What component has made the biggest impact in your system?

[Ex_Vintage]

For me, I have upgraded amps, speakers, DAC's and with out a doubt the biggest improvement in my system has been made in new speakers. Whats your experience?

[ttocs]

This is a bit difficult.
A really big step up in speakers led the way, but then the switch from extremely capable solid state to tubes was another big leap in improvement. But that's not the golden ticket either.

The speakers have the capability of performance I was aiming for.
The tube amps give the speakers what I was hoping for but wasn't sure I'd ever get.

But it is speaker placement and orientation in the room that allowed the synergy of amp & speaker to be fully realized!

Without this I'd still be searching.
So my answer in the poll is Other.

[Ex_Vintage]

Jun 23, 2021 21:25:15 GMT -5 ttocs said:

This is a bit difficult.
A really big step up in speakers led the way, but then the switch from extremely capable solid state to tubes was another big leap in improvement. But that's not the golden ticket either.

The speakers have the capability of performance I was aiming for.
The tube amps give the speakers what I was hoping for but wasn't sure I'd ever get.

But it is speaker placement and orientation in the room that allowed the synergy of amp & speaker to be fully realized!

Without this I'd still be searching.
So my answer in the poll is Other.

I was assuming that for a given system that the user would have worked out the best speaker position given the constraints of the room. In my case, a change of a DAC brought noticeable improvement to the upper/mid frequencies in clarity and definition, but upgraded speakers revealed much more detail and soundstage. As you have mentioned, my next adventure may be a tube amp. Very many Tekton owners rave about how a tube amp really opens up their speakers.

[Gary Cook]

Replacing the power amps in the receiver with an XPA-5 easily made the biggest impression at the time. The receiver was a good quality Sony and I had vintage KEF's so the speakers were pretty good as well, slotting in the XPA-5 was a revelation.


Cheers
Gary

[tropicallutefisk]

In my audio journey, it was speakers that made the first giant leap towards the sound I wanted. Next was going from a receiver to a Pre/Pro with a five channel Rotel amp. After that I stumbled and lost ground. I purchased a high end stereo amplifier to start moving towards a separate two channel system. That amp just couldn't drive the speakers to full potential. I was so disappointed. Over $3000 spent and it sounded only marginally better than the $1000 Rotel, and in some ways it was worse. That amp was replaced by two DR1s and they have blended very well with my Maggie speakers. The final big step I made was adding a Schiit Freya plus preamp. It gave me the "natural", "warm" sound I craved from other systems I've heard. What's next for me? Probably a new DAC and then its a likely a new, dedicated listening room.

[cawgijoe]

Speakers and then amp.

[LuisV]

Interesting... no mention of room treatments.

[Deleted]

Jun 24, 2021 7:19:46 GMT -5 cawgijoe said:

Speakers and then amp.

Same here and I followed the same upgrade path. 

[brutiarti]

Definitely room treatment is missing

[ttocs]

I consider room treatment to be a tweak. Although, some use it as a bandaid for a scarred setup.

[405x5]

I checked “Speakers” then rethought the question and changed my answer to CD player.
So far I’m the Lone Ranger and nobody else checked that one.
Why?? (because you have to be OLD….that is why!)
Basically, I’ve been listening to the same “speaker” for 4 1/2 decades.

SO LONG….that I needed to recall that there was NO SUCH THING as a compact disc 💿 player when I picked up my first pair. Only in Popular Science Magazine.
So my brother brings this black box over to my place with these new discs and says “You’re not gonna believe this”.
I had already super power stereo with records and tape but Digital was just out.

That was probably the most dramatic moment ever in this sport. (on a personal level)
…..And he was right; I could not believe what I was hearing.

[Boomzilla]

Although speakers have made the biggest difference, the close second is ROOM TREATMENT.

[thezone]

All things being equal - For me it was changing amps - Moving from Class A/B to Class D. Much more detail and control.

[26gary26]

I have held off as long as I could with my answer.  I would like to say that speakers and speaker placement are a great beginning.  But I also have to say each component that I have added has made my music more enjoyable.  As we all know also the quality of music engineering and reproduction of it means a lot to what we hear.  Just like beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the beauty of music is what we like hearing. You may not like what you hear,  but someone else just might.

[garbulky]

Gosh it's hard. At the beginning there are certain things that make big differences while once you lower the overall distortion in your system then other things can make big differences when before they couldn't.
In recent times almost everyone of my upgrades made significant differences. The most eye opening one was probably my XPA-1 gen 2 amp upgrade. Also my OLED TV.

[gus4emo]

My speakers are great, but the Emotiva amps made them better, let's remember the content can make an even better impression.

[Ex_Vintage]

Content is a significant contributor. Source material along with D?A conversion are critical. My original speakers were Polk RTi-8's and they were harsh on the high end. The Elac speakers I had were much more neutral and somewhat boring. The Tektons I have now have revealed detail that previous speakers could not. I have tried several different routes (AKA DAC's) in the signal path with fairly little change. Next step is pointing at a more dedicated 2 channel amp. A dedicated listening room would be a game changer, but that is not in the cards right now.

[davidl81]

I’ll say speakers, because without decent speakers nothing else matters. By decent I don’t mean it needs to be $5000 speakers etc, but a pair of Best Buy Pioneer towers will always sound poor no matter what other equipment you use.

[adaboy]

Room treatment 1st but since that wasn't an option I chose speakers.

A properly treated room is your number one sonic improvement.

[SteveH]

That's a hard question to answer. I haven't had an audio upgrade since 1992. In 2018 I upgraded my prepro/amps/subs all at the same time, while still using my 1992 speakers. My DAC/streamer is the versatile toy that I have never owned and has made a huge differnce. I voted DAC.