Is High End Audio Gear Worth the Money?

[Elliot G.]

also the percentage of new Ferrari's that get used to their performance potential is much lower than uber hifi systems. hifi systems are acquired to be listened to, not as garage queens, posers, or investments. yes; some do 'track' their cars, but less than half. there are many many reasons to own a Ferrari. much, much less so for hifi.

observe the average milage on a used 2-5-7 year old Ferrari. under 3000 miles. many under 1500 miles. the ones that get driven are not the one's for sale.

so while there are common motivations involved in both, they are really separate realms. and not comparable.

you can find so many used with less than 3000 miles its crazy . Country club chariots.
I worked for them and can tell so many stories of how these cars get trailered everywhere but not driven

 

[Lagonda]

Can’t say I’ve ever heard a DIY system that ever sounded compelling but that is only my set of data points

The DIY systems i have heard did not particularly impress me, but i am sure they sounded right to the creators at the time, until they changed something to make them even better ! You have a ability to adjust the system to the particular room better than most premade speakers give you options for. That is definitely a good thing.

 

[roundhead]

As the client base dies, the dealers chase fewer and fewer, so prices rise. Nothing to do with high end, just high price. People are wising up. Less and less are convinced by $100,000 speakers when a pair af carefully setup monitors in a professionally treated room surpass it on every parameter. A lot of willy waving going on in high end.

 

[Elliot G.]

The DIY systems i have heard did not particularly impress me, but i am sure they sounded right to the creators at the time, until they changed something to make them even better ! You have an ability to adjust the system to the particular room better than most premade speakers give you options for. That is definitely a good thing.

These are two very different things.
Fine tuning the room and the speaker position to get the proper result versus changing the speaker or speaker parts to fix a bad or colored room. The latter is not what I’m ever trying to do.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

I know an audiophile that owns a Porsche and he's afraid to sit in it let alone drive it.

i owned my 'cool but modest' 2016 Porsche CS2 for 18 months before i sold it and moved on. put 3000 miles on it including the 1200 mile trip home from SoCal where i bought it. it was a trophy, a garage queen. i realized that for me it did not make sense to keep it. i did check the box and moved on.

loved it and driving it grinned from ear to ear. fond memories. but something i can live without.

 

[dbeau]

i owned my 'cool but modest' 2016 Porsche CS2 for 18 months before i sold it and moved on. put 3000 miles on it including the 1200 mile trip home from SoCal where i bought it. it was a trophy, a garage queen. i realized that for me it did not make sense to keep it. i did check the box and moved on.

loved it and driving it grinned from ear to ear. fond memories. but something i can live without.

DITTO - a Porsche 928 owned for 4 years and 10K miles - I am a pickup guy

 

[Lagonda]

These are two very different things.
Fine tuning the room and the speaker position to get the proper result versus changing the speaker or speaker parts to fix a bad or colored room. The latter is not what I’m ever trying to do.

Some speakers can be adjusted to fit a given room to some degree, thereafter you can fine tune position to perfection . I have different crossover settings for different room dimensions, room placement and seating distance in the passive crossover. Additionally the active crossover for the sub towers can be set for phase, gain and bass bump/dips. I am sure the Goebbels speakers can too.

 

[Elliot G.]

Some speakers can be adjusted to fit a given room to some degree, thereafter you can fine tune position to perfection . I have different crossover settings for different room dimensions, room placement and seating distance in the passive crossover. Additionally the active crossover for the sub towers can be set for phase, gain and bass bump/dips. I am sure the Goebbels speakers can too.

The Gobels are passive except the subwoofer off course which is incredibly flexible.

 

[thedudeabides]

I know an audiophile that owns a Porsche and he's afraid to sit in it let alone drive it.

Does he let his family / friends look at it?

 

[thedudeabides]

Oh it’s the messenger, no question.

Never got goosebumps from my car radio, only with my driving…

We are way different. With my CD player and certain music, I do. Best.

 

[Pokey77]

I know an audiophile that owns a Porsche and he's afraid to sit in it let alone drive it.

How sad, achieving a dream only to be afraid of it. Investment aside, thats not living.

 

[TonyW]

Back in the mid 90s I was doing development work with Ford Lincoln at the Naples, Fl proving grounds. The Mustang group was working in the bays next to ours. I think they had 5 or 6 Mustang test cars and they had stacks and stacks of tires, I noticed at the beginning of the week. So every day nearly all day long I could hear tires squealing. It got to be annoying. I found out it was the Mustang crew testing their cars on a track. After a couple of days I noticed the stack of tires was quickly diminishing. I then noticed that these Mustangs would go out in the morning with new tires and they would come back in the afternoon with bald tires. I said to one of the Ford engineers, wait a minute, those tires were brand new this morning. Now they are bald. He told me that’s right. They are doing handling tests with various brands of tires. They would wear out a set of tires in a day.

So you guys with your track cars- if you are not wearing out a set of brakes and tires in a day, well whattaya doin out there- listening to your car stereo?

 

[TonyW]

If I had tube power amplifiers I would probably not turn my system on very often. All I would be thinking about, besides the heat, is how much the tubes cost to replace. My midwestern upbringing would have me calculating how many dollars/hour burning those tubes are costing me. I’ve managed to avoid that mindset with my tube DAC and preamps but those tubes are starting to get pricey too. Still, I’m not going to calculate that cost. I’m not going to do it. No…

My point is, if you got it use it.

I used to baby my cars and park far away, avoid bad weather, immediately wash the car after a trip- just so someone else could enjoy that clean, like new car after me. I would watch the mileage. I even had a beater for everyday driving. I finally started driving them hard and wear me out some tires. Well, I still wash them after a trip.

 

[jugi63]

Some speakers can be adjusted to fit a given room to some degree, thereafter you can fine tune position to perfection . I have different crossover settings for different room dimensions, room placement and seating distance in the passive crossover. Additionally the active crossover for the sub towers can be set for phase, gain and bass bump/dips. I am sure the Goebbels speakers can too.

I agree that DIY can go quite a bit further than just small speakers tweaks.

But, to get the most out of DIY, it does required work. But as said before, I really think a competent DIY audio builder has a big advantage compared to the buyer of a commercial device: it is much easier to tweak and adjust them yourself. Not to compensate weaknesses, but to tweak the sound to suit your taste, suit the room, experiment and make improvements, improve capacitors, resistors, power filtering, adjust amplifier bias current, etc.

My speakers for an example: I have not designed them, but I have tweaked and tuned at least as follows:

- adjusted the height and the angle of the speaker also in the vertical axis (a little lower at the back than at the front)
- tried different spikes, (DIY) damping feet - and finally made a Boenicke Swing Base style solution for both the bass units, separately for the tweeters and also for the external crossovers.
- made a small adjustment to the crossover
- made the crossovers external
- adjusted the length of the reflex tubes so that it would sound good/balanced in my room and to my taste
- tried different internal cables
- tried the effects of the different internal damping material (amount / location / tightness)
- made my own speaker connectors, where the wires are directly connected to each other, but still tightly compressed

And also, practically all my other devices have also been tweaked in some way - also made my own signal and speaker cables, etc. (which are better than the well known brand cables I had)

Doing it yourself takes a lot of time, and of course it requires some knowledge (one can learn), some curiosity and hand skills. One also needs the willingness and time to experiment and listen a lot. Sometimes the changes works, sometimes they don’t - but you always learn more.

I think that in the DIY world you can achieve a level of sound and balance that you may not otherwise afford - and that can be difficult to achieve even with expensive gear, because you are always tied to the manufacturer's vision of the device's sound and balance.

 

[exupgh12]

also the percentage of new Ferrari's that get used to their performance potential is much lower than uber hifi systems. hifi systems are acquired to be listened to, not as garage queens, posers, or investments. yes; some do 'track' their cars, but less than half. there are many many reasons to own a Ferrari. much, much less so for hifi.

observe the average milage on a used 2-5-7 year old Ferrari. under 3000 miles. many under 1500 miles. the ones that get driven are not the one's for sale.

so while there are common motivations involved in both, they are really separate realms. and not comparable.

I'm proud that my system costs more than my car. while I try to spend the minimum time I can in my car, I can say the opposite about the time I spend in front of my system. I would say it is 3:1 during weekdays and closer to 8:0 during most weekends in favor of my system.

 

[Gregm]

Can’t say I’ve ever heard a DIY system that ever sounded compelling but that is only my set of data points

I have.
As you imply, I am probably an exception to the rule.
It is a digital system, direct output DAC, Lowther based speakers with Murata super-tweets, 2a3 tubes amplfication. All battery powered except for the amps.

 

[Gregm]

... a real lack of information and understanding of how to get the best result in consumers homes significantly influences these rants on line.

I agree wholeheartedly

High End audio is not plug and play

Nor is any other kind of audio -- the same rules of set & placement apply. But, since hi-fi is cheaper, nobody complains about the mediocre sonic results -- in a way they're expected, so anything tat tops mediocrity is immediately labeled a "giant killer"

 

[Rensselaer]

Another: Topping has been making a very decent line of DACs for some years now. A few years back we had their cheapest one at the time, the D30 ($125.00 including shipping at the time), in the shop and had opportunity to compare it directly to a tubed DAC that cost over $4000.00. The Topping was smoother, more detailed, not bright (like the other was), played bass beautifully and generally was easy to listen to while the other was

Think about it- if the digital is being done right you should not be hearing big differences between DACs but you do;

Interesting points:

The first asserts that there is no correlation between price and performance. It also suggests that if you are convinced to spend more than $125.00 a DAC (price of the Topping D30) then you are getting ripped off. (Oh, and thank you greatly for sharing this insight in order to help your fellow audiophiles who might not be as wealthy, experienced or knowledgeable, such is the reason why I follow this site).

The second makes me think about all those who have asserted digital superiority over analogue because of “accuracy”, that what was recorded is recovered absolutely intact. Well then, if the signal from the digital source is 100% accurately converted to analogue, why do you hear differences between DACs (all else being equal)?

 

[Rensselaer]

Jeff Dorgay of Tone Audio says "yes."

What do you think?

Someone mentioned something vaguely about how a great violinist might play a Strad. costing several millions is comparable to an audiophile spending similar on his system. Wrong.

The musician has developed the skill to bring out the best from that expensive instrument. Handing it to me to play would be just plain stupid, but I can get a close representation of the sound of that Strad. being played (by whichever great violinist I prefer) by putting together a great hi fi system to play recordings on.

To get the closest approximation of that live performance, I will need the best sounding system I can afford. I can’t afford much but fortunately I have some skills that I employed to make less expensive (but highly regarded) equipment sound their best.

Then there are those who do not have the skill to play a Strad. either, nor the skills to build/modify good hi fi equipment in such a way as to get the best from it. They have to buy all their equipment, and because they lack skills in this area they definitely want/need “plug and play” equipment. They are at the mercy of the high-end dealers.

For the wealthy, they can afford to take chances. They can pay the high-end dealers outrageous sums for the equipment. If it doesn’t sound so good (and they can perceive such), they simply sell it off at a loss and buy some more from someone else. As nothing yet built can fully convince one is listening to live, they might end up changing equipment many times over (I’m reminded of Camu’s The Myth of Sisyphus). No big deal, and some here actually get off more on the possession of “first tier” gear and “expensive cables” than the sound quality of the music played anyway.

For the not-so-wealthy (who can’t afford to make mistakes), there is the occasional pearl found reading these threads (like that $125.00 DAC that Atmosphere disclosed) that will likely give great pleasure at an affordable price and save them a bundle in not buying and selling too much to find.

So in answer to the question of the OP “is high end gear worth the money?”, to answer; to some it is.

 

[TonyW]

.

So in answer to the question of the OP “is high end gear worth the money?”, to answer; to some it is.

If the question was, is gold worth the money? Would your answer still be, to some it is?
In our global economy, value is determined by the market, not by one’s personal preferences.
If I choose to buy something or not, the value of that product does not change.

The point is hifi gear is worth it because a market exists for it.

Perhaps you would argue that you can walk into a store and bargain for a better price with the sales person. You walk out of the store with your purchase feeling good about making a great deal. Then you go online and see the average selling price for your purchase is exactly what you paid.

If you say, that product is not worth it to me. Again, that is a personal decision and does not affect market value. Now if no one is willing to purchase a particular product at a given price, then the market value must be adjusted. Turntables are a good example. By 2000 turntable values were at their lowest. Some great hifi turntables could be had for some bargain prices. These days turntables are more expensive than ever.