Below are a few things my ears have taught me over the years. I did not intentionally arrive at any of these, but let the music guide me there. Your experiences will probably differ and for some very good reasons, but thought I’d share them to generate some discussion and maybe pass on some tips.

With power amplifiers, the first watt is the most important to get right. All the music you hear goes "through" it, tube, transistor, or whatever.

Transistors do some things well, tubes do other things well – I know what my choice is.

My system sounds best when it is pure analog and there is not a single transistor in the signal path. Luckily, the audio world seems to agree – look at all the turntables and valve gear now available.

Class A is best in class, all other things being equal. Add to that single ended operation and you have the foundation for great tunes. A low amount of feedback is good and no feedback so much the better. Don’t ask me for a reason, I have found this combination just sounds better.

Simplicity rules in active designs: Getting rid of excess gain stages is like going on a diet – why feel bloated? I wish my preamp could lose a couple cathode followers.

Directly heated triode power amplification provides a "you are there" palpable juiciness that you cannot get any other way, but this technology has its limitations. With all their foibles, are DHT SETs still the ticket? Hell ya, provided you hook them up to the right speakers!

I never had a passive preamp I was happy with over an extended period of time. They seem to drain the life out of everything routed through them. As Einstein said, "Make a system as simple as possible, but not simpler," or something like that.

You can tell a great deal about the overall balance and transient response of an entire system just by the way vinyl surface noise, clicks, and pops are reproduced. After many years and many rigs, this has been an unwavering constant. If record noise does not "sound right," anything on the record will not sound right either.

Some LPs will remain quiet and pop free over years of playing, while other will get noisy right away - no matter what you do. I have always found that vinyl quality the main reason albums either age gracefully or turn unlistenable over a few plays. Sometimes only one side goes bad, like my recent $30 180g reissue I just purchased – ouch!

Exact cartridge set up is very important, but not critical to extracting 90+% from vinyl, (which, by the way is still 100% better than CDs). Of course I’m anal about my cartridge setup, but then again I don’t adjust arm height when switching between 180g and 200g pressings.

Clean your records only if you get them dirty. Tip - don’t get them dirty. I have thirty-year-old albums that I occasionally play and the last time I cleaned them was in college. And by the way, I like paper sleeves better than plastic – they are stiffer, easier to slide back into the record jacket and more environmentally friendly.

Redbook CD can sound damn nice, considering the limited medium. Unfortunately, it took twenty years to arrive at "perfect sound forever." Upsampling improves spaciousness, depth, smoothness, and provides a more pleasing "analog-like" texture. I liken it to progressive output for DVD.

I don’t know enough about SACD and DVD-A to comment on. I will probably get into it now as these are on their deathbeds. There will be cheaper recordings coming onto the market, similar to vinyl in the early 80’s. Get them while you can. The problem is that these players will not be around in 20 years. I don’t ever think there will be a Hi-Rez renaissance as with vinyl and I really don’t see any other audiophile medium on the horizon to replace it.

Low crossover slopes are better and no crossovers best. I really don’t know why certain loudspeaker manufacturers pride themselves on their complex, multi-component, 10-pound 6db/oct crossovers. If I designed this, I’d be embarrassed.

Phase and time coherence are a prerequisite for a life-like performance. It does not need to be perfect, but hey, try to get close or don’t bother!

It’s hard to beat a well-constructed high efficiency, wide range paper-coned dynamic driver for natural vocals, brass and woodwinds. Strong magnetic fields coupled with low cone mass is key to dynamics.

Some people have particular preferences for either planar, dynamic, bipolar, dipolar, omni-directional, etc. I’ve had or heard them all and I say to each their own. There’s no right or wrong here. As Joseph Campbell once said, "Follow your bliss."

Correctly balance the mid-bass in your system and you can gain perceived "speed" and "pace" of a system without making it sound too brittle or bright. This balance is difficult to achieve and I’m still working on mine.

The room is the hardest thing to compensate for when choosing a speaker. My problems have always stemmed in the mid bass on down. Getting acceptable midrange and treble can be mostly accomplished using room treatments, speaker positioning, cables, and tubes, but the fundamental room dimensions and accompanying bass modes are the most difficult to compensate for. I think the new digital subwoofer equalizers are a good idea as long as they are kept in the subwoofer range only.

The best $500 I have ever spent are for my room’s sound panels. No cost comparable cable or component change ever came close.

The main thing a good subwoofer will do is to provide a deeper soundstage and more realistic ambiance retrieval. I don’t know why, but there is a lot of phase information contained in low bass signals. It might be string theory at work with those extra dimensions curled inside the subsonic waveforms. Why don’t more professional reviewers hear and comment on this obvious improvement is beyond me.

Over the years, I have logged many miles on my subwoofers looking for the best position in my rooms. I have come to the conclusion that corner loading a sub gives it the best combination of good low frequency pressurization and phase alignment. It is amazing how much difference can be had by moving the sub in or out of the corner by a few inches.

With regard to positioning left and right speakers, I try to get them within a quarter to half inch of each other in relation to the listening location (my head). This is your last chance to get it right before the sound hits your eardrums.

I’ve tended to stay away from speakers that contain metal dome tweeters, multiple drivers and high order, complex crossovers. I have found them to sound neutral but not engaging. Take a complex design, throw in an average three-ohm impedance and low efficiency and it spells train wreck. These manufacturers tend to show nice off-axis computer plots and smooth lobing patterns but I try to directly tame room influences and aim the speakers directly at my ears.

Don’t worry about phase polarity; just make sure your system is wired right and you’ll have it correct about fifty-percent of the time. Saying that, wire it wrong and you will still have it correct about fifty-percent of the time.

I have always found mini-monitors (as a whole) to image very well. I think part of it is due to their narrow baffle and driver widths. I believe some of it comes from their typical tipped up response and little usable low bass. This artificially sharpens and defines the images a bit more than full range speakers. Mid-bass warmth and/or larger drivers tend to round out images and add flesh to the music. As the old Mexican adage goes: "Meat for the man, bones for the dog."

Short interconnect runs and long speaker cables are preferred over long interconnects and short speaker cables. Don’t know why, but that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

I’ve always preferred shielded cables – they have always kept the noise out of my system, but finding a good sounding shielded cable is much harder than an unshielded type.

Solid core is preferred over multi-strand - their sound is more direct, punchy and has generally more guts to it. I’m a fan of the simplistic single magnet wire designs, you can’t get much wrong with these.

Silver containing cables should always have the majority of their composition made out of copper. Silver sounds a bit too "wiry" to me, pun intended.

I have never heard any major difference in biwiring speakers, other than the obvious result of doubling the amount of copper.

I have never really heard any detectable improvement with aftermarket power cords, but it can’t hurt to have a few of them in your system – they may all add up to something worthwhile. I think I need two more.

Very simple: there are no right or wrong types of tubes (octal, new, miniature, NOS, Chinese, etc.). If they sound good in your situation – then they are the right tubes. There is too much else going on in a system to say with any certainty that a particular tube will sound good. I currently use a mix of tubes that were not allowed during the Cold War.

Exotic NOS stock tubes with fancy pedigrees can sound excellent in any system. I have found them to add sweetness and a bit euphonic, never a problem in most instances.

To be honest, I am not a serious tweaker. I try to focus on the main things than the periphery. Rather than spend a whole bunch of money piecemeal on many small tweaks, I’ll save up the cash and buy a whole new component and upgrade that way. Try not to attach too much sentiment to any one component and ditch a piece if a better replacement comes along. All things equal, I really don’t think a $2000 cable will make a $500 preamp sound better than a $2300 preamp connected to a $200 cable – but again, that’s my ears doing the talking.

I have always had some sort of power conditioning. The hype says it cleans and purifies my mains juice but I primarily use it for surge protection and a place to conveniently plug in all my components. An added plus is my unit has a cute analog meter, very old school. By the way, my power conditioner was made by the same guy who used to peddle secretly treated digital clocks.

I don’t use any sort of vibration control other than having a good rack and spiking the speakers. I should do more in this area – most audiophiles swear by it. Call me lazy.

I turn off the air conditioner, forced air heating, or any other appliances that generate unwanted noise when I seriously listen. High background noise levels reduce perceived dynamic range and obscure low-level detail that I’ve tried so hard to get right. I wish I had hot water heating.

Smoothness, warmth, and detail are not mutually exclusive and don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.

Some times when I listen to my system, it sounds like shit, while other times it sounds superb – it must be me. Music is an emotional experience and I would guess to venture that my mood has something to do with this.

Do you think your system faithfully recreates the sound of a live performance in a real space? Have my daughter play a short violin solo in your listening room and then ask yourself the question again. I know what your answer will be.

Above all, have fun.

Jeff

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