The State of High End Audio
- Thread starter FrantzM
- Start date
umm...
WBF is over reaction central
good luck to any hifi box pusher going after DaveC... you going to need ityou will quickly find your self out gunned, hope your wearing your running shoes as your going to need them.
blizzards getting a hard time, well if you kick the hornets nest you better be prepared to get stung mike. thats not to say the nest dont need kicking mind you
both these guys are trying to bring great sounds to people at a respectable price point, they are the antidote not the sickness
as for the state of hi end i think asia and easten europe/russia are to blame by the looks of it...
Well it's a good thing I'm wearing a bee suit
You need a Sherman tank I reckon
Keith,
I see the market expanding in both directions. The availability of speakers both high and low appears to be greater than before. I see posts saying that the parts total only add up to a very small portion of the price, which may be true but I also hear that some people won't consider anything if the price is too low!! I hear the same thing from some people in the industry on occasion. It's an interesting line to tread.
The speed of digital development renders this a little moot but I am also a bit wary of products that look like they are very high parts cost relative to their price. Too many examples of people trying to make a go of it and essentially valuing their time at zero, and selling based on parts costs alone, not being around after a few years.
Beau
I see the market expanding in both directions. The availability of speakers both high and low appears to be greater than before. I see posts saying that the parts total only add up to a very small portion of the price, which may be true but I also hear that some people won't consider anything if the price is too low!! I hear the same thing from some people in the industry on occasion. It's an interesting line to tread.
The speed of digital development renders this a little moot but I am also a bit wary of products that look like they are very high parts cost relative to their price. Too many examples of people trying to make a go of it and essentially valuing their time at zero, and selling based on parts costs alone, not being around after a few years.
Beau
Absolutely. The largest part of the super high end is surely industrial design. I was recently at a factory making a $.25M pair of amplifiers, the effort going into machining and casework is amazing...
I have mixed feeling about it, on one hand it should be about sound more than male jewelery, but it's nice that people are buying uber-gear as it allows designers to design with no regard to budget. The only issue is designers are being forced into it, they are encouraged and required to make such gear by the market. So it seems designers are making large, ornate and expensive gear just for the sake of making it more expensive.
Also, it seems people are losing respect for reasonably priced gear and think money = performance and you can't get a SOTA speaker for under $100k... this isn't good.
Then you can understand the serious issues of world history and see how the introduction of a new DAC chip is just not the same thing...
Regards
Bob
Just to be clear:
Blizzard said he'd stop by SoCal and bring his stuff, and I politely accepted, so he could bring his stuff, and I'll give it a fair shake. I then tell him to, basically, "shut up and get to work", and show the fruits of his labour. And two posts later, I'm the evil dealer, that can't be trusted with an honest opinion.
DaveyF, thanks for the kind words, but it seems me (and dealers in general) are not welcome in WBF anymore, when a person associated with the forum is allowed to slander, without any consequences.
For the folks that do not know me well: before I became a dealer, I've spent enough of my own money on several different brands, including many that I don't represent, but I have a lot of respect. I've bought several Sonus faber, Vienna, Focal, Dynaudio, a Magico Q7, and I currently own a Magico Q3, and I've tried more cable brands that I care to remember right now. This is called *experience*, something that's utterly lacking for our soldering iron cowboys.
The only difference between dealer-me and not-dealer-me is that now people don't have to take my word for it. They can ask me to audition the gear that I like, and if they don't like it, it's par for the course!
Thanks,
Alex
Blizzard said he'd stop by SoCal and bring his stuff, and I politely accepted, so he could bring his stuff, and I'll give it a fair shake. I then tell him to, basically, "shut up and get to work", and show the fruits of his labour. And two posts later, I'm the evil dealer, that can't be trusted with an honest opinion.
DaveyF, thanks for the kind words, but it seems me (and dealers in general) are not welcome in WBF anymore, when a person associated with the forum is allowed to slander, without any consequences.
For the folks that do not know me well: before I became a dealer, I've spent enough of my own money on several different brands, including many that I don't represent, but I have a lot of respect. I've bought several Sonus faber, Vienna, Focal, Dynaudio, a Magico Q7, and I currently own a Magico Q3, and I've tried more cable brands that I care to remember right now. This is called *experience*, something that's utterly lacking for our soldering iron cowboys.
The only difference between dealer-me and not-dealer-me is that now people don't have to take my word for it. They can ask me to audition the gear that I like, and if they don't like it, it's par for the course!
Thanks,
Alex
It is sad that decent honest people have to be bullied and forced out by an audio amateur carnival huckster.
Maybe I would be as serious about it when I was 17. But we are way past that now. Then or now I would never have held Dylan's ideas as holy Scriptures that could never be used in a less serious context without it being sacrilege.
I believe that you are being naive and immature on the matter.
Either does Bob Dylan. He think's everyone's was nut's for worshipping him. He was simply just speaking his mind.
Any yes, Bob has a very strange, creepy obsession with me. Just look at his posts. Not 1 that's not about me in over 100. He's an disgruntled REGEN fanboy who just can't let things go.
Nothing do do with him per se or his music. It it that some people should not use that time IMO for there foolery. Just not the same thing... Sorry...
Keep spouting garbage and bulling people. Just acts of a desperate attention starved individual...
No, remember, I said "by any objective metric." Sound is subjective. You can certainly prefer the sound of the average turntables at the dawn of consumer digital. Or you can prefer the sound of the mastering for vinyl of that era. Or both. Or you can not know which it is you're preferring. It's when folks get into believing that the table is quieter, has greater dynamic range, more accurate frequency response, better channel separation, better speed stability, that it becomes a bit delusional. This is what marginalized affordable high fidelity and replaced it with "high end." The stuff we preferred wasn't "better." So the hobby and the industry re-defined better.
Back to the music lovers, "most people" prefer to buy and live with stuff that is even more affordable than "mid fi" stereo. Audiophiles are exotic hardware aficionados of the music lover crowd. If that's the real test, even modest stereo systems have lost out.
We're going to have to agree to disagree as I see no evidence of this. On the contrary, I see audiophiles looking down their noses at SOTA performance when it is reasonably priced. The Benchmark DAC is a perfect example. Some of the Emotiva gear, which even makes the Benchmark look expensive, also comes to mine.
Both of them?
Not sure there's enough time. People hear what they believe in, what they expect to hear. One man's clarity is another's strident. One's "timbral weight" is the next's colored midrange. That's the point. The hobbyist's obsession with minutiae drives the "high end," not fidelity. The dead giveaway is that the gear itself is a "hobby," not a collection of tools for reproducing recording. Nothing wrong with that, but there it is.
Tim
So it's the time and not Dylan we should hold so Holy? I think that is even more misplaced in this context.
No, remember, I said "by any objective metric." Sound is subjective. You can certainly prefer the sound of the average turntables at the dawn of consumer digital. Or you can prefer the sound of the mastering for vinyl of that era. Or both. Or you can not know which it is you're preferring. It's when folks get into believing that the table is quieter, has greater dynamic range, more accurate frequency response, better channel separation, better speed stability, that it becomes a bit delusional. This is what marginalized affordable high fidelity and replaced it with "high end." The stuff we preferred wasn't "better." So the hobby and the industry re-defined better.
Back to the music lovers, "most people" prefer to buy and live with stuff that is even more affordable than "mid fi" stereo. Audiophiles are exotic hardware aficionados of the music lover crowd. If that's the real test, even modest stereo systems have lost out.
We're going to have to agree to disagree as I see no evidence of this. On the contrary, I see audiophiles looking down their noses at SOTA performance when it is reasonably priced. The Benchmark DAC is a perfect example. Some of the Emotiva gear, which even makes the Benchmark look expensive, also comes to mine.
Both of them?
Not sure there's enough time. People hear what they believe in, what they expect to hear. One man's clarity is another's strident. One's "timbral weight" is the next's colored midrange. That's the point. The hobbyist's obsession with minutiae drives the "high end," not fidelity. The dead giveaway is that the gear itself is a "hobby," not a collection of tools for reproducing recording. Nothing wrong with that, but there it is.
Tim
I agree with you Tim. That is why niches and approaches multiply rather than using the technology available to converge on the genuine Fidelity.
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