I've had an audio-related revelation today.
I've been looking for a relatively cheap set of bookshelf speakers for a little while now, and today my mates and I went around to various audio stores to test out what we picked out to be affordable speakers just for computer use ($300AUD cap). We wern't after something super-epic-awesome as we both agree that we'd rather save up and get a pair of epic floorstanders when we have the necessary funds to have bought our own appartment/house after getting a full time job.
We went to the first store, and after trying out some Behringers and other similarly price equipment, we came away unimpressed. Bloated bass, no separation between vocals and instruments and a rather pathetic soundstage. Off to the second store we go - again, the same thing, but this time we were testing $2900 Genelacs, and even the cheapest pair of speakers we tested were $500 Fostexs (The three of us universally hated the Fostexs. My favorite out of the ones tested were dynaudios, and the other 2 liked the genelacs). A little annoyed at this stage, we went to the third store, and this time we had more luck with a set of Joey bookshelves (Designed/tuned by the guy who used to work at Linn), but they were $1200, and they were hooked up to a CD player and amp combo which was at least $6000. Of course they were going to sound nicer, but most things will sound nicer when hooked up to such an expensive source
.
Onwards to the last store, and I finally found a set-up which I was happy with (B&W 6-series, NAD amp and CD player). However, this set-up was about $2900, and even in that acoustically tuned demo room they could "just" compete with the HD650+amp .
Clearly, you can see my price cap and outlook on things has been completely rewritten today.
The revelation in this little experience for me today is just how spoiled my ears are by my headphones, and that they really are a nice budget way to enjoy top-shelve audio. Its definitely made me appreciate my HD650+336 tube amp combo and UE18pro customs much more. As someone who has had no previous in-depth experience with speakers or home theater systems, it amazed me that I had to look at systems which were at least $2500 to actually feel like I was getting something that would compete with my headphone set-up, and even my friend, who wasn't really an audiophile until today, came to the same conclusions I did after hearing my HD650 set.
Now, Australian pricing for almost anything tends to be ridiculous, but even then it still highlighted to me just how good value-for-money headphones and earphones can be and how far I've come expectations-wise from when I first began this hobby by picking up a pair of Shure E2Cs. One of the mates I was with was already into HT systems, so he had his baseline expectations in order.
My other mate and I wern't expecting really awesome sound from $300 speakers, but even than we were both amazed that we were able to pick out the cheap speakers from the good speakers in less than 10 seconds even when double-blinding, and that we had to get to almost $3000 to find a set-up which we thought was comparable to the HD650. That old equation relating speakers and equivalent headphone costs has never rang more true for me than now, and with the plethora of amps and headphones out there on the market there really hasn't been a better time than now to get into the audiophile world.
Speakers are definitely more fun overall than headphones because of the soundstage and overall presentation, but at that sort of price range they better be, and if you have a small apartment/share house with others than you can still get very nice sound out of a good pair of cans.
Sorry to bang on about the HD650, but I'm just over the moon with them right now
The other benefit of today is that I now know what speakers I should be looking at as a baseline when I start putting together a home system, and that this hobby is going to get insanely expensive very quickly once I start looking at speakers.
P.S. The Electrocomapniet gear is utter sex.
