With that sort of budget, I would think that you could look at a setup designed for a (small) commercial movie theatre. Pro gear certainly ( I don't know what they are using these days), but sure to produce the same results as going to see the movie, subject of course to room effects.
Not necessarily hi-fi though
Not necessarily hi-fi though
Hi
First and this may be hard to accept is that a fundamental of marketing is to create an image that supports the highest ratio of cost to selling price.
This is why everyone knows (at least somewhere even if subconsciously) that the more costly something is, the better it is.
Second, research on medicine went in circles until they figured out how to remove subjectivity from the research. The Audio industry not being a “life or death” business is based largely on subjectivity, especially at the “high end” where manipulation is more prevalent.
Your subjective impression (of the effects of a drug or placebo in the medical case or a speaker or amplifier) is governed by what you “know” and how you feel as well as what all your senses tell you at that moment..
In audio, this would include a great deal more than just what you can hear. This is why some one who just spent a months pay on fancy cables, IS very likely to hear an improvement, but also why someone else who had no knowledge of which was A or B, or cost is normally unable to hear any difference.
Even the act of making some modification which one expects will make an improvement, will often make a subjective improvement, even standing some little wooden slabs up in your room can make a difference (to you) if you paid enough for them.
I guess my point is to be skeptical about price vs performance.
You can do blind testing incorrectly but if done properly, it is (just as it was in medicine) the best way to reduce the issue to “what can you really hear” in the absence of prior knowledge and non-aural inputs.
I have been in several blind tests, one of which compared several “hifi” amps to several “pro” amplifiers.
No one present heard any detectable difference between a Threshold Stasis and QSC pl 236 for example. Of the pro amps, at best the differences were very small with blind testing. To be fair, there were none of the low end pro amps present, perhaps they would be more audible in the differences.
If your interested there was also an amplifier “shootout” some time back on the Pro-sound web live audio board.
The bottom line in general is you should try to compare side by side at matched levels and ideally in a way that does not let you know which you are listening to.
When you hear differences this way, you can be sure you are HEARING a difference and not just getting a subjective impression, which unavoidably includes so many things in addition to just what you hear.
Remember elitism has been cultivated to assist in sales of very expensive gear, I know that many will be repelled by the idea of “blind testing” and so are not interested in seeing if “the emperor has new cloths”.
But ask, if I have to “know” which I am hearing in order to hear any difference, what are you really hearing. Actual differences can be HEARD without knowledge of which is which. .
The down side.
Pro amps have several potential problems.
As they are generally much more powerful and physically smaller than hifi, so they often have fans for cooling. On modern amps, most of the fans are variable speed so in the home may not be a problem at all.
Pro gear is set up for a higher signal level than hifi.
Electrical noise and signal line losses are more of an issue in pro so they use a higher signal level to reduce the potential for a problem.
Also, much Pro gear has balanced signal paths as an option, again this provides much greater immunity to noise and hum than single ended, low level “hifi” signal paths.
Here, it is a decision point where in the chain you want to change the signal level.
Hope this helps
Tom Danley
Danley Sound Labs.
First and this may be hard to accept is that a fundamental of marketing is to create an image that supports the highest ratio of cost to selling price.
This is why everyone knows (at least somewhere even if subconsciously) that the more costly something is, the better it is.
Second, research on medicine went in circles until they figured out how to remove subjectivity from the research. The Audio industry not being a “life or death” business is based largely on subjectivity, especially at the “high end” where manipulation is more prevalent.
Your subjective impression (of the effects of a drug or placebo in the medical case or a speaker or amplifier) is governed by what you “know” and how you feel as well as what all your senses tell you at that moment..
In audio, this would include a great deal more than just what you can hear. This is why some one who just spent a months pay on fancy cables, IS very likely to hear an improvement, but also why someone else who had no knowledge of which was A or B, or cost is normally unable to hear any difference.
Even the act of making some modification which one expects will make an improvement, will often make a subjective improvement, even standing some little wooden slabs up in your room can make a difference (to you) if you paid enough for them.
I guess my point is to be skeptical about price vs performance.
You can do blind testing incorrectly but if done properly, it is (just as it was in medicine) the best way to reduce the issue to “what can you really hear” in the absence of prior knowledge and non-aural inputs.
I have been in several blind tests, one of which compared several “hifi” amps to several “pro” amplifiers.
No one present heard any detectable difference between a Threshold Stasis and QSC pl 236 for example. Of the pro amps, at best the differences were very small with blind testing. To be fair, there were none of the low end pro amps present, perhaps they would be more audible in the differences.
If your interested there was also an amplifier “shootout” some time back on the Pro-sound web live audio board.
The bottom line in general is you should try to compare side by side at matched levels and ideally in a way that does not let you know which you are listening to.
When you hear differences this way, you can be sure you are HEARING a difference and not just getting a subjective impression, which unavoidably includes so many things in addition to just what you hear.
Remember elitism has been cultivated to assist in sales of very expensive gear, I know that many will be repelled by the idea of “blind testing” and so are not interested in seeing if “the emperor has new cloths”.
But ask, if I have to “know” which I am hearing in order to hear any difference, what are you really hearing. Actual differences can be HEARD without knowledge of which is which. .
The down side.
Pro amps have several potential problems.
As they are generally much more powerful and physically smaller than hifi, so they often have fans for cooling. On modern amps, most of the fans are variable speed so in the home may not be a problem at all.
Pro gear is set up for a higher signal level than hifi.
Electrical noise and signal line losses are more of an issue in pro so they use a higher signal level to reduce the potential for a problem.
Also, much Pro gear has balanced signal paths as an option, again this provides much greater immunity to noise and hum than single ended, low level “hifi” signal paths.
Here, it is a decision point where in the chain you want to change the signal level.
Hope this helps
Tom Danley
Danley Sound Labs.
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