Achieving The Holy Grail Of Audio
By: Greg Maltz, Technical Contributor

It is a common joke among audio addicts: “How do you know that you’ve achieved the perfect system?  Because you can’t take out another mortgage on your home.” The real punch-line is that we often do go to extremes to maximize enjoyment of our system, whether tapping our credit limit with a new component, spending hours and days to tweak speaker position, or ordering interconnects costing more than some people’s entire systems.   To the outsider, this is not normal behavior.   But then again, achieving the holy grail of audio is not a normal conquest.

“The Sound”

Part of the problem--or part of the solution for wise audio hobbyists--is that there is no “right or wrong” in this conquest.  If a roadmap existed showing the way to perfect audio, we would all have arrived there and be listening to it at this moment. Contrary to the nom de plume of a leading audio magazine, there is no “absolute” sound.  It differs for each individual and in choosing gear, tweaking one’s system or swapping components, there are always give and take choices.  For example, that new CD player may make the music smoother and avoid painful glare, but doesn’t deliver the treble punch or some detail of your old player.    Or that line conditioner may create pinpoint imaging, but at great cost to the fullness of sound you previously had, strangling the body of the bass and midrange.  The first leg of the journey is to learn about audio and about stereo systems so that we as unique listeners can each develop an ear to guide us toward what we seek.

On a purely philosophical aside, this “sound” has nothing to do with the components and physical limitations of our listening environment.   I am not talking about whether the turntable is adjusted exactly to within .0001 seconds of the technically correct rpm, nor reflections of walls, nor the choice between tubes and solid state amplification.  These are all, to some extent, “newbie” problems that we immerse ourselves in when we get our first system (and then forever after). Instead I am talking about the “sound” we seek as people who understand and care about music.

Is your “sound” forward or laid back?  Etched and detailed or sweet and musical?  A touch bright or a tad dark?  Combining various properties of each category, no two people will seek exactly the same sound.   One’s sound is a particular mixture or blend of all the qualities you hear discussed in audio circles: warmth, fullness, brightness, clarity, leanness, tonal purity, smoothness, liquidity, detail, palpability, presence, dryness, crispness, soundstage depth/width/height, and so on.  So, in developing your system, you will inevitably be told by someone that “your sound” is too dark, bright, analytical, or warm--relative to that person’s “sound” of course.  You learn to smile politely and ignore that person, or risk sacrificing the qualities of your system that are specific to your own ears. 

Everyone has an opinion on where to start building/upgrading a system.  One widely held opinion is with speakers; others choose to start with amps.  Others argue that front end is the most influential determinant in overall sound quality.  No matter where you start, the key is to listen to each component in a variety of rooms and with a variety of other equipment.  Only then will the properties of the component become discernable and stand out from other properties of the system and physical environment unique to each audition.

But it is a tricky endeavor because the sound of any system is of course dependent on every aspect of that system and the room around it.  With one listen you can have a vague idea of any given component’s sound.   With multiple listens on a variety of systems, the vague idea will give way to a more precise determination of the component’s qualities.

Listen to speakers until you hear your sound.  Listen to amps until you hear your sound.  Listen to preamps, CD transports, DACs, turntables, cables, power conditioners.   The beauty and the horror of audio systems is that everything in the chain of the signal and the electricity has an impact on the sound.  Use this to your advantage and you will achieve the grail.  But if you select system components without understanding how they contribute to an overall sound, you may immediately seek upgrades to a system that you otherwise would have been satisfied with for years.

Points of Diminishing Returns

Whether you will be satisfied for years depends on your point of diminishing returns.  This is another area different for each individual--as different and personal as one’s ears, and in this case, the depth of one’s pockets.  Here too, there are no absolute rules and the horrible truth is that new formats and technologies will constantly be in development, tempting you with the promise of improved sound quality.  The horrible truth for some is that, if they replace your components every year, their system will continue getting better forever.

By the same token, even if you spend $80,000 on your system, there will be compromises. We may speak of "neutrality" or "transparency", but no system does equal justice to all possible attributes of musical sound.   No system can maximize both warmth and clarity. It is up to you to balance them. And that is as much a choice as any other.  Some ears will seek a sound that to others may not be quite lovely enough.   And to other ears, it may be too warm and insufficiently resolving. In some ways, it's like something built by a committee. A good way to begin a search for your sound is to have a dealer let you hear some extremely different sounding systems while you attend closely and to your instinctive response. It is unlikely that a radically analytical system, a radically euphonic one, and one that is tonally extremely accurate will please you equally.  Mini-monitors tend to image better than larger speakers, but they lack the bass extension.  No matter how big your budget, it is not feasible to get the best of all worlds, for the simple fact that you must choose between these worlds when selecting your gear.

So why spend much money at all?  Why obsess over careful listening tests and brow-forrowing, hand-wringing decisions if the gear you choose is automatically a compromise?  Well, because the compromises are what give you “your sound”.   That is the key to building a system that pleases you past the point of diminishing returns versus a system that you plan to upgrade as soon as you haul in a few more paychecks.  No matter what your budget, because of compromises in all gear, it is possible to closely approximate your “sound”.  And that is really simple: getting a clear sense of your “sound” and hanging on to it, no matter what a dealer tells you or a know-it-all friend says about audio--getting this sense of your “sound” and hanging onto it as you find gear that creates that sound externally. . .that is the holy grail of audio right there.

Greg Maltz
Senior Technical Writer, Soundreproduction.com