You would not believe how many e-mails I have received over time from fellow music lovers and audiophiles that start out with, "My Hi-Fi system sucks, I need some advice ..." or a variation on that. Most of the time people ask me about getting a new piece of Hi-Fi gear that will remedy their system's ills, and most of the time that's not really the solution to their problem.

We Hi-Fi and music enthusiasts are willing to spend many thousands of dollars on electronics for a Hi-Fi system that will give us long term listening satisfaction, and yet for many enthusiasts this results in getting on an equipment merry-go-round that costs us much of our hard earned money and ends in disappointment with the results. I think most of us (I do) really just want a musically competent Hi-Fi system so that we can just kick back and enjoy our music and focus on building our music library for the long haul. If you have limited financial means like I do, every equipment purchase that doesn't work out in our Hi-Fi system effectively robs us of hundreds of albums for our music library cost-wise, so a mistake can have a lot of negative impact on building a library that will enhance our listening pleasure over the long haul.

I thought I'd do my best to distill my hard earned audio experience into simple & straightforward advice on putting together a musically satisfying Hi-Fi system in three easy steps. My goal is to equip you with the knowledge and skills you need to choose the right equipment, get a musically competent Hi-Fi system set up & running and out of the way - with a maximum of fun and a minimum of fuss & frustration - so you can focus on kicking back and enjoying your music while building your music library for the long haul.

Step One - Music 101

The first and most important step for getting the most out of your home Hi-Fi system is knowing a little something about music so that you can judge whether or not your Hi-Fi system is playing the musical content of recordings at its maximum potential. The greatest source of dissatisfaction among audiophiles is pursuing optimizing their system around the sonic content of recordings (recording artifacts like soundstaging, imaging, transparency, etc.) instead of the musical content. If you get your Hi-Fi rig dialed in so it plays the musical content of recordings well, the sonic content will fall into place automatically, and then a magical thing happens - you begin to enjoy the music immensely and forget about the gear.

What is musical content? It's simply the content of recordings that make up the music - the fabric of the music itself: timbre, melody, harmony, rhythm, tone, and tempo, for example.

One of the best ways to learn more about musical content is through The Teaching Company's Understanding the Fundamentals of Music DVD set that I wrote about for Positive Feedback Online back in Issue 43. In that article I started the article by saying:

"I don't normally start an article with a conclusion and a recommendation, but here goes: Please, please, read this article all the way through and buy the Understanding the Fundamentals of Music DVD set ($69.95). Buying this DVD set may be the single most important thing you ever do in audio, and it will transform your musical and Hi-Fi sensibilities for the good regardless of how long you've been in the hobby—very, very, highly recommended. Ok, now that I've got that off my chest, lets go on."

The focus of Dr. Greenberg's course is about learning the language of music through using one's ears, which is a surprisingly easy thing to do with the right teacher, and the the right teacher is Dr. Greenberg. While Dr. Greenberg's lectures use primarily classical music for examples, what he teaches applies to every musical genre. So whether you enjoy classical, jazz, rock, folk, bluegrass, blues, or what-have-you, you'll come away with knowledge and new listening skills that will be an immense help in getting your system dialed in so that it sounds like music.

So, to summarize, Step One is to go read my article about Dr. Greenberg's Understanding the Fundamentals of Music DVD set in Issue 43 of Positive Feedback Online and then go buy the DVD set from The Teaching Company for the ridiculously inexpensive price of $70 USD. Then watch and listen to what Dr. Greenberg has to say, and commit to memory what he teaches on his Understanding the Fundamentals of Music DVD set, and then you can take your new found listening skills and use them to help you optimize your Hi-Fi system to play music. This is the first and most important step that will help you to reap enormous rewards in listening pleasure over your lifetime. This step will help you get off the merry-go-round of equipment purchases, so you can focus on the music and build your music collection - please don't skip this step!

Step Two - Choosing Your Hi-Fi Equipment

This step is where most music lovers hit a snag that ends up costing them a small fortune and results in a lot of frustration and unhappiness. There's very little out there that has been written that is truly helpful in getting you going in the right direction equipment-wise, so I'm hoping what I've written will help bridge that gap.

The goal for choosing your Hi-Fi equipment is to choose equipment that plays music well. That probably sounds ridiculously obvious, as one would think that the primary purpose of all quality Hi-Fi gear is to play music well, but that's not the case, and in fact it's largely not the case. Much of the Hi-Fi gear marketed to audiophiles is voiced to emphasize the sonic content of recordings (recording artifacts like soundstaging, imaging, transparency, etc.) instead of a recording's musical content - the fabric of the music itself - like timbre, melody, harmony, rhythm, tone, and tempo. Equipment voiced for sonics will ultimately prove disappointing because after the sonic "Wow!" wears off, you realize that the thing sucks at playing music and was an expensive mistake.

There is equipment available that was designed to play the musical content of a recording well, and with such equipment  the sonic content falls into place automatically, and as I said above, a magical thing happens - you begin to enjoy the music  and forget about the gear.

I'm first going to start with some generalities that will give you the greatest chance of success in setting up a musically satisfying system, then I'll move on to some specific examples that I know work. This is all from personal experience, so I'm not just theorizing here. Not everyone will like what I am about to say, but it's truth as best I know it, and if you take what I say to heart, your chances of setting up a musically satisfying system that will serve you for the long haul will go up dramatically.

Here's the generalities part that a lot of folks will not like to hear: I'm sorry I have to say it, but in choosing equipment that emphasizes the musical content of recordings, the most musical of digital sources & solid state electronics just don't do as well as as analog sources & vacuum tube electronics at playing satisfying music over the long haul. Now it is true that the most musical digital & solid state combinations may play music better than some of the least musical analog & vacuum tube combinations, but if you are going for the most musical experience possible, it's still analog & vacuum tube electronics that have a clear advantage.

So what equipment gives you the best odds for putting together a musically satisfying system? It's simple really, an analog source combined with vacuum tube electronics and a decent set of speakers. It need not be hugely expensive either, and although you can spend a lot of money if you want to, you don't need to in order to get extremely musical and satisfying results.

Back in 2006 I began experimenting with a simple Hi-Fi rig centered around a vacuum tube Leben CS600 integrated amplifier and a pair of Harbeth Super HL5 loudspeakers with a variety of analog front ends, most notably a Garrard 301 in a Cain & Cain plinth. The results were so spectacularly satisfying that that simple system ended up replacing my expensive and exotic system centered around Avantgarde Duo loudspeakers and Tom Evans Audio Design electronics, which were extremely good in their own right. That early experience with the Leben & Harbeth system led me to rethink what was important in audio reproduction, and led to the Music Lovers series of articles at 6Moons which promoted a different perspective than the usual audiophile one, which is to say that the quality of the playback of the musical content of a recording was of higher importance to long term satisfaction than the playback of the sonic content of recording artifacts. In early 2007 I wrote about a variation on that Leben & Harbeth system at 6Moons:

"For those of you who have been following the Music Lovers Series introduction, you already know that music lovers' interests inhabit a parallel universe to the one most audiophiles live in. The music lovers' universe is music-centered instead of focused on the 'sound' universe of audiophiles, absolute or otherwise. Music lovers want Hi-Fi equipment that flatters all music regardless of how well it is recorded because there's lots of great music that isn't recorded that well. The equipment must serve the music, not the music the equipment as is often the case in audiophile circles. Music lovers often want a presentation just to the warm side of neutral, with a natural and organic presentation with plenty of tone color and musical texture. Music lovers want to experience the full glory of the music's beat, rhythm, melody and mood in such a way that they can get lost in the music. Their gear must possess that elusive and controversial element called musicality. A Hi-Fi system that plays music really well can forever change your perspective on what this hobby is all about. Ultimately it can change your life for the better. That is why my little tongue-in-cheek motto for the Music Lovers series is "Save the music, save the world"."

I still have that Leben & Harbeth system, albeit in a slightly different form, and I still think as highly of it as I did back in 2006-07 when I wrote the article quoted from above.

I talked about even more refined examples of this approach in the Winning Combinations post I made a while back, where I described how Jonathan Halpern used the very simple formula of combining a turntable, a vacuum tube integrated amplifier, and a decent set of speakers to blow his competition away at the Salon and Image Show over the last few years, competition that was using Hi-Fi systems that were 10 to 100 times more expensive at that.

Take a look at these posts from the Stereophile website as well:

Robert Deutsch’s 2008 Festival Son & Image show report on the Stereophile website here.

John Atkinson's 2008 Festival Son & Image show report on the Stereophile website here.

Stephen Mejias' 2009 Salon Son & Image show report on the Stereophile website here.

John Atkinson's 2009 Salon Son & Image show report on the Stereophile website here.

John Marks' June 2010 The Fifth Element column, now on the Stereophile website, where John describes his experience with the Leben CS600 integrated amplifier and ProAc Response D Two loudspeakers as "a magically synergistic combination - a marriage made in heaven."

If you had any doubts about the veracity of what I am recommending, they should be completely dispelled after reading the above posts and article. This approach works. You can, if you wish, apply the general principle of combining a turntable, vacuum tube electronics, and decent speakers, to any variety of turntables, vacuum tube electronics, and speakers out there, and after winnowing through some chaff you'll probably come up with a good combination.

However, the more closely you stick to the combinations mentioned in the posts above, the more likely you'll end up with excellent results, as there is a reason these synergistic combinations are eliciting so much praise in the press across the board. It's easier to learn from others' success in a Hi-Fi system, and then clone their success, than it is to discover it for yourself (if you ever do).

So here's the gear Jonathan used in his show winning systems, and my recommendation is that you just cut to the chase and clone his winning systems for your own system (from my 'Winning Combinations' post):

"Jonathan combines a decent entry level turntable & arm combo with an EMT phono cartridge and an Auditorium 23 step-up transformer, plus a Leben vacuum tube integrated amplifier & phono stage, plus decent entry level speakers, plus a few well chosen accessories, plus careful setup, plus some good music, which results in a winning combination. Here’s some more details:

Electronics: Each show system was based on either the Leben CS-300XS or CS-600 vacuum tube integrated amplifiers from Japan, along with the Leben RS-30EQ vacuum tube phono stage. When Jonathan used the CS-300XS he used JJ EL84 vacuum tubes, and he used EL34 vacuum tubes in the CS-600.

Speakers: Entry level ProAc or DeVore loudspeakers were used depending on the year.

Source: an entry level turntable & arm combination, which differed depending on the year of the show (Brinkman or Clearaudio). The important common element was EMT phono cartridges (an EMT TSD15N with the CS-300XS or an EMT JSD6 with the CS-600) combined with the Auditorium 23 ‘103′ style step-up transformer.

Cables: Interconnects and speaker cables were Auditorium 23. I’m using the A23 speaker cables on my Tannoy Westminster Royal Special Edition loudspeakers and they are an exquisite match. I haven’t had a chance to try the A23 interconnects yet.

Accessories: a Shindo Mr. T power conditioner and a Box Furniture Company equipment rack.

Now if you absolutely feel the need to drop a large amount of cash on a Hi-Fi rig, I can heartily recommend you clone my System #1, which is simply the most musical Hi-Fi system I've ever heard anywhere at any price, but for most people Jonathan's combinations are a much more realistic approach, and offer superb performance.

Step Three - Setting Up Your Hi-Fi Equipment

In Step One you found out about the importance of musical content over sonic content, and learning how to listen for the difference. In Step Two you found out about choosing Hi-Fi equipment that plays music well by sticking with an analog source & vacuum tube electronics, and taking advantage of others' hard-won knowledge in discovering synergistic systems to clone them for yourself.

But we're not done yet, and now in Step Three we'll put it all together and make sure you get everything setup to get the musical most out of your Hi-Fi rig.  As Jonathan told me with his show winning systems, “I believe careful set up is a key part of our success.” Careful setup is something you should take to heart, because it is absolutely essential to get the most out of your investment.

I wrote a review for Positive Feedback Online back in Issue 40 about Jim Smith’s excellent book  Get Better Sound, which I think is the finest resource of its kind for helping with system setup that has ever been written. Jim’s book ought to be in every audiophile’s and music lover’s library, and if you follow Jim’s techniques your system and listening enjoyment will benefit in significant ways that can’t be achieved by simply buying new equipment.

Here's a little excerpt from my article on Jim's book:

"Jim Smith has been in the audio business for over thirty-five years and has helped literally thousands of music and film enthusiasts get the maximum performance out of their home audio and video systems. I've known Jim for quite some time, both as a customer before I started writing about audio, and after by attending his demonstration rooms at the ever-popular yearly Consumer Electronics Show.

I have always been impressed that Jim was able to get such exceptional sonics and musicality in his own CES rooms, as well as those he optimized for others. In case you don't know, getting good results in the hotel rooms used at CES is extremely difficult to do. Due to the odd dimensions of the rooms, the often built-in furniture, the need to cater to show attendees, and the fact that you have a very limited amount of time to get it right, makes it all the more impressive that Jim has such a good track record of getting impressive performance during show conditions."

If you follow the techniques Jim describes in Get Better Sound you'll get superb results in setting up your system. So I recommend you first go read my article at PFO on Jim's book, then go to Jim's website and order a copy for yourself, then take your time and start working through Jim's techniques one-by-one and applying them to your own Hi-Fi system - you'll be astonished at the results.

I hope you find this information to be valuable. It represents a lot of experience on the part of a lot of people, boiled down into three simple steps that are designed to give you success in building a musically satisfying system for the long haul.

If you follow the steps you will get excellent results, and you will own a system that will provide musical satisfaction for the long haul. So now all you have to do is kick back with a cup of your favorite beverage, listen to your growing music library, and enjoy the fruits of your labors. Have fun!