PLEASE, take this as a personal journey, and not as an attack. I sold some very expensive gear ($32K Burmester 911 MK3 and $18K GNSC Wadia S7i). I look at some of the SOTA prices and cringe. Not because I can't afford it (I can), but because I seriously wonder about the bang for the buck factor. I kept my $24K Concert Fidelity pre and $27K Venture speakers, but sold my amp amp and source, and went downtown and bout an Oppo 105 and an ATI amp. But, you know what? I felt a 10% decline for a 1000% savings. Do not get me wrong, I greatly appreciate the SOTA, but wallet is my new sphincter muscle. Why even start this thread? Because I see an alarming tread at CES and the new prices of gear, considering this economy. If I am wrong, sorry for your time.
Edit: This is in reference to "Ultra High End" article. Nothing more, nothing less.
There's a number of different things to consider here.
One is that some people tend to get very angry when you question their subjective findings.
Another is the strange working of "it's more expensive so it has to be better".
A third one could be that some people spend ridiculous amounts on say cables, but won't do anything about acoustics or even place speakers correct.
A fourth one is that most people don't have a clear goal in mind what the setup is supposed to do, so they make one up for themselves.
A fifth one is that if you mix and match gear with colorations and for some reason need to replace one, then you may end up unbalancing it all and will have to go the whole cycle of testing/buying new gear to find a new balance of liking.
A sixth one could be that people listen too much to 'authorities' like reviewers in magazines or sales people.
There are hugely good opportunities in getting extreme bang-for-the-buck setups if you pick the right gear and even more so if you can consider pre-owned gear.
I wonder how much someone would have to spend on brand new high-end gear to actually match a Denon AVR from say 2008 as preamp with a couple of Emotiva poweramps driving B&W Matrix 801sII or perhaps NHT 3.3:s? It won't be as pretty to look at as some hyper-designed ultra high-end gear, but the performance difference would most likely be irritatingly small.
Even if you'd pick a brand new pair of B&W 800 Diamonds at $24K, that's still "cheap" compared to other high-end stuff.
Another fun thing is that people use ridiculous words to describe differences. Had a falling out with a dealer a while back when he said the bigger amps of the two which he was a dealer of was 50% better than the other (high end gear, nothing cheap) and I wondered how he could put down his own gear like that and why he'd keep selling the cheaper one if it was that crappy... I mean, has it only half the frequency range, does it deliver music half tuned? Gear like that are close to the theoretical limit and the differences are minimal. Not matter how they're subjectively perceived, they're minimal. Sure, they could be something like 70% better then my alarmclock since it's mono and has a stumped frequency range and quite high distortion. But any real hifi gear will be quite close to the theoretical limit so we're talking a handful of percents difference at most so people might be spending $100k for a few tenths of a percent (and the bragging rights
).
