Best system for under 8,000 pounds?

[Anonymous]

jaxwired:

Mr_Poletski:I simply reccomend you look at the platinum series by Monitor Audio (the PL-300's give me a stiffy) and some hardcore Krell amplification. The PL-300 retail at 5-5.5 grand but I can't find any decent prices on Krell kit...

I like those PL 300 as well. Spectacular.

So you'd recommend a £5000 pair of speakers, a £1500 amp and a £1500 CD player.

Hmmm.

 

[TheHomeCinemaCentre]

Nothing wrong with that. Some favour the source first but in my experience getting the speakers right is a good first move. Size and appearances can play a very important part in a purchase. Generally with a weighting on the speakers you can hear everything the electronics have to offer. This is not a hard and fast rule and we could discuss the merits of both options all day but it can work. £5k/ £1.5k/£1.5k may provide better results than splitting the budget evenly across the three components. This is why atime spent listening to different options is key.

 

[matthewpiano]

I would strongly urge you to follow Nick's excellent advice and start doing some auditioning/extended listening.

Furthermore I would strongly recommend that when you think you have found the right combination, you secure a decent home demonstration to make sure it all works well in your room at home. Speakers, in particular, depend very much on how they interact with your own acoustic environment and what sounds good in the dealer's demo room won't necessarily sound the same at home.

This is a big investment and the stakes are high. With this budget you should be spending a lot of time listening and judging with your own ears.

 

[Anonymous]

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for all this..first sessions start this comming Sat and will report back what I'm hearing! No hurry here and enjoying the opportunity to do the research and get the feedback..much appreciated.

 

[rtweed]

My recommendation is that you spend most of your money on speakers. They are the one component that you'll hear something other than subtle or imaginary differences. These days, contrary to what you'll read in the magazines, most decent amps sound the same. I'd suggest you'd be hard pressed to hear any significant difference between the ludicrously expensive amps recommended by others in this thread and the Behringer A500 that will cost you the princely sum of 150 quid!

Forget about CD players and transports - rip your CDs to Apple Lossless or some other lossless format and use a PC/Mac running iTunes to play your music. The Beresford TC-7520 at the equally princely sum of about 180 quid will provide you a front end that sounds as good if not better than any the expensive exotica for playing CDs.

So you therefore have about 7,600 to spend on speakers! I'd check out PMC's ones: they are truly amazing!

Forget about expensive cables, bi-wiring etc too. Any real or (more likely) imagined difference they'll make will pale into insignificance compared with the differences in your choice of speakers.

 

[Anonymous]

Ok good day testing...have listened to the Neat Momentum 4i, DynAudio focus 360, Monitor Audio PL 200's, Wilson Benesch Square 2, and some others which I felt were not up to speed. Loved all but thinking the Monitor's are the best? What do folks think?...

 

[Kevin Stephens]

If you like the Monitor Audio speakers, seek out some ex demo Musical Fidelity amps and speakers to try them with, seems to be a wel matched combination if you like the sound, eg kW550 amp reduced from £5000 to 2500

 

[Thaiman]

charliemoore:Ok good day testing...have listened to the Neat Momentum 4i, DynAudio focus 360, Monitor Audio PL 200's, Wilson Benesch Square 2, and some others which I felt were not up to speed. Loved all but thinking the Monitor's are the best? What do folks think?...

The PL range will left you with only £3k to spend on electronics! You would be looking to spend "at least" £2K on amplification to make justice which that's mean you might be wasting your time spend £1K on CD player....just my thought.

Which amp did you demo them with? (I love Neat and Naim, Dyn and Krell, Wilson benesch with a er...something that hasn't got any brightness at all!)

 

[the record spot]

It is a fallacy to think that the biggest affect on sound will be via the speakers alone. Simply not true...

 

[rtweed]

Can you quote me the evidence, other than personal belief that you heard differences, or based on biased reports or hearsay, that this is *not* the case?

I always love the "even my wife could hear the difference" line that's so frequently trotted out by way of convincing evidence 🙂

Listen to 10 speakers even in the same price bracket and you'll hear 10 *widely* differing sounds. Listen to any half-way decent modern amp or CD player and the differences are subtle to say the least.

I'm open to someone bringing round some gear to compare with mine and convincing me otherwise.

 

[the record spot]

"Quote...evidence"? Sorry, I didn't realise I was in a court case. By the same token, can you quote me the evidence that supports your theory?

Look, I couldn't give a bundle of very much what others reckon makes the biggest difference or impact on their systems. If it floats your boat to think speakers are the be all and end all when determining how to allocate a budget, fine by me.

Where the rationale falls down isn;t so much in the belief that taking ten speakers aside and lining them up and getting ten different presentations subsequently, it's the belief that the variation is much wider than with other integral components.

Put an Audio Analogue Paganini CD player up against my current source. There is a big gap in sonic terms between then two. One revels in near depth plundering bass, the Marantz much less so (very lean) with a fine mindrange and a less spritely treble. The Linn Mimik different yet again.

The Marantz PM6010-KI amp is similar - however - the Audio Analogue Puccine SE, albeit the latter is a little drier, yet compared to the Technics SU-V6, neither can match the latter for bass extension. Both major with a far more expressive midrange.

I've listened to enough and mixed and matched enough kit in the last few months alone, never mind in the last thrity years to come round to the perspective I have. Change any component and you will achieve a different audio footprint that will be as great or as little as the difference between the characteristics of the new item and the item being replace are.

In other words, if you have similar sounding kit you won't notice much difference if replacing one with another. Change transparent for coloured and it's like night and day. The argument, then, that this applies significantly more to speakers than to other kit if flawed IMO. The best you can hope for is to achieve a working synergy between components and that isn't - and never has been - down to speaker choice alone.

 

[JoelSim]

rtweed:
Can you quote me the evidence, other than personal belief that you heard differences, or based on biased reports or hearsay, that this is *not* the case?

I always love the "even my wife could hear the difference" line that's so frequently trotted out by way of convincing evidence 🙂

Listen to 10 speakers even in the same price bracket and you'll hear 10 *widely* differing sounds. Listen to any half-way decent modern amp or CD player and the differences are subtle to say the least.

I'm open to someone bringing round some gear to compare with mine and convincing me otherwise.

I can't agree with you fella, sorry. You may be right on a 'demo' or first listen, but once you sit down and try to appreciate the music over an extended period you are wrong, very wrong. I guess it all depends on what you want out of your hifi.

 

[Craig M.]

rtweed:
My recommendation is that you spend most of your money on speakers. They are the one component that you'll hear something other than subtle or imaginary differences. These days, contrary to what you'll read in the magazines, most decent amps sound the same. I'd suggest you'd be hard pressed to hear any significant difference between the ludicrously expensive amps recommended by others in this thread and the Behringer A500 that will cost you the princely sum of 150 quid!

Forget about CD players and transports - rip your CDs to Apple Lossless or some other lossless format and use a PC/Mac running iTunes to play your music. The Beresford TC-7520 at the equally princely sum of about 180 quid will provide you a front end that sounds as good if not better than any the expensive exotica for playing CDs.

there are some huge differences between amps, and unfortunately the more expensive ones nearly always sound better. as well as having more power/current/headroom. and i have to say that while the beresford is very good, it isn't the be all and end all of digital replay. i thought my old kandy cdp was better and the caspian cdp ripped it apart, much better in every way. just compare the beresford to a dacmagic, now i'm not saying the dm is better then the 7520 (or vice versa, i own both), but they are different and claiming that one of them will trounce a 1k upwards cdp is wrong. maybe your behringer doesn't let you hear the difference?

 

[Alec]

Some of you are talking about comparing products at similar prices, some at wildly different prices...

 

[Craig M.]

i think only one is saying a 180 quid dac can compete with a high end cdp. or that they all sound the same.

 

[rtweed]

Well you asked me to quote references and provided the moderator doesn't remove hyperlinks as he has done before, here are some. I'll add enough description that you'll hopefully be able to Google for the articles anyway. The best source in my opinion for such evidence is the newsgroup named rec.audio.high-end which is also available as a Google Group. The threads I'll quote will contain numerous other references to support the claims that are made.

A great all-round summary in the thread titled "Best 3 ways to significantly improve a stereo system":

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/rec.audio.high-end/browse_thread/thread/385b5581913187ad#

While we're at it, on the subject of the sound of cables, see the lengthy discussion in the thread titled "You Tell 'Em, Arnie!":

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/rec.audio.high-end/browse_thread/thread/8dc7089fc397bdad#

On amps (and more on cables), again same group, thread titled "The Carver Challenge":

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/rec.audio.high-end/browse_thread/thread/9193e3692a71c833#

On bi-wiring and speaker cables, thread titled "Bi-wiring?":

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/rec.audio.high-end/browse_thread/thread/e2dd69024fc41c13#

In fact anyone who seriously considers himself or herself an audiophile should spend time persusing the numerous postings in this group.

 

[rtweed]

> maybe your behringer doesn't let you hear the difference?

I doubt it. See the review in the Audio Critic (if the moderator removes the hyperlink as he has done before on me, just do a Google search for Behringer Audio Critic):

http://theaudiocritic.com/plog/index.php?op=ViewArticle&articleId=22&blogId=1

 

[Thaiman]

rtweed:
My recommendation is that you spend most of your money on speakers. They are the one component that you'll hear something other than subtle or imaginary differences. These days, contrary to what you'll read in the magazines, most decent amps sound the same. I'd suggest you'd be hard pressed to hear any significant difference between the ludicrously expensive amps recommended by others in this thread and the Behringer A500 that will cost you the princely sum of 150 quid!

Forget about CD players and transports - rip your CDs to Apple Lossless or some other lossless format and use a PC/Mac running iTunes to play your music. The Beresford TC-7520 at the equally princely sum of about 180 quid will provide you a front end that sounds as good if not better than any the expensive exotica for playing CDs.

So you therefore have about 7,600 to spend on speakers! I'd check out PMC's ones: they are truly amazing!

Forget about expensive cables, bi-wiring etc too. Any real or (more likely) imagined difference they'll make will pale into insignificance compared with the differences in your choice of speakers.

Are you working for PMC or something! Speakers do make a vast different but very much room and amplification depending and your advice to spend nearly all of budget on a pair of speakers is very odd. Don't get me wrong, I don't believe in how much should go where but if the op follow your advice it would be like put 900cc Mini mk2 engine into new S-Class Merc!

Behringer A500 is a powerful amp but you wouldn't get any timbre, imaging and resolution the way highend amp can and as for Beresford, I 've 2 of them but NONE has a place on my main rack. It's is a very good value DAC but to put it with £8000 system would be insane. There is a massive different between "listen to music" and "listen to music with £8000 system".

 

[the record spot]

rtweed:
Well you asked me to quote references and provided the moderator doesn't remove hyperlinks as he has done before, here are some. I'll add enough description that you'll hopefully be able to Google for the articles anyway. The best source in my opinion for such evidence is the newsgroup named rec.audio.high-end which is also available as a Google Group. The threads I'll quote will contain numerous other references to support the claims that are made.

A great all-round summary in the thread titled "Best 3 ways to significantly improve a stereo system":

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/rec.audio.high-end/browse_thread/thread/385b5581913187ad#

While we're at it, on the subject of the sound of cables, see the lengthy discussion in the thread titled "You Tell 'Em, Arnie!":

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/rec.audio.high-end/browse_thread/thread/8dc7089fc397bdad#

On amps (and more on cables), again same group, thread titled "The Carver Challenge":

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/rec.audio.high-end/browse_thread/thread/9193e3692a71c833#

On bi-wiring and speaker cables, thread titled "Bi-wiring?":

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/rec.audio.high-end/browse_thread/thread/e2dd69024fc41c13#

In fact anyone who seriously considers himself or herself an audiophile should spend time persusing the numerous postings in this group.

I haven't read the cables related posts listed principally as I've a fairly ambivalent view on these things; the cables I'm using right now were £30 and £60 apiece and do the job well enough for my ears. I dropped down from Nordost Blue Heavens to Audioquest Copperheads and that gave me an improvement. I noticed one anyway, so whether or not anyone else does is pretty irrelevant to me!

As for the speaker thread in the newsgroup, apart from a pile of posts on the many virtues of finding well recorded CDs in the first place (including well mastered ones), I see an awful lot of opinions and not a whole lot of fact. Which is as it should be of course. That those opinions appear on a "high end" newsgroup means nothing to be fair in as much as those which are expressed are no different to the ones I've heard and read about for the last decade and more here there and everywhere.

Peronsally, I would go along with the ones which suggested good masterings on your favourite recordings and getting a decent record deck. The ones who said "buy some good speakers" missed the same boat that you did. They think that this is the only way to make a big difference to the sound of your music, maybe because that's where the sound comes out of...I dunno.

And you seem to have contradicted your own argument; in the thread elsewhere on here where the OP asked for recommendations about replacing his Marantz CD52 Mk2 with a CD6003, you suggested getting a DAC, but, by your own logic (as the OP wasn't having issues with the player's ability to still spin discs), shouldn't you have suggested buying new speakers?!

 

[rtweed]

Nope I don't work for either PMC or Behringer. My views are my own based on over 30 years of hi-fi enthusiam. I just despair at the guff that is spouted about the subject and the amount of money that people are persuaded and prepared to spend on chasing the ellusive holy grail of audio perfection.That's up to them of course and it clearly becomes like religion - there's no telling 'em once they believe. But I would like to think that anyone setting out on this trail for the first time doesn't end up thinking that it's necessary to spend the kinds of money people are talking about on stuff that actually doesn't make any significant difference in reality. A lot of people *believe* they hear a difference and if they're prepared to fork out money on that belief, then good luck to the retailer concerned. Personally I've never heard a damned bit of difference in most reasonably modern gear. I've tried all kinds of tweaks over the years and swapped out all kinds of gear but rarely (apart from speakers) has the effect been truthfully been anything other than subtle.

So I decided to go the whole hog and see the result: as cheap but highly regarded gear as possible for everything but the speakers: the happy result is the kind of sound I know I've been striving for and similar to what I've heard in some of the major recording studios I've been lucky enough to visit over the years.

As for my amp not providing the timbre, imaging and resoultion that a high end amp can produce, please do me a favour. As Peter Aczel from the Audio Critic says: "any
two amplifiers with high input impedance, low output impedance, flat
frequency response, and sufficiently low distortion and noise will
sound exactly the same at matched levels if not clipped"

Peter has reviewed and listened to more high-end power amps with stratospheric price tags than most, so I respect his opinion. I listen at domestic levels so I'm not even approaching clipping, so I suspect that unless the laws of physics are somehow not applying in your living room, what I'm hearing from my amp is exactly the same at matched levels as anyone else's, unless you're a bat or child who has yet to don his first set of iPod headphones or visit a disco and lop the top end off their hearing for ever more.

There's no reason not to put a Beresford with a system of any value. It shares most of its core components and design with the Benchmark which is regarded as close to perfection as can make no audible difference (check out the review at Audio Critic for details).

As I said, I'm happy for anyone to come along and visit me with expensive gear and prove to me otherwise. Perhaps a challenge for What HiFi magazine? Until then my recommendation to anyone new to the hifi game is simple these days:

- rip all your CDs to lossless images using something like iTunes and store them on your computer's hard drive

- buy a decent USB-interfaced DAC for no more than 200 pounds

- buy a decent power amp for no more than about 250 pounds

- audition and spend as much as possible on speakers

- use ordinary cables

- sit back and enjoy the sound, safe in the knowledge that is as near perfection as makes no real difference and ignore the babble of the hifi tweako religion.

- spend the rest of your money on what really matters: music.

 

[the record spot]

Ummm, beg to differ, but hey, that's what this game is all about. As you can see from my system, I don't go in for tweakery, have a pretty simple set-up and it'll need me to spend a lot to beat it. Yet, there was a distinct change when I swapped the Marantz PM6010-KI for the NAD 3020A. More bass, a less "big" soundstage, to name but two. I can live witht he difference, but I can hear it too.

Suffice to say I think if you've never heard a difference in most modern gear (whatever that means), then you must be either setting your stall out at such a high level but not doing any critical listening that you don't really care, OR you are listening to similarly sounding kit and the differences really are minimal in the underlying audio characteristic.

I put it simply as per my earlier post - listen to the Audio Analogue Paganini against the Marantz SA7001-KI. The difference between the two is striking beyond belief and blows your theory out the water. And that's at what is considered midrange price these days (£900/£650 CD players respectively). See if you can borrow any of those and do the test yourself; I'll be interested to hear your thoughts.

 

[Craig M.]

sorry mate, you've put some effort in to your post but just compare a beresford to an arcam cd37, and by that i mean listen yourself rather then try to think of reasons why they should sound the same. and then compare the arcam to a caspian cdp. and then think about all the articles you've read that say they sound the same. or compare a primare i30 with my moon, very different sound. it's all opinions at the end of the day, but anyone who reckons all this stuff sounds the same isn't paying attention, imo.

and i'm sure the reviewer you mention has seen it all before but i have a pair of ears of my own.

 

[Thaiman]

So there is no different between my mcintosh and your Behringer if we were to use the same pair of speakers? be careful, you make yourself look rather silly here.

I have been follow Hifi Critics too and who care what is Peter Aczel think?, I don't think he know more than any of us that love this hobby for a long time. He get paid to do it, we paid to do it!

Good luck with your hobby, it's very different than my.