What level of importance do you put on the source?

It's really late for me after doing seven consecutive days of double shifts so I'm not thinking very clearly, but as soon as I saw the topic I thought-- SOURCE. The starting point. And that of course Is the cd or lp or stream. That seems to me to be the ultimate achievable quality. No equipment can exceed the source except maybe to cover up sins which lead to more sins. So I would say the source might be the most important link in the chain. Geez...I feel lousy and I'm totally okay if some says this is a stupid idea.
 
Removing "the room" as a variable from this discussion makes the choice easy for me, speakers/amps are far more important then a source component. If you were to take a $200 CD player and connect it to any quality system you will get good sound. If you take one of the uber expensive CD stacks available and play it through some Big Box stores speakers you will not get good sound.

This whole "the source" narrative was promulgated by Linn's Ivor Tiefenbrun when that company ironically only produced a source product.
 
I dunno.. I think you can get good sound by going in any particular direction.

For example, I heard a set of Wilson Watt pups being fronted by a $300 NAD CD-player, and that system sounded just fine. On the flip side, I recently heard a $4,500 AMR CD-player fronting a Polk Audio T50 system that also sounded very good.
 
still-one said:
If you were to take a $200 CD player and connect it to any quality system you will get good sound.
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The problem is, this hobby isn't about "good" sound. The foundation for this hobby is great sound. "Good" sound is comparatively cheap compared to great sound.

still-one said:
f you take one of the uber expensive CD stacks available and play it through some Big Box stores speakers you will not get good sound.
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True, but that's no surprise.


still-one said:
This whole "the source" narrative was promulgated by Linn's Ivor Tiefenbrun when that company ironically only produced a source product.
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That doesn't mean he was wrong in this case though. Ideally you have great source components so you capture as much information as you can at the front end and the rest of your system is up to task of reproducing it correctly. You can argue that if you only have "X" amount of money to spend on your system that it makes sense to you to scrimp on the source component(s) and go big on the amp and speakers so you can still get "good" sound. The goal for me is to have everything in your system on equal footing in terms of quality.
 
mep said:
...Ideally you have great source components so you capture as much information as you can at the front end and the rest of your system is up to task of reproducing it correctly. You can argue that if you only have "X" amount of money to spend on your system that it makes sense to you to scrimp on the source component(s) and go big on the amp and speakers so you can still get "good" sound. The goal for me is to have everything in your system on equal footing in terms of quality.
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JMO, of course, but I think your system is far over-balanced toward the source ;)
 
rbbert said:
I very much like your speakers, but it would be easy to argue that with your sources they should be Baby Grands
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Baby Grands are $55k last I knew which equals the value of my entire system approximately. One thing I know, the NOLA KOs are resolving enough to let me hear the differences between source components and I think represent the sweet spot in their lineup. I would love to compare the Baby Grands with my NOLA KOs, but I'm not spending my retirement money yet since I'm not retired. In the meantime, I'm real happy with my KOs.
 
FWIW, remember that Carl typically demos the Baby Grands with your current amp and an ARC CD player. The current Baby Grands run closer to $70k I think.
 
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