Is source first relevant any more?

hi,
just wondering if the source first doctrine of the 70's and 80's still holds sway when people are upgrading. i.e. can better amplification reveal a source component so much that what sounded pretty good with 'lesser' amplification sound bad with the 'better' one?
personal experiance hasn't bourne this out for me but i'd like to know others opinions on this.
cheers


julian

 

I think "source first" was perhaps more relevant in the analogue age i.e. the days of cheap turntables. I can remember putting a better amp into a system (that had a particularly nasty Pioneer direct drive turntable) and the overall sound being worse because the amp was revealing the shortcomings.

What's also a factor nowadays is the use of off-board DAC's (be it standalone or within a processor). You can take a pretty average CD player or DVD player and make it sound many times better by using a separate DAC.

So, yes, I'd say "source first" is less of an issue in this digital age.

Matt.

 

In general, I think you get into less trouble working source first, especially when upgrading, although my opinion on what constitutes a first rate source has changed over the years.

Nonetheless, if you've got a big room you tend to need big speakers which are expensive. With big speakers it may be garbage in, garbage out but at least its an impressive pile of it.

 

hmm interesting question mate.

I think that speakers need careful matching with rooms, and amps need careful matching with speakers.

Sources like CD players though, just need to be GOOD (*nb good is what you think sounds good)..

So! IMHO I think a quality source is very important, but should be less room/system dependant..

Thats what I thinks
Chris

 

I'd happily argue in favour of "source first".

At present I'm awaiting a replacement CD player, the old one having expired in a rather untimely fashion.
That leaves me with a fairly good amp and pair of speakers fronted by a mid-priced DVD player.
Frankly, I've hardly used my system in stereo since the loss of my CD player. It just sounds dull and boring now, despite having plenty of "scale" as so well mentioned earlier.

As a comparison, I tried a cheapo £100 pair of speakers on the back end of my system when I still had my VRDS-7.
The cheapo units clearly didn't have anything like the ability of my standard speakers, yet they still managed to get the key musical messages across, and as such, the system was still fun and listenable.

So "down with mullet systems", up with the source first philosophy.

 

I think the price of the sources have come with the event of the CD player. These days £200 will buy you a pretty damn good cd player but I reckon you need to spend about £300 on a turntable of similar qualities.

Although I think things like the Project Debut and maye Planar 2 break this rule. The reason I think source first was popular in the 70's was because of the amount of cheap crappy turntbales. A £100 CDP will sound better than any of the CHEAP 70's crap.

I still think the source is important but I think the amp should cost at least the same as the source. In my case my amp cost nearly double what my CDP cost.

 

sauce first definatle,especially on chips ,followed by the salt and then vinagar

 

In 1977, I bought my first hifi turntable...

Deck: Thorens TD160BC MkII
Arm: SME 3009
Cart: Ortofon VMS20E

Edited: Forgot the price - £124

It fed Crimson Elektrik amps and home made KEF/Peerless speakers. I can still remember today exactly how it sounded and I can confidently say that it would trash any £100 CD player in just about every way.

Well this is certainly true of my system at the moment but only because I upgraded from an amp which cost only half what the CD player cost. And I only spent as much as I did on the new amp because it was necessary to spend that in order to get high power output without losing sound quality. However, I'm not convinced that my next CD player will have to cost as much as the ATC amp cost.
We'll see.

 

I completely buy into the source first ethos and would always recommend the best source you can find then a decent well matched amp and speakers within a vinyl set up.

However price and quality do not always go hand in hand, I paid £450 for my Xerxes with an Artemiz arm and another £350 for a cart + £150 for set up/service at the factory, this pales against the £2400 amp or expensive speakers but never the less it works very well...

I have no idea why people stopped buying into source first but I imagine it relates the very minor upgrades bought by spending loads on a CD front end instead of getting a 1000 pounder and leaving it at that... I have yet to hear an expensive CD player that lived up to it's pricetag....

Stands back and ducks..

 

I have no doubt that a Thorens TD160BC MkII would trash a modern £100 CDP but if that turntbale was still being made it would cost much more than £100. By cheap turntbales I was refereing to the Japeneese plastic stuff and the old music centre things.

 

At the risk of sounding like a broken record!!!!, I would rather have a pair of atc scm50s and a marantz el cheapo cd, than a linn cd12 and some wharfdales


Then again, you never know, maybe if i had them side by side in my room, I might prefer the other..funny old world

I think I have the definitive answer to this age old question, buy the most expensive in everything..source first, amp first, speakers first, all first, all equal

 

In my experience source first is no longer really applicable, at least not to CD players. A competently designed budget player will sound, IME, around 75-80% as good as a £1000 deck. If not more.

I did a test one day, after several months of trying different CD players and finding only minor improvements, even with large price hikes. I thought it was worth trying an extreme test, so compared my £1200 Meridian 507 (hooked up to my preamp with expensive phono calbes) directly to a £130 Sony CD Walkman (hooked up to the preamp using a cheap 'n skanky minjack-to-phono cable). I was astounded when I first put on the Sony - it sounded just as good! After a bit of listening, and a couple swaps back and forth I realised it didn't actually sound as good, and really wasn't that close. But the fact is, initially it sounded just as good, and I really had to listen to it to pick out the differences. I mean, who knows - maybe the Sony is a particularly exceptional portable player, but it was still surprising.

My previous experience had been that the difference between a Marantz CD6000 KI Signature player (£500 new, <£300 these days) and a Meridian 506.24 (£950 when I bought it, but that was reduced from the original price) was pretty small, and that the difference between that and the 507 was very small, and that the difference between that and the 588 (£2100) was even smaller. Interestingly, I compared the 588 directly to a Linn Ikemi, and there was quite a noticeable difference between them - neither machine sounded decidedly better but they each had a distinctive "character" to the sound (well, being honest, the Linn sounded like it had a "character", the Meridian just sounded right. ) So I suspect that's what you're paying for in most of the high end players - a particular sonic character that the designer happens to like.

In any case, these minor, piddling differences between CD players pale into insignificance when compared to the differences between speakers (and the improvements you get when upgrading speakers). I would contend that a £100 CD player fed through £1000 speakers will always sound better than a £1000 CD player fed through £100 speakers. The only exception is when the speakers are particularly difficult loads (as is often the case in the high end) and require more meaty amplification to come on song.

Thus, IMHO, the speaker is paramount. If you're building a system from scratch, start with the speaker, and dedicate the majority of your budget to it. Get the speaker that best suits your tastes and your room, and is the best you can afford. Then make sure it's got an appropriate amp. *Then* get the best CD player you can with whatever £££ is left. I don't see any problem with driving £2K speakers and £2K amps with a £500 CD player. I suspect it would sound marvelous.

Cheers,

Dunc

 

Data, I would agree wholeheartedly with your statement re: ATC 50s and el-cheapo CD player. That's exactly what I was getting at.

Dunc

 

I feel that just because changing speakers can make a more noticeable difference to the sound of a system than changing a CD player does not actually mean that it gives a greater improvement in the sound.

When I changed from my old Philips bit stream player to my current Arcam Alpha9 I was slightly taken back as I expected a much more noticeable leap forward in clarity and detail than was initially evident. I did a side by side comparison with my computer (Edirol DA2496 pro recording card) and there really wasn't much in it. The Arcam was fuller in the bass and smoother all round.

However after prolonged listening to the Arcam I began to realise just how superior it really was. It just brings more feeling from the music. If I do an A/B test now I still don't notice a huge difference in detail and so on, but there is certainly more music coming out! I would really hate to go back to a budget player now as although the initial playing of say.. just one song would be fine, it really just doesn't have the ability to bring you into the music like a better player can.

Cheers,

 

Thats the main problem with demos you can't listen to them long enough to notice the fualts. My £40 Panasonic played through my Philips HP890 headphones sounded great at first but extension listening you realise the detail and just the entire way the music gells is misisng.

However I don't think I would ever spend £1000 on a CDP. A turntable maybe.

 

like I said, it has got to be in your room, I am only just discovering the kind of sound I like, and many a time have bought something, got it back, and didn't take to it in my room.

 

I know you were just useing them as an example but I don't think you could knock the HP890 at the price. I'd expect if you pair them with a more capable PCD you might be supprised what they can do. Or maybe a headphone amp.

 

I do wonder just how many people here are making the happy statement of "I'd rather spend the cash on the amp/speakers than the source", without actually having tried it?

Me, I've sampled it both ways around in my system, as mentioned earlier, my present VERY mullet sounding system is not really usable for more than background lift music, as the source lets it down so much (£180 DVD player with nearly £4ks worth of amp/speakers).

Vice versa, the RS £100 specials speakers when mated with my old CDP were actually fun to listen to.

Still, thats just my experience.

 

Well I kind of go for the source first theory. I've got a Pioneer 656A dvd going via a BR Concerto to a MF A324 dac (and now for the sacralige :duck: ) into a Marantz SR7200 av amp to a pair of B&W 602s2's.
Well the source together is worth £1200 RRP without the cable. The amp (apart from being an AV amp) was £600 RRP and the speakers were £300 RRP.

But I can honestly say if you had told me my speakers can do what they do now I wouldn't have beleived you. It sounds absolutley wonderful, deep detailed soundstage with a lovely warm overall sound.

Admittably I've splashed out a lot for power cables and interconnects, but its been more than worth it.

What would it sound like with a £600 stereo amp . Well if anyone wants to give me one i'll tell you.

 

Wm's theroy on this age old debate, is an evenly balanced system. If you have a transparent enough system it will let through, what your source is capable of giving, doesn't have to be expensive either, we have a very transparent basic system 'At the office' for testing purposes, it assembly was a lot less than all the system listed in this thread, my own personal system is very close in the ratio of 5<>4<>3. Wm