Never as Strong as the Weakest Link!
It is often said that a chain is as strong as its weakest link, but an audio "chain" is never as strong as its weakest link!
Stop thinking about your music system as a chain and start thinking of it as a series of glass windows.
Your DAC, preamplifier, and power amplifier are three windows between you and the musicians. One bad window ruins the entire experience. We are often looking through three or more bad windows. Cleaning one window will help, but each window must be clean to fully experience the musical performance.
- John Siau
5 comments
You are correct, the speakers are almost always the largest source of distortion. However, DSP overloads can cause bursts of IMD exceeding 10% distortion which is higher than the distortion caused by most speakers. This is a problem with many DACs and I talk about it here:
https://benchmarkmedia.com/blogs/videos/the-biggest-problem-with-digital-audio
Also, you are correct in mentioning the effects of the room. A small change in the placement of the speakers or the listening position can have a dramatic impact on the sound. Treatment of first reflection surfaces is also very important.
Nevertheless, the loudspeakers should never be a excuse for building equally bad electronics. We can completely eliminate the audible noise and distortion from the electronics, and this just leaves us with the room and speaker deficiencies. – JS
Like your analogies and your explanations…but what about speakers, which often have distortion levels and frequency response errors vastly greater than the electronics? And the acoustics of the listening room which can skew the listening experience in large measure? Don’t these things swamp the measurable faults of the electronics? Thank you.
Hello, I visited your company before and was quite impressed. I’m considering purchasing a DAC to feed into my McIntosh C2500. I like the c2500 for its tubes and phono preamp and the gain matches my McIntosh 830 mono blocks. Considering the Eversolo DAC Z10 but may be overkill for what I intend to use it for.
Hello, I visited your company before and was quite impressed. I’m considering purchasing a DAC to feed into my McIntosh C2500. I like the c2500 for its tubes and phono preamp and the gain matches my McIntosh 830 mono blocks. Considering the Eversolo DAC Z10 but may be overkill for what I intend to use it for.
Great analogy! You have got me thinking about solutions to this problem.