A note of thanks and appreciation to the following: my uncle Su Lim who first started me on this hi-fi journey; my audiophile mentors Kuo YH, Ashley Elias, Sim TS, and Gabriel of Zenn Audio; and last but not least, the members of the group RFSG Vinyl, who have rekindled my passion for good music, and made me rediscover how fun this hobby can be - thanks guys!
The following are some basic rules that I didn't have the luxury of knowing when I started out on this hobby. After lots of painful trial and error, I think I finally have some of it figured out.
Hopefully, some day I'd understand 'em all and achieve audiophilic nirvana, and maybe then I can finally stop buying audiophile grade CDs....
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| Listening Room, circa Jan 2008 |
1. Optimise the listening room.
If you have the luxury of a
dedicated room, good for you! Most of the rest of us have to make do with a
room that doubles up as the AV room, bedroom, study, living hall etc. Even
then, it’s possible to optimise the room from an acoustic point of view.
Firstly, the room has to be
balanced between acoustically live and acoustically dead. The average real-life
room with lots of furniture, junk and gear should be fine, but beware of large
swaths of glass or bare wall or floor - if you can discern echoes from
hand-claps while walking about the room, it won’t hurt to lay down a rug or two,
or a set of curtains.
Next, the speakers need to be
positioned correctly – here there’s lots of resources online – the Cardas golden-ratio
method, the Rule of Thirds etc. – so you’re welcome to explore and experiment,
but do note that a correctly positioned pair of speakers will likely to be far
out enough from the wall to incur (gasp!) The Disapproval Of The Wife, so be-warned.
Most people will place the rest of their
audio or AV gear in the space between the speakers, but do note that this will
negatively affect the speaker’s sound projection. Ditto for any piece of
furniture (e.g. study desk or coffee table) between the speakers and you at
your listening position.
If, and when, you get your listening room right, this is what should happen when you sit down at the listening position and close your eyes - the speakers, the whole system, should disappear sonically. With your eyes closed, you should not be able to discern where the speakers are - in front of you should just be a 'wall of sound'.
If, and when, you can achieve this - congratulations!
If, and when, you get your listening room right, this is what should happen when you sit down at the listening position and close your eyes - the speakers, the whole system, should disappear sonically. With your eyes closed, you should not be able to discern where the speakers are - in front of you should just be a 'wall of sound'.
If, and when, you can achieve this - congratulations!
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| CEC ST930 turntable, Jelco SA250ST arm, Ortofon Rohmann cartridge, circa April 2013 |
2. Proportion the budget right.
This depends on how many sources
of music you intend to play – obviously the more sources you want the more
you’re going to have to spend. To keep this simple, let’s assume you just need
one source, e.g. a turntable.
I would suggest a 3:3:3:1 split
as a starting point, i.e. 30% of your budget for each of the source,
amplification and speakers, leaving 10% for the rest (cables etc.).
There will obviously be much variability in
this, but if you are eyeing a CD player costing twelve hundred bucks when your
budget is two grand, then you might be in for a bit of a fix.
3. Find the love-of-your-life speakers.
The most important item to nail
down right is the speakers. I cannot
emphasize this point enough!
Just think of the speakers as
your life partner. The same way you’d want to take your time to find the right
life partner you truly love, you’d want to take your time to find the pair of
speakers that you, your ears, and your heart truly love. Reviews and all can
help, but at the end of the day, you’ve got to like, no, love how the speakers
sound – you’re the one who’s going be listening to them day in day out, not
anyone else.
So the same way you’d want to choose the
girlfriend you wanna go out with, not the one your mother wants you to go out with; choose the speakers
that you like, not the ones that the Stereophile reviewer likes.
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| Yugoslavian EI 6CA7s, Antique Sound Labs AQ1008 amps, circa Jan 2008 |
4. Match the amp to your speakers.
Once you’re found the speaker
love of your life, then this next rule is easy – get the amp that best drives your chosen speaker. Do note that this
might be easier said than done – getting a correct speaker-amplifier pairing
can be a black art, but there are a few tricks....
The store where you bought your
speakers – what amplification did they use to drive them?
When your speakers were designed,
what was the amplification used? For example, Robin Marshall famously used Naim
amplification when designing the Epos 14 speaker.
Go onto the forums – is there a
particular pairing that many people seem to rave about?
Do note that good amplification
often don’t come cheap, and cheap amplification often don’t sound good.
Lastly, just because the speaker
and the amp share the same brand does not automatically make them an ideal
pairing. Case in point – my Mission 751 speakers sound terrible with a Rotel
integrated, pretty darn good with a Mission Cyrus amp, but exceedingly
wonderful with an Audiolab 8000A!
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| Cyrus CDP, Audiolab 8000A, circa March 2013 |
5. Get the best source component that your budget allows.
You’d think this is an obvious no
brainer, but what a lot of budding audiophiles tend to do is to overspend on
fancy downstream gear, and then buying an entry-level source component.
As with most men’s toys, entry-level
gear tends to get outgrown very quickly, thus it often makes more sense to go
straight for mid-level gear right from the get-go.
Also, for the same quantum of money, it’s
often more worthwhile buying used
mid-level gear than new entry-level
gear.
6. Don’t go overboard on accessories.
I’m going to stick my neck out
here and boldly proclaim that if you follow the rules above and get the room,
speaker, amp and source right, then accessories like cables and power cords etc.
are going to matter much less - as in you won’t need to over-spend on hideously
overpriced accessories and tweaks cos you’ve already got your basic components
right.
The reverse is also true – if you’ve got
your room acoustics wrong, or a poor source component, or a amp-speaker
mismatch, then no amount of exotic cable upgrading, fancy tuning devices, power
conditioners, tube socks, cleaning fluid, or green marker pens is going to right
the fundamentally wrong sound.
7. Listen with your heart, not your ears.
The typical audiophile should be
listening out for airy trebles, neutral midrange, tight bass, soundstage,
detailing, micro-dynamics, PRAT etc. correct? My tip? Forget about all that!
Sit down, close your eyes, and
just feel the music. Does it make you
feel relaxed, or joyful, or as if you’re in a live performance? Do you feel an
emotional connection to the music? Are you losing yourself in the song? Or does
it make you tense, uneasy, wanting to get up and change the track?
If it’s the former, congratulations! If
it’s the latter, time to go back - you’ve done something wrong somewhere (or
you’ve used a non-audiophile approved disc! =P)
Also, it's important to make your judgement only after prolonged listening. A lot of hi-fi gear sounds great on first listen - be careful here - often these will tire you and your ears out on prolonged listening. But if you find that you can sit and listen to, and enjoy, the music over a prolonged session, then you're on to something.
Also, it's important to make your judgement only after prolonged listening. A lot of hi-fi gear sounds great on first listen - be careful here - often these will tire you and your ears out on prolonged listening. But if you find that you can sit and listen to, and enjoy, the music over a prolonged session, then you're on to something.
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| David Ng, Mosaic Music Festival, March 2011 |
8. Listen to, and take reference from, live music.
Often, the audiophile will expect
his speakers to reproduce tight bass – bass tighter than the botox-ed butt of
that aging Hollywood star, but have you ever heard a plucked double bass in
real life? A real life double bass doesn’t sound as ‘tight’ as your audiophile
recording will have you believe. You don’t have to take my word – go have a
listen for yourself!
So do go check out a classical concert,
play a musical instrument, attend a live gig. Listen to, and learn, what real
live music sounds like, and use that as a reference when tuning your hi-fi.
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| Collection, circa Jan 2013 |
9. Don’t limit your listening to just audiophile-approved recordings.
Just think – what percentage of recorded
music has been recorded and released in an audiophile-approved format? 1%? 0.1%
I don’t know, but you get my point – there’s a shitload of music out there
that’s not pressed using Fancy Acronym Technology (FAT) on 188gm virgin vinyl
using half speed mastering, and you’ll be missing out of all of that if you only
listen to audiophile stuff.
10. Learn from your mistakes, and share on your experiences!
Lastly, in this audiophile journey,
you’re going to make mistakes. Nobody’s going to get it all correct the first
time.
You’re not going to believe the
number of audiophile boo-boos I’ve committed and the amount of audiophile
snake-oil I’ve fallen for - drinking by the label, buying entry level junk,
wrong amp-speaker pairing, wrong speaker positioning - I’ve done ‘em all!
It’s ok - I was young and stupid
then (now I’m just stupid). It’s called ‘school fees’ – we’ve all had to pay
them one way or the other.
BUT we can learn from the mistakes of
others! It’s in this spirit that I’ve penned this article…hopefully someone out
there will read this and benefit from the folly of my audiophile ways.
Disclaimer.
I’ve been listening to hi-fi for
many years, but that doesn’t make me an expert – the same way a lifetime of farting doesn't make anyone an authority on flatulence.
The above are my personal
observations - you don’t have to agree with it, or even believe any of it.
If any of the above offends your own
audiophile believes and inclinations – it’s ok, you don’t have to write in to
complain – the world hasn’t ended and nobody's died - just close the page and move
on to another Internet site – but thank you for reading this far anyway! =)
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| Michell Gyrodec turntable, Graham 1.5c tonearm, Ortofon Rohmann cartridge, circa Dec 2011 |
