Roger Skoff at the LAOC Audio Society Gala, 2024 (photograph and image processing by David W. Robinson)
Roger Skoff writes about the cost of building a system
On one of the audiophile groups on Facebook, I just read a post where some guy wrote in and said he's got a turntable that cost whatever number of dollars, and asked how much money he ought to spend for a phono cartridge to use with it.
That's not how it works.
The reason that a HiFi system is called a "system" is because it's a system—an assemblage of component parts put together to perform a particular function which, for this particular kind of system, is the reproduction of music with a high level of fidelity to the sound of the recordings being played through it.
No, not the actual sound of a live performance. Capturing that and presenting it to the system for playback is the job of the recording being played, and the system can sound no better than the recording does.
Back to the question at hand, though—the turntable and a cartridge for it—those are just two parts of the complete music system, which consists of, in the case of a phono system (which is all that we can assume that this guy has or is putting together) consists of a cartridge, the tonearm, the way the cartridge is mounted in the tonearm, the turntable, the surface or thing that the turntable is mounted on, a phono cable, a (assuming separate components and not a receiver) preamp, a pair of cables from the preamp to the amplifier (or amplifiers if the guy is using monoblocks), speaker cables, speakers, the room that all of it is mounted in, where the speakers are placed relative to the listening room, and where the listener is going to be sitting when he listens to it. There are other things, too, like AC power cords and AC receptacles for everything that needs them, one or more subwoofers and subwoofer cables if it/they are used, and whatever else may have an effect on the sound, including the furniture and whatever else might affect the room's acoustics.
Neither the turntable nor the cartridge can sound any better than the total of all of the other things involved, and the worst of them all is going to be the limiting factor.
What that means is that if the guy has the world's best turntable and buys the world's best cartridge (Notice that in both cases I said "best," and not "most expensive") and correspondingly good everything else, but uses a pair of unbaffled 4" table-radio speakers or plays his music in a bad room or through badly placed good speakers, it's not going to sound good, regardless of what cartridge he buys.
There are a number of things we must always keep in mind when spending money for a system or system components:
- The system is a system and can't sound better than its worst element.
- The law of diminishing returns to scale: Past a certain point, spending ten times as much can never buy ten times as good performance.
- Performance is what you think it is. For a system, the measured performance of any component, even if true, doesn't mean anything at all if any other part or the combination doesn't sound good to you.
- Listening with your own ears, in your own room, to your own system, as it is set up, is the only true measurements of performance.
- Unless you are working toward some other plan than maximizing immediate improvement, always improve the most easily/the most cheaply/the most significantly improvable thing first.
The cheapest thing you can ever improve is how your system is set up. A $10,000 cartridge mounted off-angle or played at a significantly wrong tracking force will always sound like crap. You may be able to correct it for free. Do that first. Correcting badly placed speakers can also be done free. Find whatever improvements can be made cheap or free. Always do them before actually spending money.
Simply unplugging and cleaning all of the connectors in your system—all of them, including speaker cables and AC plugs—can be done for free. Good contact cleaners and protectants (check out the stuff from Caig Labs) don't cost very much. When you plug everything back in afterwards, you will hear a difference. Do it at least once a year.
Depending on your room, its furnishings, and the level your system is already at, improving your listening room acoustics might be cheaper than making any other changes to your system (for example, changing speakers or electronics, which can easily run in the thousands of dollars). Talk with your dealer or check online sources for information about how and what to use to improve your own particular room. You might be surprised at the results.
Before changing other components that would be more expensive, look into getting better cables wherever they're needed. Some brands are famous for offering value and performance far beyond their price and can make an important improvement to the sound of your system. At the risk of an apparent conflict of interest, my company's RSX cable lines is one of them. But there are other cables with really good price-to-performance characteristics. When you do that, consider new AC power cords, too. A number of highly regarded reviewers think they can be the most important cables in your system.
When buying electronics, listen to both tubed and solid-state products. How good any electronic product is depends very much more on the skills and intent of the designer than on what they're made of. Tubes are more exotic and many people like them, but they require regular and potentially expensive maintenance. Solid-state gear can sound just as good (I use only solid-state electronics), can run for years completely untended, and can be less expensive to buy.
And here's one thought well worth remembering when it comes time to consider new speakers: Getting deep bass is the hardest and very most expensive part of building speakers. Bass drivers cost manufacturers more than tweeters or midrange units and the cabinetry (enclosures) for bass production can be greatly more complex, difficult, and expensive to produce. That means that to buy "full range" speakers—ones that will, themselves, make deep bass, has to be more expensive. They also take up more space and can be a problem in terms of fitting into the room and its furnishings.
The good news is that many manufactures offer smaller (usually stand-mounted) two-way versions of their speakers that use exactly the same tweeters and midrange drives as their full-range models and sound exactly the same in all but the bass frequencies. These can cost very much less and, because of their reduced size and the resultant reduction in cabinet diffraction, they often image and soundstage better than the larger ones.
The use of speakers like that with an accessory subwoofer (or two) can not only give you better sound, but be easier to place, look better, and save thousands of dollars in overall cost!
Getting a great sounding system will always cost money, but using your ears and your mind instead of just your wallet is the best way to get the best one possible at whatever price range you choose.
Enjoy!
Drawings by Bruce Walker
