Yep thank goodness we have all (or mostly) moved on now ……
I can’t imagine why he would say this though 
Yes, but he had a point, as the sometime orthodoxy in the '70s was to encourage people to have the best 'speakers going. GIGO in action 
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In the 70’s Linn sold speakers that were more expensive than their turntable so Ivor was not doing himself that many favours.
FWIW I agree that speakers AND room combined are important but rooms can be treated at relatively low cost to other hi fi expenditure. I have only owned 5 different sets of speakers since my childhood and am now in my 60’s, the last 3 pairs were not home dem’d (shock horror) yet I couldn’t be happier with the results, but the last pair (Titan 707’s) proved to me that I had to sort the room out, the depth of bass produced being so much greater than previous speakers and setting off room modes.
For me speakers need to be ‘good enough’ to show any changes further upstream in the hi fi chain. When the differences become less noticable as you upgrade then it is the time to change speakers. It is a balancing act.
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Hi @Steinwerck , I notice that you haven’t posted here on what is after all your thread! Has it been hi-jacked too much?
I am keen to know if you are going to proceed with a transport, and if so, which one?
What are your thoughts on streaming? You already have the gear and just need a subscription to one of the streaming services. Some of them allow you to purchase the files so you can download them and put them on a relatively inexpensive and small USB SSD. A 1TB SSD can be bought for less than £100 and can store around 900 albums at CD quality.
Can’t spin a disc without one. 
Just out of interest what changes did you make to the room to sort out the issues you had with your Kudos speakers?
Apologies for going off topic but it looks like Steinwerck is taking some time out.
My room is an odd L shaped room but main resonance is about 33Hz. There is also glass on 3 sides (patio doors, internal doors to the sides and a window behind the speakers). Contrary to popular belief the glass panels, being large, resonate at low frequencies as well.
Previously I owned Linn Isobariks for many years which, as many know can certainly rock but I had put up with the occasionally boomy bass and, as I know now, the muddled middle. When I got the 707’s they were barely run in but go notably deeper in the bass (Although were better in every respect than the Isobariks IMO)
I ended up making some triangular corner baffles for behind my speakers (commercially available ones would have partially blocked the window) and then buying a full height soffit trap for the rear corner of the room and 2 x 6" thick diffuser panels for the rear wall. The effect was to tighten the bass up considerably but, more importantly, even out the midrange frequencies so now different elements of the music play together better (if that makes sense). The knock on to the higher frequencies is that they sound clearer and more relaxing at the same time.
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Interesting.
Sound like it would be a bit of a challenge to get most loudspeakers to work well in that space.
Apologies if I exaggerated a bit. Truth be told, I have been trying for years to get streaming / file as source to beat my CD player but to no avail. I really want the convenience. Recent foray into Lumin & Aavik (sounded good at the show but …) at great expense still could not better my transport (DCS Vivaldi). Sigh.
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Not surprised 
.
ATB, J
Sorry if my reply was a bit late. Please refer to my explanation in the reply to Blacknote. I do not want to detract from this main topic so will not try to justify further other than to say that for now, my transport still trumps any streaming source (from NAS, not online music services). My Aurender W20 has been reduced to the role of NAS for ROON.
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May I also suggest Project RS2T. Small form factor & comes in black. Nice for the Naim. It shares the same mechanism as the much more expensive Gryphon Ethos CD player. Get the optional linear power supply as well.
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Thanks for clarifying, I’ve never listened to a dCS Vivaldi so I can’t really comment about it.
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No worries - thanks for explaining… it looked like a sort of comment from a person you are clearly not.
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Have you considered a career in politics?
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Ha ha, if you read carefully I wouldn’t split the gear by % but my warning is just cables etc. are necessary and I just gave an idea of the amount of money that it may cost
I don’t believe in a % split for gear - source first people will dedicate the majority to the source, others may have different priorities. Synergy is important and not measurable by ideal %.
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This troubles me too, friends insists CD ripped to WAV files sounds best, but my ears told me that from vinyl LP to CD to CD ripped to WAV files, the sound has become more and more ‘mechanical’, less and less lifelike/organic.
However, I had no experience on ‘true’ hi-res 24-bit files from Qobuz for example, not sure if they sound more lifelike than vinyl. I think this topic needs to be in another thread, but thanks for bringing this up. Cheers.
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The ‘files’ are largely irrelevant. It’s the distribution masters and DACs used that are key. Remember the same file types can be used for creating vinyl, CD and streaming, though CD there is sometimes downsampling and decimation required to bring the data rate down to 44.1/16… it’s about the mastering adjustment undertaken in the file… or from the file for vinyl pressing or streaming distribution… and the DAC reconstruction quality.
Of course on a good system you can notice quite a difference in distribution masters sometimes of tracks that are in a single, album, re release, different compilations etc…
I maintain the key variability is the distribution master being used… and on streaming services you may find many different master versions of a track especially if a few years old and popular.
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Source matters, as people on here are fond of saying😉 it was not until I upgraded my streamer to an Innuos pulse and got a phoenix net switch that local files and streaming got to the level of a good transport
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