Barclay Digital - the biggest scam of the 90s ?

thedudeabides

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Jan 16, 2011
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I couldn't find any photos of the Barclay in my living room and my digital camera is dead, so I looked it up on eBay. The sale went down on Oct 3, 2017 from budgiemusic in Germany and cost me a cool US $17,455.33 + shipping. Thanks again US stock market for making it possible!

Sounds like money well spent to me.
 

thedudeabides

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Jan 16, 2011
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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.

Sounds like the "hi end pricing strategy" worked.
 
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BobbinHobbin

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Jul 15, 2016
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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.

For that amount of money, you could have commissioned professionals to design & build multiple types of complex metal casing for any type of equipment you wanted.
 

xjr15

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Apr 9, 2019
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Well, it's only money, after all. And I'm not sure I could have commissioned a design of my own for $17K. You certainly would pay much more than that for a 1:8 scale car model special commission. And at the time I bought the Barclay, there was one on offer on a high-end audio website for 40K Euros, so it seemed like a bargain. And it still does.

I think all of the haters are just jealous. If you're buying Mark Levinson or DCS products, you're living in a giant glass house. Also my player looks better than yours. A least it's not a boring black box. I'm an audio objectivist, so I believe all CD players sound alike. I bought it for the looks, not the sound.
 
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BobbinHobbin

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Jul 15, 2016
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Well, it's only money, after all. And I'm not sure I could have commissioned a design of my own for $17K. You certainly would pay much more than that for a 1:8 scale car model special commission. And at the time I bought the Barclay, there was one on offer on a high-end audio website for 40K Euros, so it seemed like a bargain. And it still does.

I think all of the haters are just jealous. If you're buying Mark Levinson or DCS products, you're living in a giant glass house. Also my player looks better than yours. A least it's not a boring black box. I'm an audio objectivist, so I believe all CD players sound alike. I bought it for the looks, not the sound.

If you can drop nearly $20,000 on something for just looks & not sound, what do you have for actual sound use?
 

xjr15

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If you can drop nearly $20,000 on something for just looks & not sound, what do you have for actual sound use?
My AV system is very simple.
I use a Cambridge Audio universal disc player as a source. For audio I use a Smyth A8 binaural emulator (7.1 default config) into a Sennheiser HDVA 600 headphone amp into Sennheiser HD 800S cans. For video I use a Cinera 3D headset and an aging (non-UHD) Pioneer Elite Kuro Pro-111FD.
 
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BobbinHobbin

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Jul 15, 2016
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Very humble system. I was expecting Goldmund, Boulder, Kondo, Gryphon, Dan D’Agostino to be in your system.

Not something a college student might have.
 

xjr15

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You are a horrible example of the intended target of this message.

AN OPEN LETTER TO CONSUMERS OF 'HIGH END' AUDIO EQUIPMENT

I don't preach. All I do is tell the simple truth. And I am not surprised or bothered by infantile tantrums posted by the believers in 'high-end' audio.
Unlike the high-end shamans and pontiffs, I don't claim to have any special perceptual or reasoning ability; I am willing to submit anything I say to rigorous testing and to the scrutiny of the real experts, most of whom have engineering degrees in audio and physics.

Your statements, on the other hand, are sloppy and slobbish and so is your 'thinking'. Your posts typify the loose 'thinking' of the slob snob that keeps 'high-end' consumer audio alive. You are a prime example of the target market that is so skillfully cultivated and manipulated by the 'high end' audio manufacturers and their 'journalist' fellow travelers.

You "have been reading stereo magazines since the late 1970s" but have done precious little thinking in all of that time. It's a shame, and I wish I could help you.

And though you are probably too willfully ignorant to benefit from anything I could tell you, I will give it a shot anyway, and try to keep the discussion simple.

Let's compare consumer audio to consumer video. Are there any 'golden-eyed videophiles' with perceptions and beliefs that do not square with plain old ordinary physics and engineering? Does anybody claim to see a video defect or artifact that cannot be measured or explained using basic physics? Why is that so? Why is audio seemingly (according the snake-oil salesmen of the high-end) so stubbornly resistant to scientific and engineering progress, whereas, in every other field you care to name, science and engineering works so well to explain any empirical fact or observation and to advance the subject?

The crux of the problem is that, in audio, unlike video, we have to rely on memory to compare A with B. And that stubborn and indubitable fact is why stringent controls are needed in listening tests of audio equipment. Because, as anyone with experience in a court of law will tell you, eyewitness testimony (which also relies on memory) is notoriously unreliable.

So, without proper controls, we could argue endlessly and inconclusively for eons about the sound of A vs. the sound of B.

So, here is my advice to you (and to anyone reading this who is similarly inclined): get your hands on an ABX box and test out empirically some of your beliefs. The hard truth that you discover may initially cause you a sleepless night or two, but you may be surprised at how liberating the truth can be. Following your ABX experience, you will have a choice: you can continue with your religion and reject, or somehow rationalize, with great difficulty, the facts; or you can, with a little thinking and reflection, reconsider and reject the mountains of hogwash the high-end 'authorities' are selling you and focus instead on what is really important: the sound and that which actually affects the sound. The high-end dullards will tell you that they believe only what they hear, but they are, to paraphrase George Santayana, much better at believing than they are at hearing.
 

xjr15

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Apr 9, 2019
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You implied that I don't know how to select audio components, so the above is my rejoinder to you. You are intellectually and philosophically naive, and you have been duped into buying overpriced components and accessories. No one forced you to be rude to me, but if you are rude when you don't know what you are talking about, you should expect a pointed response.

I am trying to help you see the truth, so that you can stop wasting money, time, and energy on high-end audio fantasies. This is a forum on "The Best of Everything". I am interested in promoting the best in AV hardware and software, and that requires debunking the myths surrounding high-end consumer audio. My comparatively 'inexpensive' AV hardware is better than your high-end equipment, though I doubt whether you know anything about Smyth Research. You announce your ignorance and gullibility by appending to every post your supposedly impressive audio purchases (including expensive power cords!)

Anyway, I hope you have fun with your overpriced stuff! Gotta love those 'high-end' power cords!!!!
 

spiritofmusic

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Jun 13, 2013
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I'm still waiting for the
"My sister made !!!!$5000!!! in just ONE day" type messages.
Oh, I know, she made that by not spending that sum on rip off pwr cords.
Or sneakily, she sells rip off pwr cords.
 

xjr15

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Apr 9, 2019
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Sorry , but I cannot stand idly by and silently watch while idiots destroy Western Civilization.
;)
 

spiritofmusic

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Jun 13, 2013
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xjr, with all due respect, Western Civilisation is already doomed. Have you watched Pop Idol and Big Brother?
 

thedudeabides

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Jan 16, 2011
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xjr15 is trolling and we all should know what not to do with a troll.
 
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Lagonda

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You implied that I don't know how to select audio components, so the above is my rejoinder to you. You are intellectually and philosophically naive, and you have been duped into buying overpriced components and accessories. No one forced you to be rude to me, but if you are rude when you don't know what you are talking about, you should expect a pointed response.

I am trying to help you see the truth, so that you can stop wasting money, time, and energy on high-end audio fantasies. This is a forum on "The Best of Everything". I am interested in promoting the best in AV hardware and software, and that requires debunking the myths surrounding high-end consumer audio. My comparatively 'inexpensive' AV hardware is better than your high-end equipment, though I doubt whether you know anything about Smyth Research. You announce your ignorance and gullibility by appending to every post your supposedly impressive audio purchases (including expensive power cords!)

Anyway, I hope you have fun with your overpriced stuff! Gotta love those 'high-end' power cords!!!!
And you bought a old CD player for $20000 because it looks cool !
Take your attitude and story’s somewhere else .
 

xjr15

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Apr 9, 2019
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And you bought a old CD player for $20000 because it looks cool !
Take your attitude and story’s somewhere else .

I bought the expensive CD players because I like the way they look as industrial design artifacts; I am honest about why I bought them. I don't claim or pretend that they sound better than other CD players.

The typical 'high end' audio slob/snob, on the other hand, buys the expensive components because he believes they sound better than inexpensive components. But no properly controlled listening tests that have ever been done has shown that there is any audible difference between the preamp/power amp sections of any run-of-the-mill inexpensive receiver and the mega-buck audio electronics touted and recommended by the high-end audio magazines/cults. The worst symptom of the audio fetishist delusion is the money spent on 'high-end' cables and power cords.

I am not accountable to you and you do not control access to this forum. My attitude is to respect science and engineering rather than the intellectually sloppy and ignorant 'journalists' and editors who populate and dominate the consumer audio press. At least my writing is grammatical, unlike yours.

My advice to you is that you go back to grade school to learn spelling and grammar. Then try to learn some physics and engineering and learn how to set up and administer controlled listening tests. Read some of the papers and books by Floyd Toole or Sean Olive or back issues of The Audio Critic from 1987 on. It might change your life for the better.
 
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Al M.

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