I wrote this in 1984, and I think it's still relevant today :)
It's not enough to buy the components we think are the best to make our system a success. The way in which we combine them can produce a result that is either very disappointing or, on the contrary, better than our expectations.
The additive approach consists of balancing the characteristics of the different components (adding them together) to achieve the desired result, for example by pairing a 'soft' amplifier with 'bright' speakers to achieve a 'neutral' sound.
The subtractive approach consists of seeing each component as a source of information loss, and avoiding having a 'weak' component in the chain that would cause the rest of the system to lose what it could do.
Other approaches exist, and often form what are known as 'schools'.
Here are some of the best known:
- the "old fashion technician" approach, which sees the loudspeaker as the only important link, amplifiers as "all sounding the same" and cable comparisons as an unhealthy obsession;
- the 'guru' approach, which accepts the most far-fetched pairings as long as the voice of the third singer in the last row on the last pressing of the first version of the only accepted reference record makes the listener reach nirvana;
Other approaches exist, often forming what are known as 'schools'.
Here are some of the best known:
- the "old fashion technician" approach, which sees the loudspeaker as the only important link, amplifiers as "all sounding the same" and cable comparisons as an unhealthy obsession;
- the 'guru' approach, which accepts the most far-fetched pairings as long as the voice of the third singer in the last row on the last pressing of the first version of the only accepted reference record makes the listener reach nirvana;
- the religion that comes from the land of Scotch (a famous one, by the way), which says that "everything is in the source, nothing but the source", even if it means installing a system that costs a fortune on a sweet box that captures a tenth of the possibilities of the rest;
- the religion from the land of surfers that says that an amplifier that isn't 200 lbs heavy and the size of your grandmother's TV cabinet can only equip your car radio (and even then, the one in your sub-compact car);
- the battle between music lovers and audiophiles, and between the two and everybody else...
There have been a lot of studies on addictions, but not many on this one...
In fact, to follow only one of these approaches blindly is to condemn yourself, barring a rare stroke of luck, to spending a lot to get very little.
And that's not even mentioning the acoustics of the listening room... which dictate a large part of the result.
In short... take a deep breath, the success of a high-fidelity music system doesn't require any esoteric knowledge, just a logical approach and method.
1) Trust only your ears; it's funny how many people forget that they are slightly involved... The next time you buy a piano, if you choose it 'according to the measurements', tell us how you did it (no, there aren't any, acousticians keep them for their research, which is fascinating, but fortunately musicians continue to sit 'stupidly' in front of the keyboard ... and play!). That said, with the gradual disappearance of good dealers (the next generation comes more often from marketing schools than from music!), this ideal is less and less applicable... alas.
2) If you don't want your ears to betray you, there's only one thing to do: educate them... by often listening to instruments and natural sounds; with the noise stress in which we live, this is becoming vital.
There's no need to buy the most expensive concert tickets: a musician playing on a stage is a live instrument. And the human voice is one of the most complex instruments we can easily relate to.
It doesn't matter what kind of music you listen to, but you should avoid listening only to electro-acoustic music, because non-electric instruments are often richer in timbre. Discover the notions of sound space (a jazz cellar, an opera house or a cathedral all have different acoustics, which can be 'heard' even before the first note of music, simply by the different qualities of silence and resonance.
3) Think 'long term'... a high-fidelity system is above all... a 'system'! Not a simple stack of components.
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