I Want Better Sound...

[Woochifer]

Before you even bother with amplification upgrades, you need to look at the speakers and the room acoustics as markw said. Speakers and rooms have far more variation and real world effect on the sound quality than any of the front end components will.

If you have a small and echoey room, then the room will produce standing waves (which create huge fluctuations in the low frequencies, making it sound overly boomy with some sounds and anemic with others), and time domain distortions (which make the sound harsh, mess with the imaging, and make the overall sound less coherent).

At a minimum, you should try different speaker positions (with two channel, you're best off pulling the speakers away from the front wall by at least 3 feet, and using sound absorption at the reflection points along the side walls). Room treatments that deaden the echoes can dramatically improve the imaging coherency and smooth out the sound overall.

If you use a subwoofer with your system, you should consider installing bass traps and/or a parametric EQ. A parametric equalizer can really improve the bass by targeting and attenuating boomy frequencies, and allowing you to more accurately calibrate the levels. The end result is extended, and fuller sounding bass.

Whether or not a source sounds better using an analog or digital connection depends on the quality of the DACs inside of your receiver versus those inside the CD player. Keep in mind though that a lot of home theater receivers convert all analog signals to digital anyway for DSP processing (including the bass management, which is almost always done in the digital domain with home theater receivers), so the quality of the DACs or the analog circuitry inside the CD player won't matter much. Most receivers do allow for direct analog connections (with no digital conversions) using the multichannel analog inputs, however keeping the signal in the analog domain means that the signal also bypasses the subwoofer.

Even though there can be audible differences between amplifiers, they are often more subtle than the improvement that a simple speaker repositioning can make. Speaker upgrades and room treatments typically make far more obvious and noticeable improvements.

[hermanv]

Many audiophiles maintain two seperate systems, one for HT and one for music. There are a number of reasons that this is common.

1. Many already had a two channel system when HT became a big hit.
2. There so many movie sound encoding schemes that adding Dolby, PCM, DTS etc. to the existing stereo was improbable, buying a receiver for HT was much easier and cheaper.
3. I have never heard a receiver that can do the job of a first class two channel stereo (doesn't mean they don't exist but I guarantee they are rare indeed).

I don't mean to dis anyone's equipment (like I said I've never heard yours) but most purists buy seperates, not so much because we love buying absurdly overpriced interconnect cables but because it just plain sounds better.

Before you invest a large amount of money in your pursuit, perhaps you could find a local audiophile club or someone you work with who is an audiophile. You need to hear a good system for a reasonable amount of time to discover what is possible. Only then can you decide what level of investment makes sense to you. Many good systems easily cost the price of a car.

Most larger cities have high end shops, you know you found one when the salesmen pretend you don't exist and act like demonstrating a system is a special favor never before done for anyone but you. You will not find what you need at the local mass market electronics shop. You might find better than you have now, but it is very important to discover what is possible before spending any money on what may turn out to be an in between step.

Get some magazines, old copies are fine, learn some of the lingo, get familiar with the brand names that are highly regarded, learn about the used market. A decent piece of equipment will probably cost half as much used (most of it doesn't wear out, nothing wrong with used). Often you can find used close enough to home that you can go see and hear it.

Once you have a good overview you wont have to depend on others for advice, none of us can hear your system in your room. All of us end up guessing, you are far better off deciding these things for yourself especially if large amounts of money are involved.

[Florian]

Well i consider myself as one of those purists on our site

Its funny how so many people write about the difference of equipment and how money doesnt always get you more and acoustics and dvd-a and sacd etc... blablabla
Its quite amusing, and i definetly enjoy reading it. For starters i would make a list of what you want. Do you maybe want more defined bass? Maybe a larger soundstage? How about more max spl or a more emotionally involving sound? I did see some of our highly regarded members systems and have read their opinion on some highly regarded equipment and it makes me smile internally, very much. Listen to your ears and musical heart. Its funny how some mention biamping but dont list the real advantage of it all, and that is that the amp has to play a much smaller frequency range which reliefs it of much stress and introduces less distortion at the back of the amp. Some mention new super audio formats etc.. while not understanding nor grasping the heart of the music. I will gladly put any CD player or new hi rez format player against a Forsell or Goldmund TT and open some of your eyes. Anyways before i go on a rant, just ask yourself what you want. And then i can help you reach that goal, its not hard. But buying into one bigger sale then the other or buying the same drivers in a cabinet for the past 20 years under new super names wont get you there.

Cheers

Flo

[RICKY009]

there are huge differences between amplifiers. and i'm not talking about receivers, but separate amps. tube vs. solid state for example. mark levinson vs. rotel. BAT v. Bryston. ...........................