With due respect to everyone on the forum, I find the advice of experts to be overrated. I have been surprised at how many times I have found myself differing with them once I tried things out.
Music is a lot like food. I love mint and chocolate. It's a heavenly combo as far as I'm concerned. After eights, Mint chocolate chip ice cream, the list goes on, but every friend of mine thinks I'm sort of freak, paying to eat stuff that taste like toothpaste. In the end, there are no absolute truths in this. Find out what works for you. Sometimes it might not be what everyone is saying.
Absolutely!!
The key with listening to music is that it must sound good to your ears. How its played is only secondary.
Personally I used to read a lot of reviews and make buying decisions based on them. Then I realized that reviews make a lot of sense but one must experience the entire cycle of expected change, leading up to them.
For example in this case, you can take 2 approaches:
1) buy the eq, plug it in, use it, try out the rig without it and make a comparison, then take a call on what sounds best to you (but you have to buy the eq to do this
)
2) listen without it first, try out an eq on winamp to get a feel of how the eq influences music, probably listen to an eq playing at a friends place, take a call on how you like what you hear, without it and with it, then make the buying decision (this is the full cycle)
I can tell you this for sure because I experienced it first hand. Let me tell you my story:
I was using a BPL CWX79 combo system with my 700T speakers for a few years. When money came by, I started thinking about my long standing dream (from my school days) about owning a NAD amplifier. I used to sit and admire their pictures in magazines and read everything I could about them and was convinced that NAD amps were brilliant, if not the best. I spent a lot of my savings and bought a NAD 216thx power amp and 106 preamp. I was expecting the rig to blow me out of this world but to my surprise, when I connected it up and played my first record through it, I was in a state of shock and dis-belief. It sounded so flat and dull compared to my spruced up CWX79 with a $2 external phonostage. I was shattered. A friend suggested that I buy a graphic eq and put it between my NAD 106 preamp and 216thx poweramp. I did just that, got the best of the line Technics graphic eqs from the United States and plugged it in between. The results were even more shocking. It sounded exactly the same as my CWX79 rig.
Damn!! I had spent 32K on the pre/power combo and another 12k on the eq totalling 44k. My CWX79 cost me Rs.6500/- from the BPL showroom and the phonobox cost me Rs.100 ($2 at the time). I had paid all this extra money just to get to where I was already??
I consulted with my Dad, he came and sat down to listen. He asked me to play an old Englebert Humperdinck Decca record on my existing CWX79 rig and then asked me to switch to the NAD rig without the eq and play the same record. Before I lowered the stylus to pay the record on the NAD rig, he told me to forget what system I was listening to, drop all my pre-conveived notions and listen to the music. I then lowered the stylus and my world of music listening was changed for ever. Good old Englebert sounded very life like, as though he was standing in front of us with the mic and singing. What lovely imagery, the music sounded full and large, very realistic, extremely pleasurable, wanted to listen to it more and more. We spent that entire evening listening to record after record on the NAD. Through the evening I realized what a wonderful preamp my 106 is. It had a very pleasant sounding phonostage that cancelled out most of the noise and played only the music. I was completely bowled over. Ever since that day, I've always listened to my NADs and to nothing else. The eq was never used again and gifted away. The CWX79 was also gifted away.
Another lesson I learnt from this is not to jump to conclusions by reading reviews or by listening to friends. Experience the flavour yourself and stick by what you like. Going with a structured approach can save you hearbreaks caused by spending on un-necessary equipment.
