Listening party w/$120k system

V

vitocorleone

New member
Holy crap. I got to spend a couple hours with some friends listening to various tracks of our choosing on a crazy expensive stereo system (as in, 2 floor speakers... along with a bunch of monoblock and stereo amps for the speakers in the speakers, turn table, pre-amps, dacs, media server, external power supplies, etc.). I was told it was around $120k.

It made all music sound good, and decently-mastered music sound live.

Probably the most expensive system I'll even get to use. Or hear.
 
curio said:
Nice! Owned by someone you know?
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I wish!! Then again, I'd probably go deaf. No - it was a small, private gathering at a small high-end audio shop.

There were a couple of duds in comparison - where the mixing/mastering wasn't up to the scrutiny it received with the system. Also, I think the speakers weren't quite as friendly to some kinds of electronic music played from a digital source, but pretty much everything else thrown at them rocked.

The separation and lack of any noise whatsoever from the system was amazing. A lot of people were noticing nuances in tracks that they'd never heard before.

No subs. No surrounds. Just a crazy stereo setup of all the same brand components.
 
Well, I'm sure the system would have sounded really nice, but damn, how the hell do you put $120K into two speakers and an amp system?? Solid gold cabinets? :nuts:
 
It's fairly easy to put a lot of money into a powerful class a/b amp
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Only if you get it made by unicorns in a magical factory. Really good amps just don't cost that much to make.

I'm sure the amp is really good, but when you get up to that sort of money, the price is purely about what someone will pay, and very little to do with the cost of actually making the thing, and is certainly not proportional to sound quality.

With $120K, I could fit out a large music venue with a new front of house system.
 
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drumphil said:
Only if you get it made by unicorns in a magical factory. Really good amps just don't cost that much to make.

I'm sure the amp is really good, but when you get up to that sort of money, the price is purely about what someone will pay, and very little to do with the cost of actually making the thing, and is certainly not proportional to sound quality.

With $120K, I could fit out a large music venue with a new front of house system.
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I am pretty sure that those who spend absurd amount of money into audiophile equipments tend to think "because I am spending I am paying 5K into this piece of cable, it better makes it sounds great!" and "I am better audiophile then they are, because I have spent 5K on this cable!" -- very little to do with actual audio quality. This is the only reason they could pay for BS such as super expensive cable or power cords. Even if I am made of money, I cannot find any justifications for spending more than 10K total for the audiophile set (though this already is the absurd amount of money, if you think about it). Beyond that, it would be much more important to improve the acoustics of the listening room. If they actually cared for the audio quality, that is.

By the way, some of the super-expensive speakers actually sound...mediocre.
 
The main reason for those expensive systems is stage.

I agree about the cables though. But bi-wiring does make
a difference in stage and definition.

He probably hear Wilson Grand Slam speakers with a Sonic Frontier
pre amp and mono-bloc amp kit...

Some speakers are stellar, but yeas, some are very ordinary and they
try and change their characteristics with too thin cables :nuts:
 
I agree about the cables though. But bi-wiring does make
a difference in stage and definition.
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Electrical engineering disagrees with you. All you need is cable with suitably low impedance. Heck, you can even calculate exactly what a cables audio properties will be from its electrical properties.

All you need is a decent cable. I use an old 240V extension that had a dodgy plug on one end. Chopped it up, and connected it to my B&W DM 603 S2's.

edit: cause I was starting to sound like a smartarse.

"Why bi-wiring has no benefits"

http://www.achievum.eu/bi-wiring.html
 
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drumphil said:
Electrical engineering disagrees with you. All you need is cable with suitably low impedance. Heck, you can even calculate exactly what a cables audio properties will be from its electrical properties.

All you need is a decent cable. I use an old 240V extension that had a dodgy plug on one end. Chopped it up, and connected it to my B&W DM 603 S2's.

edit: cause I was starting to sound like a smartarse.

"Why bi-wiring has no benefits"

http://www.achievum.eu/bi-wiring.html
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And electrical engineer can disagree all he wants...
 
And electrical engineer can disagree all he wants...
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Yes, because you have the power of confirmation bias, and that trumps everything else. No one is immune to this effect.

Have you ever tested yourself in a decent blind test?

There are two types of audiophiles, those who believe claims that violate the laws of physics, and those who have really tested if they can detect said effect. Very few from the second category are still in the first.

Usually discussions on issues like this start with "laws of physics say no!", then "well laws of physics be damned, I can hear it", then "no, you can't, have you ever really tested if you can?", and so on. This can go on for ages until the person actually does some real blind testing, and then they're left struggling to understand why they can't detect differences they were sure they could hear before.

So, will you test yourself, or do you believe that you are above confirmation bias, and that what you hear trumps the laws of physics?

Those of us who actually have to design and build audio equipment from time to time don't have the luxury of deciding that physics and electrical engineering must be wrong to explain why we think we hear something we shouldn't.

Can you think of an argument between electrical engineering types and audiophiles, that wasn't settled in favor of the EE guys when proper blind testing was actually done? Anything ever?
 
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