Audio will soon be a luxury, it is an expensive hobby, hands down. You just need to spend, you need to explore, that's my friends, is the essence of audioing. The joy of audioing is incredibly satisfying, suffice to detract you from anything, everything. So much so, no one is complaining about it even though it bleeds pocket. It is largely addictive. Everybody can audio except those who are not fascinated with sound. As high end audio prices continue to escalate, the options left are sniffing pre owned stuff for half of the money or embark on the brave DIY route. The stake is high, it calls for due diligence before upgrading. Choosing the right upgrade for optimum result is never easy for novice, it calls for cold mind. Having say so, even experienced fi too can be caught by surprise. While everybody has different ideas going about audioing, one must not mess with the tonality, the fundamental of sound.
Upgrade as defined by Oxford is raising (something) to a higher standard. The first element you search for look is quality of tone aka purity of tone. Layman term is less jarring. Better room gives better tone quality, better drivers, better transformer, higher purity, cleaner power supply, these all contribute to better tone. Better tone quality means higher resolution, finer tone quality and ability to convey a bigger stage and performance. In short, hearing more things and unlock the soundstage. These upgrades offer different degree of weight. Given a tight budget, the consumers have to play the cards right.
Change in tonal balance is not an upgrade, let's be clear about this. You are merely moving in lateral line with the assumption that both are similar tone quality. Changing a similar horsepower Toyota to Honda is not an upgrade though you can argue about changing a similar horsepower Honda to a BMW. Good thing is a diversity of tonal color, making visiting inviting, nothing more. That could explain a lower end audio is not of interest of higher end fella to check out for they had tasted the forbidden fruit. Let's be honest about it. They will feel uneasy. Telling is not good, not telling also not good, only resort is tell a bit here and there. That's why people say you can't trust audio talk, highly twisted.
My notion of good sound is balance sound. It is my observation that many exhibit good density at the mids, gradual diminishing density at the extreme frequencies. Therefore, most fi concentrate on extreme frequencies for improvement. Only upon balanced (relatively linear) sound, one can infuse a personalized tonal palette and not any earlier. Every system has a distinctive tonal palette, single ended triode aka SET strives for unmatched dense tonality, turntable strives for the analogue-ness, full rangers strive for exquisite coherence, multi drivers strive for wide bandwidth and big sound, ribbon/electrostatic speakers strive for ultimate transparency, small speakers strive for ghostly imaging, line array strives for breakneck speed etc. A big system wanting a pinpoint imaging is "susah" in a Malay word. Somehow, some fi still don't get it. With more audio equipment in the chain, adding super tweeters and sub, the coloration will inevitably get more severe. It is easy to color than to uncolor.
What is your tonal color? Don't waste time pursuing what is impossible, save your cash and time. Instead, enhancing your strength of your system than trying to eliminate weakness. You manage the degree of weaknesses. Divert attention. For instance, density has inverse correlation with transparency and detail, so is coherency against wide bandwidth and pace against emotion communicative. Juggling the balance of audio is the key.
KLIAVS 2014 is around the corner, the organiser is drumming up the event, I locked my eyes on Arpeggio Pensato loudspeakers, an ambitious effort from Hifi Creations.
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