HOW DO YOU JUDGE IMPROVEMENTS

[Nativebon]

How do you judge Sound quality improvements and which areas are most hard to improve upon.
From my experience I think it's mostly getting high frequencies sounding right... As per body, sounding clean yet natural. Also what areas of improvement in particular are important to you.

Does resolution solve all sound quality problems?. May be sound stage or transient.

Please share your experiences.

 

[Linear]

I'd say bass is the most difficult to get right, then the mids, then treble.
Bass is such a fickle thing, effected by things like speaker position and room acoustics.
Sound stage and imaging are quite difficult to get right as well, and difficult to test.

 

[Lurch]

For me ALL purchase decisions are made on a cost to performance basis. If its a small positive change and the thing making that change is cheap, say <£100 then yep let's have it, but if its £500+ then the VFM equation doesn't work so don't bother.

Back before Xmas I'd been reading online about audio fool network switches so grabbed an English Electric 8 switch being sold on pfm at half rrp to see what all the fuss was about. Did it make a difference, yes though relatively small and definitely not worth the full rrp of £499 and pushing it for the £250 I paid. I went on to achieve the same level of +ve change for £39 using ingenuity and used bits from eBay, also sold the EE8 on eBay for a £79 profit.
As to what I look for in an upgrade, with main components I need that slap in the face difference if I'm going to shell out a chunk of change. As to what I'm looking for, well I know it when I hear it.

 

[DUVET]

A small increase in every area of performance feels like a major upgrade .If it improves only one thing then its kinda of a sideway move or a different presentation

 

[Rockchild]

Ears, eyes and wallet

 

[Nativebon]

I'd say bass is the most difficult to get right, then the mids, then treble.
Bass is such a fickle thing, effected by things like speaker position and room acoustics.
Sound stage and imaging are quite difficult to get right as well, and difficult to test.

I've moved house twice in the last 20yrs and been lucky when it comes to bass and room effects. I suppose I demo as much speakers as possible in listening space before committing.

From experience the larger the room the more problematic the bass.

 

[Music At Home]

I’m coming to the conclusion that A-B comparisons can easily lead to wrong conclusions. Better to never try a direct comparison, whatsoever. Instead, just connect up the new piece of equipment one day (before starting any listening at all), let it warm up if necessary, and just use it as normal for a week or so. Follow the same process when re-inserting the previous bit of kit and repeat over as necessary.

Give it time and allow a preference to naturally emerge. Obviously this isn’t going to work for shop-dems, home loans, etc. and only really works if you‘re prepared to own both items for a while, but it’s a method that benefits long term satisfaction.

 

[newlash09]

For me ALL purchase decisions are made on a cost to performance basis. If its a small positive change and the thing making that change is cheap, say <£100 then yep let's have it, but if its £500+ then the VFM equation doesn't work so don't bother.

Back before Xmas I'd been reading online about audio fool network switches so grabbed an English Electric 8 switch being sold on pfm at half rrp to see what all the fuss was about. Did it make a difference, yes though relatively small and definitely not worth the full rrp of £499 and pushing it for the £250 I paid. I went on to achieve the same level of +ve change for £39 using ingenuity and used bits from eBay, also sold the EE8 on eBay for a £79 profit.
As to what I look for in an upgrade, with main components I need that slap in the face difference if I'm going to shell out a chunk of change. As to what I'm looking for, well I know it when I hear it.

+1

Has to be a slap in the face improvement. And I've been slapped red a few times.

 

[dari]

To get sound quality improvement, especially after having a few badly designed loudspeaker, I buy speakers that measure flat (or near flat) on-axis with smooth directivity, low distortion and resonances. This combination is giving me accuracy, good sound and pleasure of listening to music. Same for dac, preamp and headphone amp. Very low noise, jitter and distortion, with perfect linearity and high power amp.

 

[t1no]

When it sounds good at low volume i.e achieving a fullness to the sound without the sounding bloated or artificial or the treble sacrificed / rolled off. Best I have heard in this respect with moderately efficient speakers is a valve amp, followed by some vintage amps and some more modern class D amps.

 

[sktn77a]

"Differences" aren't that difficult to hear. Whether they represent "improvements" is in the ear of the beholder!

 

[Strider]

I know when a small investment has improved sound quality is when the mrs comes in from the kitchen and says, "Wow that sounds good!"
Followed by:
"How much did that cost?"

 

[Gizza]

A great thread, this. I had to think long and hard to come up with an answer to the question. For me, an improvement has been achieved if music now sounds more realistic than it did before i.e. it sounds more like the musicians/instruments/sound making devices are in front of me. This could be more accurate tonality and/or more detail. This usually results in me enjoying the music more, which is the real reason for upgrading.

 

[bigrod]

I listen to hundreds of systems throughout a year .. at mates , at bake-offs, at shows etc then listen at home and think I’m “OK” with what I’ve got ..
I’m never going to achieve the dizzying heights of some of what I heard at the Audio Show over the weekend , fabulously superb in a couple of rooms , but they we’re silly money and totally unobtainable for the majority of domestic situations..
Quite a few we’re certainly not worth the money by a wide margin . In fact some were quite embarrassing, …
When spending anything on HIFI you have got to take it in the round ..
I can’t see much point in having a 2 grand source and pre and dropping in 60 grands worth of speakers ..
Upgrade of a new cartridge is about my limit nowadays and you can easily judge if it’s better or not .. The problem then creates more problems,, You double the price of your cartridge and then start thinking , what if I change the phono amp .. .. I’m at peace with what I’ve put together for the money .. and will only change if something can’t be fixed or it’s worn out like a cartridge..
I was glad to eventually see the wood and not the trees .. ….

 

[ROOG]

These days I have more or less given up trying, the last couple of shop demos were non conclusive for me leading to me feeling quite disenfranchised by the process. similarly when I got the 'better'? (more costly more like), stuff home for a trial. Swapping in over £10k of gear of the same manufacturer as my current gear gave no discernable benefit to me.

The only HiFi search process I actually enjoyed was trying different loud speakers which ranged from bordering on unlistenable to 'good enough'.

What I have learnt is that the acoustics of my room are by far the most significant factor affecting the sound of my system and not the equipment, which I suspect goes a long way to explaining why feel as I do about my first paragraph.

I now tend to base most of my decisions on features I require, at least I know what I am gaining for my money.

 

[2010*zuma]

First 5 seconds... It ain't rocket science.

I don't have time to look for something that isn't there.

 

[bigrod]

What I have learnt is that the acoustics of my room are by far the most significant factor affecting the sound of my system and not the equipment,

That has been my philosophy for 50 years ….

 

[Jules_S]

A good measure of an improvement is the desire to listen for longer, and / or to a more diverse range of music, and / or to dig out some old stuff from your collection that you've not heard for a while. In other words, are you more engaged?

 

[Gizza]

I listen to hundreds of systems throughout a year .. at mates , at bake-offs, at shows etc then listen at home and think I’m “OK” with what I’ve got ..
I’m never going to achieve the dizzying heights of some of what I heard at the Audio Show over the weekend , fabulously superb in a couple of rooms , but they we’re silly money and totally unobtainable for the majority of domestic situations..
Quite a few we’re certainly not worth the money by a wide margin . In fact some were quite embarrassing, …
When spending anything on HIFI you have got to take it in the round ..
I can’t see much point in having a 2 grand source and pre and dropping in 60 grands worth of speakers ..
Upgrade of a new cartridge is about my limit nowadays and you can easily judge if it’s better or not .. The problem then creates more problems,, You double the price of your cartridge and then start thinking , what if I change the phono amp .. .. I’m at peace with what I’ve put together for the money .. and will only change if something can’t be fixed or it’s worn out like a cartridge..
I was glad to eventually see the wood and not the trees .. ….

Definitely agree with having a balanced system. I also agree that price does not always equate to better. It's surprising, however how some components do surprisingly keep up with improvements of other components in the system. It makes me wonder if that when auditioning for a new piece of kit, it's worth hearing those on your shortlist in a better system than you have or can afford at that time. Otherwise, you may not realise just how good a new piece of kit is.
The addition of my JBL speakers has shown me just how good the rest of my system is, even though my outgoing Quad ESL63/Gradient subwoofers with active crossover were no slouches. Conversely, I once owned some B&W DM7 speakers which I thought sounded great when I bought them with Meridian pre/power amps and a Thorens/Mission/Lentek MC cart. However, when I was auditioning some better amplifiers with a view to upgrade, we really heard the limitation of the speakers. We soon realised we could not improve the sound with those speakers in place.

 

[Gizza]

These days I have more or less given up trying, the last couple of shop demos were non conclusive for me leading to me feeling quite disenfranchised by the process. similarly when I got the 'better'? (more costly more like), stuff home for a trial. Swapping in over £10k of gear of the same manufacturer as my current gear gave no discernable benefit to me.

The only HiFi search process I actually enjoyed was trying different loud speakers which ranged from bordering on unlistenable to 'good enough'.

What I have learnt is that the acoustics of my room are by far the most significant factor affecting the sound of my system and not the equipment, which I suspect goes a long way to explaining why feel as I do about the above paragraphs.

I now tend to base most of my decisions on features I require, at least I know what I am gaining for my money.

Yep, when I bought my current speakers, I realised how much my room limited the quality of the bass. I constructed 6 acoustic panels and placed in the corners of the wall behind the speakers, the bass is much, much better. I get the impression that there are many people that have spent good sums of money on hifi that just won't be hearing the full capabilities of their system.