Forget that. go out and listen. Whatever you like and suits your tastes is good. Forget everything else or you'll never make a decision.
One of the biggest marketing BS out there and grounds for the entire Bose marketing model;
you don't have to know, just come and listen, we'll dazzle your ears and take your money, we even prefer you not knowing...
@TankTop5 It is always good to arm yourself against BS as much as you can. Perhaps no one will ever be full proof, but it can still steer you clear of some unnecessary bad decisions. First heads up should always be when someone says you don't have to know anything. I'm always asking myself the question; what kind of a person would want me dumb and who profits when I'm dumb. My experience, only your mother (not even your father) will love you if you're dumb and even she will sometimes take advantage of that.
Here's a couple of well known ones:
Shun Mook – pieces of wood you hang around your room and it „sucks out“ everything negative from the sound. No such effect has ever been made possible.
All the power conditioning myth – everything between your power outlet and your audio equipment. Just think, it's about bottle neck, the power and cabling between the power company and your power outlet will not be improved by 1-2 meters of „extra-super good“ power cable.
Cryo-copper – cooling the copper down to temps at which it starts to conduct better. Just think, metal is not able to retain conductivity properties when you warm it back up again at the usual temperature. Otherwise you could make heaps of superconducters, just by freezing the metal a couple of times over.
Tubes being natural – often heard from all the vinatge and „everything used to be better“ crowd. There's nothing natural about tubes. They can sound good, they can sound bad, They do distort the sound, but some people find this pleasing.
Breaking-in the equipment – there's very little breaking in going on and even that is done within first few moments. Some pieces of your equipment which have moving parts may need the initial few moments to start working as they're meant to. If they don't they're broken (quite different). Brake-in is a code-word actually, if you translate it to an honest language it means; buy it, go home and get used to what you're hearing.
Almost all correcting equipment – external jitter corection, external CD clock, tube stage (when BS company like Musical Fidelity makes an overpriced tube preamp that you're suppose to slap between your CD player and your amp to make CD sound like vinyl)
PMPO – when you see a kitchen radio clock that states 100W PMPO, you're free to point your finger at the salemsan and start hissing as loud as you can:
