How to rate and buy your system...

Most branded systems are said to be perfect and/or tested to be linear squared wave output, but they still don’t sound as what they should be, some are even unbearable playing a CD with piano music doesn’t like a piano at all. It’s really hard for one to select a real good system.

First of all, you must know how to rate your system with your ears or what system you want to buy. Mostly you can’t get any CD that you’re familiar with to test on at the moment especially at the shop unless you must bring ones along with you. You can also turn it up the volume at a higher level, and then if you find the sound gets annoying or unpleasant; it means the system shall have a certain distortion to a very serious extent.

When you turn up the volume of the system, there should be less resistance which is rendered by the attenuator, under this condition; the system should have better sound quality. But if you find the system doesn’t sound good when you turn up the volume, it means there is certain serious distortion within the system.

You don’t have to care what the brand you’re going to buy, it all depends on the sound quality it can reproduce, and then you can have the right choice to pick the right one.

*** You may also turn up the volume of your system at your premises and see if the sound quality gets very annoying or unpleasant, if so, it means your system has a certain severe distortion. It’s the easiest and cheapest way to rate your system rather than using any testing equipment.

Secondly, if you have experience in a certain instrument such as piano, and then use such experience as a standard, you may listen to a few CDs with such instrument and then compare the sound with the live instrument that you’re familiar with, and then you would know how to make a decision to buy one.

Live performance with instruments as a standard

Try and listen to live music with instruments like piano, violin, cello or drum, etc. for a certain time, and get used to it and pay attention to how they sound, all these instruments sound with vibrations, and then try to memorize every details and characteristics of them.

In case you’re listening to music with instruments reproduced by a certain system, and then you must pay attention to and compare every detail and characteristics of the sounds reproduced with the sounds and details of the live instruments that you can memorize and see if such system can reproduce as much.

This is the only standard and the only way to evaluate the sound output quality of a component or system in order not to select a wrong product or component and to make every single cent out of your pocket worthy of its value. And live performance with acoustic instruments is the only standard that you can rely on and use to rate your system including cables, CD, Bluray Disc or Digital Versatile Disc (DVD) player, D/A converter, glass tube buffer, glass tube pre-amplifier, glass tube power amplifier, etc. 

Don’t think you can buy a single piece of expensive component that can get your system enhanced and sound real good, there’s no single component on earth that can save your whole system. Some may get your system improved a little bit or maybe some may even get worse. It all depends on your luck unless you’re gonna do all the tweaks yourself.

No hard work, no gain. After that you can feel how strong the power of your system can be even if the power output be less than 8-watt and your system could handle songs of symphony orchestra like live performance. Believe it or not, only the truth survives the ages. Ha-ha...

For one thing, if your system is a DIY one, there’s still a lot of room to get it improved. Or else, there’s only little room to get your branded system improved, especially for those solid state systems.

*** It’s fun to share something with you guys; I have shielded up the batteries, earphone or headphone cable and the flash card for my mobile phone or flash player, and then use it to replay read-only format MP3 Pro, MP4 or wave music. What do think it can achieve? You can even get spatial information, vibrations of instruments with every detail as live that you can expect. I can say it sounds much better than some branded systems besides the sound level and the definition can’t get as high, but don’t come to me when they get burned or short. Ha-ha…

You can also shield up flash card with adhesive aluminum foil for all the electronic components that work with it, you can even get better sound quality for your digital Ipod, MP3 or MP4 player and better video quality for your digital camera as well. This is no kidding. Most of the tweaks I’m going to share with you that work well with all electronic components or systems, even with your PC. Enjoy your hard work and you’ll get good returns of quality sound enjoyment.

Training up your ears

Training up your ears is real important and helpful to yourself in selecting any components or systems you’re going to buy rather than listen to what those sales persons say or persuade, then use your listening experience of live acoustic instruments as a standard to determine what to buy.

Your ear is a good piece of testing instrument, as a common user or audiophile; you can hardly find any testing instruments to get findings of what the audio system can perform as real live. Most ears can be trained up listening to music of acoustic instruments, and if you are lucky enough, yours can be golden ears too. Then you don’t have to rely on someone’s opinions or test instruments in sound quality as most of them are irrelevant and misleading especially when those systems are said to have perfect squared-wave test results don’t mean those can sound real as live.

No system on earth sounds 100% as real live…

I can say there’s no hi-fi system in the world that sounds real perfect like 100% as live instruments can sound especially those solid state ones because the problems of EMF (Electromagnetic Flux), EMI (Electromagnetic Interference), EMR (electromagnetic radiation) and/or RFI (Radio Frequency Interference) in the air occurs when you’re turning them on, no matter how high the price you’re going to pay for it. Moreover, there’s no electronic system on earth with no distortion as some manufacturers don’t concern much about EMI or RFI impact to the systems; especially those at the hi-fi shows worth more than a few ten or hundred thousand dollars without those concerns and tweaks as I’ve put down in this article. Worse sound being reproduced by a hi-fi system is partly caused by EMF and RFI and some other innate problems; and partly caused by the original audio discs with defects during mass production.

Even if it’s tested to be perfect with a squared wave test result and no matter how good the system design is; it still can’t reproduce and get real perfect video quality, sound quality, placements and accurate phase, spatial information of the live audio image.  

Therefore, even if a perfect squared wave test result at a certain frequency of a single equipment or component doesn’t mean the whole system can sound as real as live and is irrelevant in some way. Do you know the reason why? You can find the answers here below within this article.

So, don’t just get superstitious with some dear, famous or branded ones from some manufacturers, they can’t help you much, especially those are said to be tested to perfection or linear performance. No matter what, don’t just be persuaded, misrepresented or misled by some sales people, dealers, or manufacturers, etc., they would utilize a few marketing tools such as magazines, hi-fi forums, advertisements, marketing articles, marketing means such as exhibitions, non-professional terms, faked theories or findings, etc. to promote their products, in fact what they’re doing is promoting or selling out products on behalf of some manufacturers and get their most highest profits out of sales and fooling you around. Owing to the fact if you don’t ever upgrade your system, they would have made less money. Have you ever thought if all those theories are correct and working, the sound or video quality reproduced or output should be sounded like real with high definition? Why not?

Some of them may even claim themselves to be professionals in certain ways, in electronic engineering, sound engineering or so; all they do is for the purposes of selling out their products for the highest commission or profit they can get out of the selling and they won’t tell you or let you know that how seriously their systems have been distorted by EMF in some way. I say serious distortion because it’s at least 200 or 300% loss or above of details or definition or even much, much more than that.

In addition, they would introduce you some more products. No matter it is a piece of component or a pair of interconnect cables, to get your system improved a little bit at a much higher price, and then they would only make more money out of your own pocket, they never tell you how to reduce the impact caused by the EMF, EMI or RFI whenever you’re turning on your newly bought system. Some products, with some little tweak, are introduced to you, also costing you a lot, that’s why and how they’re in real good shape.

No one, even any most famous and well-known manufacturers, can guarantee you the sound quality and accurate phase of any audio image of any system that can reproduce as good which you’re going to buy. Furthermore there are no original CDs that can sound real good, unless you burn them up with a self-assembled PC with all these tweaks on your own, and then what do you expect?

That’s why I’m telling you how you can make improvements to your system with some tweaks that you can make it on your own with so little costs, much, much less than what they are selling you the things.