Issue 277   November 2017
From the Editor: The Crème de la Crème
Editorial By Robert Harley

  This special annual Buyer's Guide issue is a compilation of every product we recommend, complete with capsule reviews. Here you'll find our top choices for individual products in all categories spanning a wide range of prices.

Evaluating the sound quality of individual components, and describing that sound quality in a review, is relatively straightforward. After all, it's our job to scour the industry for the best products, separating the crème de la crème from the run-of-the-mill. But there's another element to building a musically satisfying system that requires more involvement from you than simply reading reviews and choosing from among our recommendations. Your participation begins where the review ends—selecting individual components that will work well together, allocating your budget among those components, and setting up your system for the best sound. Although this process can be a bit daunting, taking a hands-on approach will make hi-fi a more rewarding hobby. This personal involvement can include working with a local dealer in choosing the right components, seeking guidance from experts at an internet-based retailer, or doing the legwork to decide how much of your budget to spend on each link in the chain and match components for the best sound.

No matter which path you take, a few fundamental guidelines will steer you in the right direction. One is the concept of system hierarchy, or the relative importance of each component in the playback chain. Although the components work together as a system, compromising on one link in the chain can degrade the entire chain's performance. A cornerstone principle of high-end audio is that the source is of utmost importance. If the signal isn't clean at the front end, or if it is lacking in musical information, nothing downstream will ever make it better.

It's important to understand that all components have sonic trade-offs. Even state-of-the art units have virtues and drawbacks. The art of creating a long-term, musically rewarding system lies in choosing gear that trades away what you can live without (deep bass extension, for example) for those qualities that are most important to you (such as a smooth and unfatiguing treble).

When upgrading a single component, a common mistake is to make a lateral move; that is, the new component isn't intrinsically better than the one it replaced, but rather has a different set of colorations and trade-offs. Every upgrade to your system should be in the direction of greater transparency to sources, higher resolution, and more lifelike timbral rendering, all of which lead to deeper musical involvement.

As important as these skills are, there's one that's even more important: system setup. How a hi-fi system is arranged in a room, particularly the loudspeaker positions, has such a huge effect that it can swamp an individual component's virtues. Before spending money on a new component, take the time to optimize the components you already own. Correct speaker and listener placement can make much more of a difference than switching to a significantly better preamplifier, for example. Pay attention to the foundations of your audio system—AC power conditioning and vibration-resistant equipment stands. It's this attention to detail (after you've realized optimum speaker placement) that will help you squeeze out everything your system can deliver.

I've advocated for as long as I've been writing about hi-fi that there's no substitute for the services of a skilled and caring dealer. The old aphorism "Shop for a dealer, not for equipment" is as true today as it ever was. A great dealer has all of the skills I've just described; take advantage of his experience by establishing a relationship with him and rewarding him with the sale. Even if you find such a retailer, I encourage you to learn from him all the skills I've described so that you can intelligently work with him to craft the system that is perfect for your musical tastes.

Finally, you should keep in mind that a review is nothing more than one person's opinion. It may be an educated and informed opinion, but the review will naturally reflect the priorities of the reviewer. Use our reviews, and our recommendations in this issue, as a starting point for your own evaluation, not as the final arbiter of what you should buy. That's the path to assembling a system that brings you hours of listening pleasure rather than one that has you thinking about the next upgrade.

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