Source first? Transducer first? Amp first?

We can attribute stat weights to things like sources, speakers, amps and acoustics. But i think hard rules like this or that first are not that helpful and might send people on the wrong path blindly staring at whatever Johnny big dac said on the forums.

I think it should be weakest link first and if you can smell it just by looking at something then awesome! But usually it requires experimenting.

 

First as in, biggest priority in the budget, or next up to be upgraded.

Say I am settled in a current set of gear all roughly the same price. Where if I had to pick upgrade first.

I think at certain points transducer vs source is applicable.
Say when everything is a bit over the low end Id spend more on transducers

but say I wanted to explore more into tubes I would still go tubes+transducer of choice synergy first before a source.

But if you got it all already, I think going source is totally fine.
thinking Holomay, rockna, dave. Thinking to myself these would all have their own tone and it should be easily discernable if the down stream is sufficient.

So what I am trying to say is,
Source first is totally a great choice if you know what you like, and you can hear the differences between sources. Till then, transducer for me.

*A quick note, I would consider Headphones, Speakers, and Phono Cartridges all transducers.

 

The usual rule is good for most people. Weak link first is something for when you already have that particular piece/s of gear that you just love and feel that you won't/can't sell in the future and then you built everything else around it.

 

Definitely an interesting and tricky question.

For headphones, my knee-jerk is to say tranducers first. An HD800 is going to sound a certain way no matter what, as is an LCD-2, and so on. Better amp matches will definitely improve both, but you can get a sense even plugged into a cheap HT receiver. Which is basically what I did when I started to get into HPs.

That said, I didn't actually like the HD800 the first time I heard them (on a loaner), b/c it was a bad amp match. I had to circle back around once I got a tube-y amp (the Liquid Platinum).

I'd also say that these high-end-ish headphones are in greater supply and availability than corresponding headphone amps. A lot of the HP amps that folks like on here can be pretty hard to get and are in quite limited supply. Daunting for your average consumer and/or HP beginner.

Source first is interesting, but I guess I feel that a competent DAC won't ruin much, and you tweak the source as you go along. Analog is trickier, obv.

For speakers/2-channel, trickier still. I guess I've learned that, there, the room comes first.

 

This might be a good moment to revisit the following thread from 7 years ago, which I have bookmarked. It's been helpful to me in my journey: https://www.superbestaudiofriends.o...dget-among-headphones-amps-and-dac-source.57/

Quoting @purr1n's first post:

 

I think one interpretation, as @purr1n maybe sort of hinted here, is that when you start from scratch with absolutely no gear "first" is where you should spend most of your budget to get the largest impact on sound. At this point normally it's the transducer? After you accumulate more gear "first" becomes whatever area you want to focus on because that's what draws your fancy when dabbling in this hobby. Maybe you like fancy boutique tube amps, so this becomes your "first". Or maybe high tech dacs. Whatever floats your boat and gives you joy.

 

I'll preface the following by saying everything in this post is speculative / an opinion subject to change with new experiences I may have in the future, and not some sort of principle or hill I'd die on. I tend to think of myself as a subjectivist fascinated with the intersection of objective data and my own perception. But subjective enjoyment comes first. Just a stream of consciousness ~

Many transducers can approach 10% harmonic distortion, will likely have extended time-domain ringing at one or many hotspots, and frequency responses that can swing 10dB or more here and there. No matter how you spin the data, even many of the 'best' transducers will have several orders of magnitude more measurable error than even a cheap or entry-level amp or DAC. Therefore, the room for improvement (at least by measurable benchmarks) is greatest - by far - with a transducer most of the time... assuming we're only looking at things from an on-paper standpoint. Of course, there are many exceptions where a transducer will have esoteric amplification requirements and cannot simply be 'driven by anything'...

All of that being said, from a subjective listening standpoint, of course a different amplifier or source component can make or break engagement with the content we're consuming, even through a transducer with an enormous amount of inherent error as compared to a piece of upstream electronics. The nature of how differences of source and amplification are clearly heard through such a transducer that doesn't have esoteric power requirements is very interesting and not something I understand from a cerebral, logical standpoint, even though I clearly do experience it from a subjective one.

I often think about what 'scaling' means in the context of headphones. I have chatted with @Merrick about this at length in the past. I have a theory that it's somewhat of a horseshoe-type shape. Pardon the jank graph:



On the Y axis, we have 'perceived benefit/scaling with synergistic gear'. On the X axis we have the 'ratio of strengths vs weaknesses (colorations?) @ the transducer'.

1. Point A is a transducer that has a low ratio of strengths to weaknesses. The weaknesses are so strong, it will not scale, because no amount of synergy can overcome the severe weaknesses.
2. Point B could be something with few defined strengths and few weaknesses or many strengths and many weaknesses - these will scale the most because they have more room for correction, coloration, or other types of flavor via gear synergies upstream.
   
3. Point C has a high degree of strengths vs weaknesses, and will scale less than B because there is less to correct upstream, it maintains its clear strengths and the weaknesses don't get intolerably worse according to gear combinations either (unless in an extreme case). But it still scales more than A because it just has more inherent ability.

At the end of the day, this is just a half-baked theory, and I won't name specific products that fit into each category of A,B,C, but perhaps others can chime in there. And as always, the factor of personal taste and enjoyment is not accounted for in this theory either - maybe someone with a class B transducer and a synergistic system will enjoy their music more than a 'theoretically/measurably superior' class C transducer, simply because they enjoy the mixture of colorations they get with with the associated upstream equipment moreso than the 'tepid glass of water'-flavored sound that a class C transducer may give regardless of the equipment upstream.

TL;DR - on paper, transducer comes first. At the ears, the amp or source may become vastly more important... depending on the choice of transducer, but if whatever synergy of gear sounds right to you, it is right. A lot of this speculation runs parallel to objectivist vs subjectivist and omissive vs comissive discourse. IMHO, YMMV, etc etc etc. Marv's post above (posted as I was typing this) basically simplifies everything I said here.

 

If you're just starting out, I would focus on the transducer, aka the headphone or speaker and dump most of the money into that.

But as you near the top of the mountain as Marv said, things change. Everything starts to matter alot when you're talking about those last bits of audio quality. Myself, ive spent roughly the same amount on my dac, my amp and my speakers, and I dont think that's too bad a spot to be in.

 

I see it like stats in a game, where some stats have different break-points (like elden ring). At a certain point they stop giving you as much benefit for each point.

If the maximum for any stat was 99, I believe the breakpoint would be somewhere around 50 for transducers, 30 for analog source, 25 for amplification and 10 for DAC.

Going from 30 to 31 points costs the same amount of money no matter which stat you put that point into, but it will be worth more in transducers than any other stat.

Based on that I believe most of your budget/focus/research should go towards your speakers/headphones.

That's my gamer nerd take.

 

Almost all of my headphones are around the $300ish mark and my speakers I paid $250 used then put $600 worth of mods into. I'm perfectly happy with these transducers. They reveal source differences with anything I've ever put ahead of them and just keep scaling up.

If we can look past the noobs at the magni/modi level because honestly this isn't the forum for that, it's safe to say that EVERYTHING matters but any resolution lost somewhere in the chain flat out can't trickle down to the downstream gear. If your source can't resolve it, you just don't hear it.

 

I think it's certainly true that changing transducers produces the most obvious differences, I don't think that necessarily means that it makes the most difference. DAC differences can be really subtle, but sometimes that subtle difference can be the difference between great and unlistenable. Amps and especially DACs can affect music in really profound ways, even if they're not as in-your-face about it as transducers. I do agree that completely from-scratch beginners should probably prioritize transducers, but I've frequently seen that carried too far and people ending up with really high-end headphones with kinda sad dacs & amps. There's a certain balance you need, even from the get-go.

 

Disclaimer: As an advice.. my response will be 'Do whatever you believe' or 'Does it matter?'. I'm generally viewing myself as a hybrid.

There are many ways to conceptualize this topic.. and to simplify discourses a bit, I'd like to ask myself the following question.

"In building a new rig, which part do I want to settle down first?" (definition of 'first')

My answers below.

• DAC comes first. 10-14% of reason is what @Erroneous said. The rest of reason is changing dac isn't very entertaining to me practically and physically. I always want to locate my dac at one place stably and keep it on 24/7. And largely for this reason and priority order, I used to choose an overkill device for my actual requirements.
• Between amps and transducer, it's hard to tell I prioritize one thing over the other. When really building from scratch, amp comes second for the reason in the prior bullet point.
• But I'm more favorable to have multiple amps than multiple dacs. And sometimes I can't realize the need of more or different amplification until I figure out headphones' nature/character.
• I like @E_Schaaf's diagram and logic. Based on proximity to C (or to B) and the expected outcome, I make decision about whether I should add/change amps or what they would be.
• Once settled in, my focus is almost exclusively toward transducer (headphones). Difference, if not supremacy, is what I look after most enthusiastically.

 

I think the issue I have with the "amp/transducer/source first" idea is that taken literally it implies a kind of linear scale of bad to better to betterer to bestest, and you just decide where to pump money in next. Of course in reality beyond a certain level there is a large amount of necessary compromise, you have to decide which aspects of sound reproduction you value most. So it would make more sense to talk about "macrodynamics/microdynamics/tonal balance first". And at each point you have to look at your system and evaluate where the weak point is for the aspects you hold important. For instance at this point my speakers are only 15% of the total cost of my system but I can't see any benefit to changing them out because they do what I hold important so well.

 

You make an important point here that deserves some distinction. Personally, my digital front end/source cost me more than twice what my speakers cost me, and my main amp is also twice what my speakers cost (not even considering tubes...), but I wouldn't really ever consider getting rid of my speakers because I built my system around what my speakers do well, and what they don't do well.

I can't remember what thread it was where Marv intimated a related nugget of knowledge (I'm paraphrasing): pick a general method and stick with it throughout the system. In other words, low efficiency speakers/transducers with multiple woofers and complicated x-overs are going to drive decisions about upstream gear; likewise, high efficiency speakers are going to require different considerations. It doesn't matter what you pick if it works for you; just try to stick with it, otherwise you're beyond just dicking around with side-grades. If you don't stick with a "philosophy" you really just don't understand (or don't care to consider) some basic physics that dictate that some things just won't ever sound good, or even decent.

Then again, I thought the RU-6 was a fun listen despite it's sins, so what the f**k do I know.

 

I am proud to be a cables-first audiophile music lover

 

Hear things first to establish preferences, buying shit is easy - knowing what you want is hard.

 

Many, many years ago, when you could go to a B&M store and hear equipment, before there was an internet, I remember a sales person telling me about what Linn was pushing at the time, that source mattered most.

Linn's reasoning has already been touched on, that once you lose information you can't recover it, so you need to start at the source and work from there down the chain. I supposed it didn't hurt they were known for turntables.

At this point, I think I favor working on the weakest link, but this assumes you're working on an existing system and not starting from nothing. I also work on whatever I feel like doing at the time

Randy

 

More if a truism than a practical truth?

And I suppose they would say that, as their turntables were (are?) expensive.