Great Sound Comes
With Great Products.
Big Ear. Bigger sound. Better equipment.
Ultra High Fidelity
First Choose The Right Speakers
The speakers will define the sound of your system and are your most important decision. The correct choice depends on your flexibly with listening position and speaker placement, room size, your personal taste, the music you prefer and your amplification. Never purchase speakers without first auditioning them. No amount of tweaking or replacement of upstream components will change the basic characteristics of a speaker.
Amp It Up
Correct Amplification
Once you’ve found your perfect speakers, make sure to carefully pick the correct, matching amplification. For example, choosing a 4W single ended triode amplifier for inefficient bookshelf speakers would be a disaster. I’ve always been partial to vacuum tube amplification in my stereo systems yet we carry several great solid state brands. Picking the best amplification for the speakers of your choice is far more important than randomly going tube or solid state.
May The Source Be With You
Analog or Digital
Modern digital, whether a CD player, media player or streamer has come a long way over the decades. The price for very high quality digital sound has come down substantially with good DACs (digital to analog converters) starting at $199. I no longer go right to my LPs when listening to music; I enjoy my CDs and streaming services like Qobuz just as much.
For most folks, a quality digital source makes the most sense. Unless you have a large record collection like me and have the patience to clean/maintain your records, occasionally change a worn-out stylus, get up every 20 minutes (my main form of exercise these days), it’s best to choose digital.
At Big Ear we carry a very nice selection of analog and digital source components for every budget. After choosing the best speaker/amp combination for your taste and environment, it’s important to get the best source component you can afford. If you don’t get the information off your source material correctly, there is not way to recover it elsewhere in your stereo system; it’s lost forever.
Everything In-between
The Best of the Rest
Once you’ve picked the best speakers, amplifier and source component(s) for your tastes, room, music and budget add the rest: line stage, phono stage, cables and how you want to power it all. Ways of simplifying things would be an integrated amplifier rather than separate line stage/amplifier or powered speakers (both ATC and Legacy have powered speaker systems). At Big Ear we have unique views on cabling and power conditioning aimed at saving you a lot of money.
We’re here to help. It’s pretty easy to get all this wrong and waste a lot of money. Don’t let professional salesmen fool you with all the nonsense and marketing that home entertainment systems have become.
We love music and are blessed with the means to enjoy it at home. We thank all the great musicians that have made this possible. Our goal is to help you do the same, honestly and within your budget.
