There are several other instances that are well known.Cool thread, thanks Adam!
The only such case I've heard/read about before was the Goldmund.
There are several other instances that are well known.Cool thread, thanks Adam!
The only such case I've heard/read about before was the Goldmund.
Then there was this debacleCool thread, thanks Adam!
The only such case I've heard/read about before was the Goldmund.
(...) It exposes a dark side of High End audio that some steadfastly seem to refuse to acknowledge that it exists. Not all is healthy in this hobby of ours.
I think your optimism is unjustified. There have been many similar cases since that time and it is unlikely that the existence of such dishonest behavior has disappeared. Perhaps, the egregiousness of this example is extreme but Lexicon's insertion of an intact Oppo player into their fancy case is no less dishonest. Today, it is easier to contract with a Chinese manufacturer to make a cheap but snazzy product but that just makes the misrepresentation more subtle.Well, IMHO it is a minority case from more than twenty years ago. .........................................From the data exposed we could be lead to consider that currently the hobby is very healthy, it learned from the past!
I think your optimism is unjustified. There have been many similar cases since that time and it is unlikely that the existence of such dishonest behavior has disappeared. Perhaps, the egregiousness of this example is extreme but Lexicon's insertion of an intact Oppo player into their fancy case is no less dishonest. Today, it is easier to contract with a Chinese manufacturer to make a cheap but snazzy product but that just makes the misrepresentation more subtle.
Frankly, the audio Internet community is probably the best monitor of this behavior.
Yes, the infameous Goldmund Eidos 18 BR player. They put a $300 Pioneer BR player inside their $4000 Eidos 18 model. So did Lexicon with Oppo.
Still, those manufacturers have introduced those models as their entry level oferings (probably beeing asked by their dealers) and never claimed they are state of the art.
What Barclay Digital did was just a blatant lie and mystification. Now imagine you bought this thing instead of Mark Levinson 31 ...
That is debatable. Do you make the decision only on the basis of the asking price?Another report of a public case from almost 10 years ago that is not high-end in my view.
I guess you are excluding all the products made from the ground up in-house which are, yet, priced orders of magnitude more than their true value and/or more than products with equal performance.My point is that the number of such frauds and scams in the high-end is small, contrary to the beliefs of some people.
That is debatable. Do you make the decision only on the basis of the asking price?
I guess you are excluding all the products made from the ground up in-house which are, yet, priced orders of magnitude more than their true value and/or more than products with equal performance.
Where do you stand on the issue of audio jewelry?
I have a Barclay F-1 Gold in my living room right now. I don't use it, it's part of my 'industrial design' collection. I bought it because I like the way it looks. I acquired it for about 20K USD on eBay a couple of years ago from a lady in Germany.
Another cool-looking player in my collection is an Altis Centauri. This one is NOS from an eBay seller in Germany, again. The shipping container was HUGE, too big for the Post Office or UPS, et al, so it was delivered by a trucking company. I got the matching Altis DAC from a record store in Kansas for peanuts.
Yet another cool one is the Chinese Shanling CD-5000. It looks really good next to the Centauri as they both have a big X on the top. The Shanling sits atop the Altis Reference DAC. I bought the Shanling from a Canadian dealer who specializes in Chinese high end audio equipment.
If company comes to visit I tell them that extra-terrestrial aliens left the 3 wild-looking pieces behind following a Close Encounter in the living room one evening.
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