good with system "y".
Add to this problems that may affect the speaker at the place you are listening to them.

So what I'm trying to say is this - a person listens to a stereo system Naim for example. He thinks it is a good system and he buys it. It is not cheap. For some reason, the person went wrong,
Naim is not the system for him (Naim is an example of course, for me IT IS the system...)
Now he feels that something is wrong and he tries to improve it - most of the times he will upgrade a source or an amplifier and will put more money "on" the system. But Naim has its own way of music approach - so the "wrong" basic to the person ears still exists but he doesn't identify it and he tries to keep on upgrading and he puts more money. Now, he put so much money on the system that it is realy difficult to stop and try to find another system with another approach and sometimes it may be very tough to admit that after years of buying expensive components he was wrong since the begining.
So, this person can find himself in a "no way out"
direction, and he'll try to solve his problem with relatively small investment of money - but this will not change the main approach of the system he owns and where the "heavy" money is.

I suggest to people who are restless about upgrating and improving the system, to learn the "lost investment" theory and to try to find if the whole approach of the system they own is not a wrong for them.

I want to upgrade too, but I do it when I have the money. I don't "dig" in the music hearing aspects because I think it is a wrong way. It is very difficult to find a perfect device. A perfect aspect usually followed by a worse one. There are so many aspects in the music - I found that trying to look after aspects destroyes the enjoyment of listening and brings the listener to a "tester" position instead of a relexed listener. So what a person should look for in my mind instead of immaging, air, PRaT, dynamic, bass, midd and all the others is simply a relaxed feeling while listening. You are simply feel good when all of thses are existing at your system (at least I feel so).

Arie

Interesting post arie - I agree with most of what you say. However, if you like something you want to express to other people why you like it, so the wrong part of the brain tends to kick in.

Source first is one approach, but this underestimates the effect that the speaker has on the final sound. Another important point is that one shouldn't think of a speaker as an afterthought. Think of the power amp and speaker as a unit. If you want to change a speaker, you may have to change the power amp as well. The example of active ATCs springs to mind.

dozy

tForget the Naim approach for a while. If you you like bottom end Naim you'll probably like top end Naim. Well it works for me. But with other kit, yes, you might make mistakes but surely they are easy to correct. We are often told about system synergy; the right cd player with the rght amp & the right speakers. So if you you get one piece wrong you can correct it with out scrapping the whole lot. This should be simple unless you are comitted to a single manufacturer, then you will have to start again. But Dozy is right, one must start a system as a whole. Regretablly most people ddon't have this oportunity, due do funds, the shop, etc. You have to rectify the mistakes (like Vuk) as you gain in knowledge. I was lucky & knew about Naim before I started my system but very few have this advantage.

Tom
Enjoying far too much

Tom,

If someone buyes an expensive amp and later he wants to sell it and buy an amp from another
manufacturer - then he is going to lose a lot of money.

Arie

Arie

Quite right, they will, but surely most people start with a cheap core and then start throwing money at improving the different components. Ideally each new piece should be tested for system synergy before purchase so the purchaser should know whether they might like the sound beforehand. Do many get to the stage that they hate the whole lot once their system costs the price of a large car?

But yes I agree, if the time comes that I no longer like my Naim system, the cost of change will prohibitive

Tom
Enjoying it all