A Nice Stereo
So I like music. A lot. I have more than several CDs (rock mostly from
1975-1995 and 50's & 60's jazz) and a decent stereo system (The
lower end NAD components and Wharfedale Diamond 9 speakers, grand total
about $2K).
Given the resources I'd love to have one of those seriously kick ass systems. So with the arrival of my Music Direct catalog (https://www.musicdirect.com/), my mind wanders to one of my fantasies: What would it cost to have a high end system? In this pipe dream I would have to throw out the truly high end, as I think you can pay anything you like including bespoke hardware and a purpose built room) and it is impossible to guess what that would cost. These are the realms of if you have to ask you can't afford it.
So one or two steps down from that, what would it cost? In order to answer that we have to say what we would get. Here's one list:
If you're going to be a true audiophile you have to be into vinyl. So we start with the the turntable. Of course you don't get one box with the thing you need. You get three or four parts, possibly from different places. The Cartridge is the thing at the end of the tonearm that has the needle in it. Some times you also buy the tone arm. The Phono pre-amp is an additional amplifier before the signal gets to the main pre-amp.
If you're going to have LPs you need a cleaning system for them.
Me, I like CDs, but at this level this is not one box, but two. You get a 'transport' and a 'dac', that is, the thing that spins the disk and the thing that converts the digital signal to analog. You don't want all that terrible vibration to color the sound do you?
In addition to the turntable and cd player I have a lot of music encoded as digital files. You probably have mp3's on your phone. This is not nearly fancy enough. Mp3's are lossy (they throw away part of the original signal). You should be using something like FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec), which, as the name suggests, does not throw away the signal that Mp3 does. So how do you play these files in your fancy system? With a network streamer. This box reads files from your storage (this could be a NAS (Network Attached Storage)) and converts the digital signal to analog (that is, it has a dac in it). You might notice that I've completely ignored the FLAC storage aspects.
Ok, now you need the heart of the system, the pre-amp. This is the box that controls which source is played through the speakers. The pre-amp output is fed through power amplifiers to the speakers. So you think you need one power amp. Silly you. You need separate amps for the left and right channels.
These are called monoblocks. Silly me, you don't need two, you need four. You need two amps per channel. One to handle treble and one to handle bass. This is called bi-amping.
Ok, now we talk speakers. At this rate I hope you don't think these are cheap.
Oh, we aren't done. We need cables.
Speaker Cables (from power amp to speaker):
Interconnects (connections to the pre-amp):
Power Cables (every box needs power):
Oh wait. I forgot you need a power conditioner. You don't want dirty power do you?
Final total: $497,830.00
So there you are. A pretty nice system for just under half a million dollars. I didn't mention, that if you're going to spend a half a million dollars on a stereo, you have a special built room with perfect acoustics. That's extra, of course.
Given the resources I'd love to have one of those seriously kick ass systems. So with the arrival of my Music Direct catalog (https://www.musicdirect.com/), my mind wanders to one of my fantasies: What would it cost to have a high end system? In this pipe dream I would have to throw out the truly high end, as I think you can pay anything you like including bespoke hardware and a purpose built room) and it is impossible to guess what that would cost. These are the realms of if you have to ask you can't afford it.
So one or two steps down from that, what would it cost? In order to answer that we have to say what we would get. Here's one list:
If you're going to be a true audiophile you have to be into vinyl. So we start with the the turntable. Of course you don't get one box with the thing you need. You get three or four parts, possibly from different places. The Cartridge is the thing at the end of the tonearm that has the needle in it. Some times you also buy the tone arm. The Phono pre-amp is an additional amplifier before the signal gets to the main pre-amp.
- Turntable: A Mark Levinson 515: $10,000.00
- Truntable Cartridge: A Koetsu Rosewood Signature Platinum is $7500 (17500)
- Phono Pre-Amp: An Icon Audio Ps3 MkII is $3900 (21400)
If you're going to have LPs you need a cleaning system for them.
- Klaudio Ultrasonic Cleaning System: $4800 (26200)
Me, I like CDs, but at this level this is not one box, but two. You get a 'transport' and a 'dac', that is, the thing that spins the disk and the thing that converts the digital signal to analog. You don't want all that terrible vibration to color the sound do you?
- Esoteric Transport: $10000 (36200)
- Esoteric DAC: $10000 (46200)
In addition to the turntable and cd player I have a lot of music encoded as digital files. You probably have mp3's on your phone. This is not nearly fancy enough. Mp3's are lossy (they throw away part of the original signal). You should be using something like FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec), which, as the name suggests, does not throw away the signal that Mp3 does. So how do you play these files in your fancy system? With a network streamer. This box reads files from your storage (this could be a NAS (Network Attached Storage)) and converts the digital signal to analog (that is, it has a dac in it). You might notice that I've completely ignored the FLAC storage aspects.
- Aurender W20: $17600 (63800)
Ok, now you need the heart of the system, the pre-amp. This is the box that controls which source is played through the speakers. The pre-amp output is fed through power amplifiers to the speakers. So you think you need one power amp. Silly you. You need separate amps for the left and right channels.
These are called monoblocks. Silly me, you don't need two, you need four. You need two amps per channel. One to handle treble and one to handle bass. This is called bi-amping.
- Dan D'Agostino Master Audio Systems Momentum Preamplifier: $35,000 (98800)
- Dan D'Agostino Momentum monoblock $65,000/pair 2x: $130000 (228800)
Ok, now we talk speakers. At this rate I hope you don't think these are cheap.
- Wilson Audio Specialties Alexandria XLF: $210,000 (438800)
Oh, we aren't done. We need cables.
Speaker Cables (from power amp to speaker):
- Heimdall tyr2 6250/pair 2x: 12500 (4 total amps!) (451300)
Interconnects (connections to the pre-amp):
- Heimdall tyr2 2510/pair 3x: 7530 (for phono, cd, and network streamer) (458830)
Power Cables (every box needs power):
- Dragon Source Power Cable: 3000 10x: 30000 (488830)
Oh wait. I forgot you need a power conditioner. You don't want dirty power do you?
- Hydra Triton Power Conditioner: 9000 (497830).
Final total: $497,830.00
So there you are. A pretty nice system for just under half a million dollars. I didn't mention, that if you're going to spend a half a million dollars on a stereo, you have a special built room with perfect acoustics. That's extra, of course.
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