The Fremer lays an ostrich egg thread
- Thread starter DaveyF
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The ML was indeed on the cover of TAS, but it is NOT in their 2013 Buyer's Guide edition, which probably means they weren't THAT impressed, or Harmann didn't buy enough ads...
alexandre
alexandre
And the review means Fremer doesn't like duck. That's all. ..Roast duck done right can be very good .....
You are so bad Mark when you try to pretend to be hiding your feelings/jabs.
Amir-I either wear my emotions on my sleeve or I try and hide them, it has to be one or the other. The reason I'm "bad" at trying to hide my emotions is because I don't.
You have to remember that the bulk of the high-end market ($$$) is made up of people who never read these reviews or set foot in this forum. The last set of Mark Levinson amps we sold went into a $300,000 theater we custom designed. The customer is not an audiophile but gave us one edict: it had to be the best theater we could build for him in his space. The people who come to us do so because they don't have the time or inclination to go and research such things. So as far as what my company "sells," such things are not a factor or else we would have shipped hundreds of them when the glowing review from RH came out
Amir-Are you lumping the high-end home theater crowd in with the high-end two channel crowd? I would be very surprised if the bulk of people who buy high-end gear destined for a two channel system don't read reviews in TAS, SP, or other online 'zines.
In the Harman tests that we talked about a few months, major audiophile brands like B&W and ML speakers did poorly. By your logic members here should be full of shame and be looking to dump their speakers in a river.
No Amir, they did the opposite which is what I stated about getting "prickly." How many pages are on the WBF threads debating the merits of the Harman testing? There were lots of pages filled with emotion. Since my speakers didn't get trashed by Harman, I didn't have an emotional dog in that fight. Same for the ML amp. I have never owned any ML gear, I have never heard any ML gear, and therefore I can't make any claims for how their gear sounds and nor have I. I clearly don't have any emotional involvment/attachment to ML. The only thing I said was the square waves reproduced by the ML looked "funky" and they do. This whole thread started because Fremer reviewed the ML amp and didn't like it and JA wasn't smitten with it either. Some people took exception to that and I think Mosin summed up the position that Fremer finds himself in quite nicely.
So getting back to your original statement about me, I'm a little confused on what emotions you thought I was trying to "hide." I have zero emotional attachment with any gear produced by ML and therefore I didn't have any emotions to bring to this thread-just comments on the review and its subsequent fallout.
The give away was the word "sell." Had you not put that there it would have had some prayer of looking like a normal comment rather than a personal jab. As it is it looked like a personal comment toward me. Please give us a bit more credit in seeing through such things.
No, that was just an example of how wealthy people buy things as opposed to enthusiasts. The ML amps we sold prior to that example was a Chinese gentleman who had stopped by on his way back to China. He was picking up his airplanes from Boeing for his airline! He walked in, listened for just a few short minutes and bought them. Ask Gary if he sells his Genesis speakers to you all or wealthy individuals. He will tell you it is the latter. The general market for $50,000 amp cannot be the enthusiasts or you would go out of business in a day! Remember, we get offered to carry a lot of lines. The high-end products are all "luxury" offerings and that is main focus of the manufacturer in trying to convince us to carry them. When I criticize their design, etc., they often give me a strange look saying their customers as a whole will buy the product based on their marketing and the high-end look of our showroom and staff and that is it. Everything else is unimportant including catering to you all!
People buying luxuries pick someone trusted and buy what they recommend (either their personal agent or their dealer). They don't have the time or inclination to read stuff you and I do. This is the reason "bling" matters so much. Packaging, marketing, etc. is everything. It has to exude "expensive." One of the valid criticism I have heard against Mark Levinson is on this front: that it looks like expensive audio equipment. What is that you say? That it has to look that way? Nope. It has to look like jewelry. Something that would look like a painting hanging on the wall or expensive vase. Something the wife would also say would look nice in the room.
I didn't say you had emotional attachment to ML. But you do seem to have some reason to be using this review as a weapon to antagonize. And are trying to couch such attempts in debating terms. Just come out and say it so at least we don't have deal with he obfuscation.
The give away was the word "sell." Had you not put that there it would have had some prayer of looking like a normal comment rather than a personal jab. As it is it looked like a personal comment toward me. Please give us a bit more credit in seeing through such things.
No, that was just an example of how wealthy people buy things as opposed to enthusiasts. The ML amps we sold prior to that example was a Chinese gentleman who had stopped by on his way back to China. He was picking up his airplanes from Boeing for his airline! He walked in, listened for just a few short minutes and bought them. Ask Gary if he sells his Genesis speakers to you all or wealthy individuals. He will tell you it is the latter. The general market for $50,000 amp cannot be the enthusiasts or you would go out of business in a day! Remember, we get offered to carry a lot of lines. The high-end products are all "luxury" offerings and that is main focus of the manufacturer in trying to convince us to carry them. When I criticize their design, etc., they often give me a strange look saying their customers as a whole will buy the product based on their marketing and the high-end look of our showroom and staff and that is it. Everything else is unimportant including catering to you all!
People buying luxuries pick someone trusted and buy what they recommend (either their personal agent or their dealer). They don't have the time or inclination to read stuff you and I do. This is the reason "bling" matters so much. Packaging, marketing, etc. is everything. It has to exude "expensive." One of the valid criticism I have heard against Mark Levinson is on this front: that it looks like expensive audio equipment. What is that you say? That it has to look that way? Nope. It has to look like jewelry. Something that would look like a painting hanging on the wall or expensive vase. Something the wife would also say would look nice in the room.
I didn't say you had emotional attachment to ML. But you do seem to have some reason to be using this review as a weapon to antagonize. And are trying to couch such attempts in debating terms. Just come out and say it so at least we don't have deal with he obfuscation.
"When I criticize their design, etc., they often give me a strange look saying their customers as a whole will buy the product based on their marketing and the high-end look of our showroom and staff and that is it. Everything else is unimportant including catering to you all!"
It seems to me that is what this industry has been reduced to. That is why for me it is impossible to take it seriously. Real technical advancement just isn't there, at least not where I can see it. I'm just rubbernecking at this accident on the highway of commercialism laughing at the reviewers and "enthusiasts" who argue the relative merits of one $150,000 turntable against another. As engieering efforts to me this so called "high end" equipment looks stupid. It's like those old 1960s chrome plated floatig monster sized American cars with big tail fins that fishtailed all over the highway, couldn't get out of their own way, and were burned out by 40,000 miles. In short, great looking junk.
I’m honestly not trying to antagonize anyone Amir-including you. I included the word “seller” before because if you own or sell ML gear and an unfavorable review appears in print of the very gear you own or sell, it is just human nature to become defensive. I don’t own or sell ML gear and therefore have zero emotional attachment to ML gear. This whole thread was started over Fremer’s comments. Me thinks you are being overly sensitive. Again, I have no agenda (hidden or otherwise) with ML gear. I just merely commented on the review and the comments that JA made about the amp under question.
I think the issue here is that he didn't find fault with any random piece of equipment. He found fault with something that when given the explanation of how it works, would prompt him to say it is not good. The notion that squarewaves can produce analog sound is just as foreign to some as it is in reproduction of music using digital sampling. As I noted earlier, even I had to be careful to not fall victim to do this when I did my set of comparisons.
If had found problems with say, Mark's amplifier, then he would be vindicated as far as writing something bad.
i think it's a big stretch to try and rationalize Fremer's perspective on this amp as a case of prior bias based on the technology....i.e.....all digital amps=bad. OTOH when you have yet to hear a digital amp that moves your soul then you cannot ignore that fact either. but that is not Fremer's fault, it's a fault of thinking a digital amp can do mids and highs as good as the best of conventional topography amps. it's just wrong to go down that road.
i owned a ICE based digital amp (a clone of the Rowland 3000) and it was fairly nice.....for it's $2000 list price for -2- 500 watt monoblocks. however; compared to my darTZeel 100 watt NHB-108 forget about it (only my subjective opinion, of course).
personally; i've heard the No. 53 three or four times and it reminded me of the digital amps i owned. i heard nothing to get enough of my attention to really investigate it more. and it's possible if i did hear it in my system that i would like it....but highly unlikely based on what i heard.
unlike MEP i have owned lots of ML gear.....#36, #36s, #38s, #37, #32, #332, #33H, #33. i liked them alot. i see the No. 53 like the Rowland 3000, not aimed at the 2-channel high end enthusiast, more a bling-bling amp for a little different type customer. they were foolish to send that to Fremer in the first place. what did they expect?
(...) You have to remember that the bulk of the high-end market ($$$) is made up of people who never read these reviews or set foot in this forum. The last set of Mark Levinson amps we sold went into a $300,000 theater we custom designed. The customer is not an audiophile but gave us one edict: it had to be the best theater we could build for him in his space. The people who come to us do so because they don't have the time or inclination to go and research such things. So as far as what my company "sells," such things are not a factor or else we would have shipped hundreds of them when the glowing review from RH came out
Amir,
I will try to ignore the unfriendly comment in the two last lines of your post, happily Harman has not tested the Aida's and the ML's left long ago ...
People know that my perspective about high-end is generous (some people have commented that it is too generous). Although I have not listened to the ML53 I have no doubt that most probably it is a great amplifier. Harman has an historical of fantastic great products and a technological capability, and the internal procedures and controls in such organization would screen any poorly designed or bad sounding amplifier.
However hi-end customers want and judge exceptionally sounding systems, not isolated pieces of equipment. And here Harman seems to ignore this rule lunching an ultra expensive amplifier as a soloist, ignoring that parts in a system must have synergy. And IMHO the comments of the reviews that were referred show that the ML53 was inserted in the inappropriate systems and not properly matched. Yes, I know you are just the guy in the chain who takes care of this aspect and this would not happen in your company.
Perhaps it is cynical that the same thing that Harman did in their speaker tests to other brands of speakers from competitors - testing them in conditions not controlled by the manufacturers - is happening to their top amplifier.
Just to end, I would love to listen to a ML53 with Transparent OPUS MM2 cables. Believe, one of the best systems I listened to was an all Mark Levinson top system, wire with the top Transparent cabling and using Martin Logan Monoliths. If some day I manage to visit your listening room you have to get them wired with the OPUS ...
when i had my ICE based digital amps i also owned Transparent Opus MM2 speaker cables and MM2 RCA's. the rest of my system was my darTZeel preamp and PD digital, Rockport TT.
the digital amp substituted for the darTZeel amp.
among ss preamps the dart is detailed but not harsh, so it ought to be a favorable match with a digital amp.
the Opus MM2 is certainly a more forgiving cable than some, and adds refinement and ease. but the fundamental sterility of the top end of the digital amp still came thru with extended listening compared to the naturalness and refinement of the darTZeel. how much better would the No.53 be? enough better? i don't know.
i doubt the Opus MM2 would go enough down the 'warmth' road to be the synergistic partner for a digital amp. i'd say Cardas or Siltech would be more where you might find some balance.
i'm on record of avoiding trying to balance colored gear to work. i believe in staying neutral the whole way. so i'm not saying i'd go that way myself. but that is how i see finding the center. if you already like the No.53, i would agree you'd like it more with Opus MM2 as it would add things that can use adding. the Opus MM2 is not cheap. speaker cables and interconnects would cost at least as much as the amp.
It would have been interesting to eavesdrop on a hypothetical meeting between Crown's amplifier designers and ML's after Sidney acquired ML for Harman Industries. I'll bet it would have been quite a battle between them to answer the question why does an ML amplfier cost five to twenty times as much as a Crown amplifier that performs pretty much the same, at least on a lab test bench. If I needed a high powered amplifier, you can be sure I'd go for the Crown or a competitor's like QSC before I'd spring for ML unless someone gave me money to burn....or my doctor told me I have less than a week to live
The DC300 (which I also owned before the huge step up the the PL 400) measured near perfectly; why should today's Crown amps sound (or measure) any different?
Hate to say this, BUT there is a LONG line of gear in the past that measured perfectly and sounded like ****
. Take most of the Japanese receiver's from the 70's...measured near perfect and Look at the more recent example of the Halcro amps, incredible measurements and the sound....
Best measurements are the one's that your ears give you. Just IMHO.
It would have been interesting to eavesdrop on a hypothetical meeting between Crown's amplifier designers and ML's after Sidney acquired ML for Harman Industries. I'll bet it would have been quite a battle between them to answer the question why does an ML amplfier cost five to twenty times as much as a Crown amplifier that performs pretty much the same, at least on a lab test bench. If I needed a high powered amplifier, you can be sure I'd go for the Crown or a competitor's like QSC before I'd spring for ML unless someone gave me money to burn....or my doctor told me I have less than a week to live
Can't agree , sonically crown and qsc stuff sounds like garbage vs ML
Hate to say this, BUT there is a LONG line of gear in the past that measured perfectly and sounded like ****
Look at the more recent example of the Halcro amps, incredible measurements and the sound....
Best measurements are the one's that your ears give you. Just IMHO.
Have you heard any Halcro stuff ....?