Buyers Guides > Audio

Setting Your Budget For Music

Whether you're thinking of buying a first system or planning an upgrade, the right balance of quality and sonic characters is all-important

Back in the years BC - before CD - deciding how to spend your money on a hi-fi system was simple: the greater part of your budget went on the source component. It wasn't unknown to use a very good turntable, such as a Linn, with a £100 NAD amplifier and similarly-priced speakers, based on the theory of 'garbage in, garbage out' - in other words that losses early in the signal-reproduction chain couldn't be compensated for further down the line.

That 'GIGO' theory still holds true, but the greater ease with which which CD players can be mass-produced - well, certainly when compared to the labour-intensive precision engineering involved in turntables - has rather skewed the balance.

Whereas once a £1000 system might mean £500-600 for the turntable and the rest split between amplification and speakers, we can now say with some degree of confidence that you should spend 30 per cent of the budget apiece on CD player, amp and speakers, with the last 10 per cent set aside for interconnects and speaker cable.

Bear in mind, though, that the £300 you've allowed for speakers should include stands if needed - and if you're buying small 'bookshelf' speakers those stands will be needed. That goes a long to explaining the current popularity of £200-300 floorstanding speakers - you can spend all the money on the speakers themselves. But when it comes to upgrading, how much should you spend.

Assume you've a system that cost you £600 a few years back, comprising CD, amp and speakers at £200 apiece. You want to improve the CD player, so how much should you spend? While it's undeniable that the £200 players of today are much better than those of five years ago, we wouldn't suggest you buy a brand-new £200 machine. That'll be something of a step sideways and a little bit up, more likely to give you a sound you'll soon feel is different rather than obviously better.

What you're after is an upgrade to amaze you, not one that gives rise to doubts about its worth a month down the line. We're after the 'Wow!' effect, in other words. A better investment for the future would be to move up even further, spending £350 or more on a really good player.

Not only will this work well in your current system, assuming it's well-balanced, but it'll also be a good foundation for the next upgrade step, when funds allow. True, you might not be getting the very best out of that new player in your current system, but it'll be enough an improvement to let you hear things you never heard before on familiar discs, and of course it has all that built-in potential just waiting for the future to unlock it.

That's why it's important not only to listen to upgrades in something resembling your current system, but also to try them with whatever you're considering as your next step. True, this will involve an extended listening session before you buy, but any dealer who doesn't view the time spent letting you do this as an investment for the future is being short-sighted. After all, once you've heard what your new CD player can do with an even better amp, chances are you'll be counting the days until you can afford the next step!

On the subject of matching equipment together, a swift word on the way different items interact. For all the brochure blurbs about greater purity and so on, the fact is that a piece of kit that has a perfectly flat frequency response from the lowest bass to the highest treble isn't the ideal. And a system comprising similarly flat source, amp and speakers would sound very clinical indeed.

As a result just about every hi-fi component that hits the market has something of its designer's personal taste involved. Densen, for example, refers to the 'air guitar factor', while Marantz's Ken Ishiwata writes (on the certificates accompanying the KI-Signature products) about the ability to raise the hairs on the back of the neck being more important than technical perfection. The secret of good system-matching is to combine the characters of the various components of a system to get the balance you want.

Use a warm-sounding amp with a source and speakers of similar balance and the result will be wonderfully lush right up until you nod off to tracks on your favourite disc. Partner a trio of components with a bright, treble-happy balance and the sound will amaze you with its impact and thrilling detail, but might soon have you turning the volume down a bit as it begins to grate on your nerves.

What we are trying to do in all of these sections is just to make some suggestions as to what goes well with what. But we're talking our personal tastes here, too - the beauty of the diversity of equipment on the market right now means almost anyone should be able to blend a system to give precisely the sound they want.

And if a friend or hi-fi dealer thinks it sounds dreadful, don't let them talk you out of it - it's your system, and if it's right for you it's the best set-up you can buy.

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