What lies beneath?

[DaveyF]

They probably got the schematic right but screwed up on the layout. That would reflect the educational mentality - work hard on grammar and neglect pronunciation

Looking at the insides of the CF, the layout looks pretty simple...open space primarily. One would think that copying this preamp would be pretty easy. BTW, a look at the inside of the CF amps reveal more of the same.
Yet, as I have said before, the line stage did sound pretty good, and certainly better than any Denon or Onkyo or Rotel line stage that I have ever heard.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

i own a Rotel Reciever that i use to power a pair of Dynaudio Audience 52SE bookshelf speakers for the Fujitsu 50" Plasma in my family room. i like what this combo does and enjoy the sound i get. this Rotel is not rated for very much power, maybe around 100 watts a channel, but it's rated for 5 channels at full power....unlike some other Recievers. the quality and respected reputation of the amps in the Rotel are well earned in the context of Recievers. when i bought it i felt that it was as good sounding as any reciever i had heard. maybe not as much brute power as some recievers, but in my context that is not needed. i have my full blown 7.1 Home Theatre in the room next to it with a 7 channel Lexicon amplifier, 2 powered subwoofers, a 10' wide 2:35 screen, etc. etc.

i've had the Rotel in my 2-channel system for temporary duty a few times. and in the 2-channel system it only needs to power the mid and tweeter and it's a 93db, 6 ohm load. in any case, the performance is not anywhere near what other 'big-boy' amps can do, let alone the darTZeel. the Rotel makes music, but the truth from the MM3's reveal the Rotel as congested and closed in. in the context of my acoustically accurate room and low noise signal path the Rotel is out of it's element.

it's not a trivial matter to build a high quality amplifier that aspires to approach the SOTA. if you look at design targets and expectations for mid-fi recievers it's wishful thinking to make the claim you are making. it would be like winning the lottery in odds for one to compete with SOTA.

I didn't make any claims.

Tim

 

[Mike Lavigne]

I didn't make any claims.

Tim

fair enough, you did not make any claims. i'll re-phrase.

you questioned whether opinions about Reciever performance verses high end amps were based on actual recent experiences inferring the gap percieved was too distant in time for reliable memory. you wrote;

Are you sure about what you percieve to be the gap between the two?

yes, i'm sure.

When was the last time you actually listened to high-end speakers being driven by a powerful midfi receiver?

18 months to 2 years ago in my current system.

 

[Soundminded]

I once worked for a subsidiary of a well known large pharmaceutical company that manufactured surgical needles. They hired a designer to draw up plans for the tool that sharpens the needles. What they got was an ultra precision $10,000 belt sander which for their purposes was no more valuable than one they could have bought at Sears for $69.95. The point is that there are few ways less efficient to design and build anything than the way most garage operations go about designing and building high end audio products. Not only that, they have neither the research facilities, skill sets, manufacturing facilities, personnel, or capital to run a first class operation. One example is a certain high end manufacturer, a tour of whose production facility you can find thorough various links on this site who manufactures everything in audio at what can only be called ludicrous prices. The tour of his facility shows it to be a disorganized junk pile. He's the first to admit his facility is inadequate. Small time operators don't have the wherewithall to produce first rate products. For example, they usually have no Quality Control department. That's a whole field all by itself. In that case the one you hear in the store may be nothing like the one you get new out of the box.

The hallmark which distinguishes "professional" gear from consumer gear is its ruggedness and reliability, not features and peformance. As an example, a Nikon F3 camera, a professional's tool and once the mainstay of the photographic industry is built around a machined casting. It's shutter is designed to fire reliably at least 150,000 times without failure. Every opening such as for the shutter release button and winder is gasketed to keep out dust and moisture. It's built to survive under extreme abuse in impossible conditions. By contrast, the Nikon 8008S, a later generation amateur camera is built around a composite body, has no gasketing, and its shutter is only designed for 50,000 reliable firings. Performance wise it runs rings around F3. A Crown or QSC amplifier or a Dukane for that matter is a professional piece of hardware people who supply and install this class of equipment for sports arenas, theaters, etc. know they can depend on. If and when there's a problem, service is responsive and excellent. By contrast consumer products are built to much lower construction standards and service can sometimes be maddening. They are often basically throw away units. If they fail, some of them are almost unrepairable and that includes things you wouldn't think are, like your computer. It's cheaper for the manufacturer to just replace them or at least the major components such as the motherboard than to invest labor fixing them. (I know first hand after a horrible experience with Hewlitt Packard, a company that evolved from one of the best into the worst I've ever dealt with for any product.)

Real scientific research at the basic level tries to find new ways to understand the universe, new undiscovered principles, or explanations for things observed. Applied research tries to use that knowledge to solve practical problems. Development and engineering defines a specific goal for solving a specific problem and then tests the result of a new design to see if that goal has been achieved. Extensive measurements, data, and a lot of analysis go into that process. What do high end consumer audio equipment manufacturers do to produce a new product? It seems to me they mostly flail around trying everything they can think of and when they find something they like better than what they had, voila, there's their new breakthrough product. Often it's a really dumb ideal like a $10,000 belt sander. For example, some use exotic materials and extreme construction techniques to build non resonant speaker enclosures that cost a fortune to manufacture. Wharfedale solved that engineering problem nearly 50 years ago by building a wooden box within a wooden box and filling the space in between with sand. Much cheaper and equally effective. That's why I won't pay dumb money for dumb ways to solve problems. Looking at high end audio gear, I think more real thought went into designing the packaging, the exterior appearance than engineering knowledge that want into designing what lies beneath the surface.

 

[JackD201]

Soundminded,

You've got fascinating credentials. Have you used all that experience to build something of your own design? If so, what? How does it sound?

 

[Randy Bessinger]

It seems to me that you kind of missed his point (IMHO). It takes a lot of really good people to do it right. He says DIY is generally not as good and I assume he would include himself, but maybe he can correct me.

 

[JackD201]

Not really. I think there is room in this world for artisanal goods and mass produced goods. He did practically put his CV on there so I was just asking if his experience extended to actually making stuff and not just shooting things down.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Not really. I think there is room in this world for artisanal goods and mass produced goods. He did practically put his CV on there so I was just asking if his experience extended to actually making stuff and not just shooting things down.

MHO, YMMV and all of that, but it seems to me that pointing to the advantages of depth of resources in R&D, design, manufacturing and quality control, and to the disadvantages of the lack thereof is not "shooting anything down." It seems reasonable, in fact. Obvious, even. I don't think it requires any of Soundminded's experience to understand. Can a great product be produced by a small company? Sure. Even breakthroughs can happen in isolation, but while logic would tell you that is the exception, not the rule high-end conventional wisdom seems to say that the opposite is true.

Consistent production and manufacture? Quality Control without depth of resources? That's a tough one, and probably a big part of the answer to why the high end is so high.

Tim

 

[JackD201]

You're a marketing guy Tim. You know what defines a segment as a niche. The High End is a set of niches. If you read closely his post is self contradictory. If everything is as easy as he makes it appear to be, what's the R&D for?

I buy according to my preferences, if I recall correctly, you have no problem with that only with those that don't admit their choices are done so accordingly.

The implication is, if I buy something that I like but the manufacturer doesn't have a gazillion dollars and a bunch of white coats behind it, it must suck. Tell me you believe that. Let's take the other side of the coin, does a big R&D department guarantee a better product? You still holding some IBM stock perhaps?

 

[Soundminded]

MHO, YMMV and all of that, but it seems to me that pointing to the advantages of depth of resources in R&D, design, manufacturing and quality control, and to the disadvantages of the lack thereof is not "shooting anything down." It seems reasonable, in fact. Obvious, even. I don't think it requires any of Soundminded's experience to understand. Can a great product be produced by a small company? Sure. Even breakthroughs can happen in isolation, but while logic would tell you that is the exception, not the rule high-end conventional wisdom seems to say that the opposite is true.

Consistent production and manufacture? Quality Control without depth of resources? That's a tough one, and probably a big part of the answer to why the high end is so high.

Tim

Breakthroughs do happen in isolation. They are the exception but they do happen. One problem is every little new twist on an old idea is someone's notion of a breakthrough. How many of them have you heard of in this industry. The junk piles are littered with them. But it takes more than a breakthrough to turn a true invention into a marketable product. Starting a company from scratch and turning it into a successful enterprise takes a lot more than technical savvy (which most of the current crop of high end products IMO don't demonstrate.) What was the last real breakthrough product in this industry? IMO the digital compact disc. It came to market 30 years ago. Everything else since has been nothing more than a tweak of what was there before.

Who had a breakthrough product. Edgar Villchur is a good example. Look at how many people he had to surround himself with just to get started. Allison, Kloss, and quite a number of others. On his own he'd likely have gotten nowhere.

Why does a loudspeaker system need to be installed in a precision box made from aluminum plates with parts milled on a digitally controlled milling machine? Why does a speaker system consisting of off the shelf focal and scanspeak drivers need to be reworked in a factory? Why can't I believe that if the OEM manufacturer was contracted to, he'd have built the drivers in the desired configuration more efficiently and at lower cost? Why don't I believe or trust anything these people say? Because when you get down to it and you listen to sound systems costing well over $100,000, they don't produce sounds that even come close to the sound of actual music, at least not any kind I'd listen to.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

You're a marketing guy Tim. You know what defines a segment as a niche. The High End is a set of niches. If you read closely his post is self contradictory. If everything is as easy as he makes it appear to be, what's the R&D for?

I buy according to my preferences, if I recall correctly, you have no problem with that only with those that don't admit their choices are done so accordingly.

The implication is, if I buy something that I like but the manufacturer doesn't have a gazillion dollars and a bunch of white coats behind it, it must suck. Tell me you believe that. Let's take the other side of the coin, does a big R&D department guarantee a better product? You still holding some IBM stock perhaps?

I think you're reading more into it than I am. No, don't believe everybody needs an army of white coats or that big R&D guarantees a better product. In fact, I believe than many (most?) audio products are built on R&D that's already done, in many cases assembled from components that had plenty of QC behind them and what matters most is the design, the use of those components. I need to believe that. It describes my system. My manufacturer had the amps and drivers built to their specs, but they are a small, almost cottage industry company, and one guy did the design. But I don't think understanding that there is an advantage in depth is shooting things down. It is acknowledging a reality. And I think the QC is a very real issue. Good QC is expensive. Good QC on a very small scale is much more expensive. I wouldn't be surprised to find that QC is the #2 cost of most "high-end," components, right after the box.

I'm still holding Apple...

Tim

 

[Bill Hart]

Breakthroughs do happen in isolation. They are the exception but they do happen. One problem is every little new twist on an old idea is someone's notion of a breakthrough. How many of them have you heard of in this industry. The junk piles are littered with them. But it takes more than a breakthrough to turn a true invention into a marketable product. Starting a company from scratch and turning it into a successful enterprise takes a lot more than technical savvy (which most of the current crop of high end products IMO don't demonstrate.) What was the last real breakthrough product in this industry? IMO the digital compact disc. It came to market 30 years ago. Everything else since has been nothing more than a tweak of what was there before.

Who had a breakthrough product. Edgar Villchur is a good example. Look at how many people he had to surround himself with just to get started. Allison, Kloss, and quite a number of others. On his own he'd likely have gotten nowhere.

Why does a loudspeaker system need to be installed in a precision box made from aluminum plates with parts milled on a digitally controlled milling machine? Why does a speaker system consisting of off the shelf focal and scanspeak drivers need to be reworked in a factory? Why can't I believe that if the OEM manufacturer was contracted to, he'd have built the drivers in the desired configuration more efficiently and at lower cost? Why don't I believe or trust anything these people say? Because when you get down to it and you listen to sound systems costing well over $100,000, they don't produce sounds that even come close to the sound of actual music, at least not any kind I'd listen to.

Soundminded: Again, I sorta agree with you. Take a look at another thread here, involving lateral tone arms. The guy who had the patent on one very basic design invented it and posted his original unit. He didn't need massive R&D, but a good brain, and I gather he is a trained physicist, so that helps.
I'm not sure where I come out on this- most of the big companies don't have much to offer. And reading between the lines, I understand your gripe (not that subtle) about over the top materials and design claims used to justify high prices for equipment that might just be brought in at a far lower cost. Part of it is bling, and part of it is marketing in a product niche where it makes sense to sell expensive stuff for the company's sake.
I think Jack was pushing you, simply because, after taking the industry to task- fairly enough for the most part- he wanted to know where you came out in terms of your own system. Tim, here, is a big advocate for sound engineering and avoiding the hype of 'audiophiilia.'
Me, I've assembled a pretty carefully chosen system to do what I'm after- i have specific ideas of the sound I'm trying to achieve, and while it is hardly perfect, I'm happier than ever. I only wish I could do it with cheap stuff, or build it myself. Unfortunately, I don't have the skill set. So, part of this, aside from busting your chops a little bit, is to say, "hey, given your obvious experience, where do you come out" on the best sound/value equation and what are you using to get there? Not a 'mine's bigger' attitude here, and knowing Jack, he's a pretty kind, inquisitive soul. Just saying, I'm as interested as anybody and am not afflicted with marketing-itis. I've got an open mind, as do a lot of folks here. Even Tim

 

[NorthStar]

I had a very pleasant listening session with a fellow a'phile of some of the Concert Fidelity gear. As some of you know, CF believes that the way to sonic nirvana lies in the philosophy of minimum parts and the shortest path between components. So, even prepared with this philosophy in mind, when we cracked the hood on the CF component, we were still taken aback by a) the lack of parts and b) what seemed to my fellow 'philes mind, as parts that were very cheap and out of place in a product in this price range.
Since I'm not particularly up on the cost of electronic parts in general, i couldn't comment, BUT it did leave me wondering how many high end pieces with high flying prices are constructed with readily available and inexpensive inner components. To add to this, I have heard rumor ( on several occasions and from well known sources) that the vaunted DCS gear is constructed in this manner
My fellow a'phile now believes that there could be a number of 'questionable' high priced components that should be exposed for what they really are.

So, to those with more knowledge on the technical area than I, does the quality and quantity of the inner workings make that much of a difference

-----Is there something new here that lies beneath and that we didn't already know?

DCS, it's made in Germany right?

 

[FrantzM]

Hi

I have been following this thread with interest and did in the meanwhile some introspection

. There are brands I like and have found myself wanting them to be different. It maybe the same for most of us: We need to justify our purchase. A high ticket item needs something to make it worthwhile: Exclusivity, unusual qualities, exceptional performance, etc .... It has reached a point where exclusivity has to be pushed and for many the thought of unusual performance takes holds and become reality. Aren't we audiophiles at that juncture? I am not about to declare that AVR are the equal of high end better stuffs. I don't think in Audio we are where watches are that is, where inexpensive items perform better than luxury ones. Any Casio watch performs the function of giving time better than any Rolex you want to think of. I don't think we are there but we may closer than we want to believe

We want our High End , high priced items to sound better, we are not about to relinquish the quality throne to the pedestrian pro components, even if they were superior in our applications. Our determination of how good the components are, is likely, I repeat , likely biased. Maybe some High End are superior but do you think that all High End amps are superior to any Lab Grupen, Crown, to the best QSC? I have my doubts...

As for the price of components inside our dear gears.. We also want to believe these to be expensive.. In reality they are often downright cheap... Some cabinets can be said to be not cheap again how much do they really cost? How much of this is really necessary? Do we need those thick faceplates? Those carved from billet of Aluminum ( I am thinking Ayre here by the way) or those shiny jewelry boxes?

Luxury markets need PR and the High End has its own , whether we admit it or not ... The PR is now working on components ... Back then the buzz was about Resistors.. Vishay was big in resistors... but now it is the capacitors that get the notoriety: Duleand seems to be the end-of-it for caps .. they are purported to have the best sound... whatever that means and their mere presence on a circuit board elevates the creds of a component .. It goes from for example "new" to "have to be taken seriously" .. Of course inductors are made of specially treated wire .. I don't know any particular objective measurements that make those particular components any special and frankly do they represent a size percentage of the component price? Do we think that there is $10 K of components part in a 100K amp? Again not sure .. As for cables it is a dream for any entrepreneur .. finding a way to have returns of more than a 1000% .... I am still waiting to be convinced about parts cost...

 

[microstrip]

(...) For example, some use exotic materials and extreme construction techniques to build non resonant speaker enclosures that cost a fortune to manufacture. Wharfedale solved that engineering problem nearly 50 years ago by building a wooden box within a wooden box and filling the space in between with sand. Much cheaper and equally effective. That's why I won't pay dumb money for dumb ways to solve problems. Looking at high end audio gear, I think more real thought went into designing the packaging, the exterior appearance than engineering knowledge that want into designing what lies beneath the surface.

I remember reading a paper in the 80's or early 90's about the use of sand damping stating the opposite - that it is not adequate for speaker panel damping. The people who carried the study used accelerometers to study the vibrations and found than this type of damping was very irregular in some frequencies. They presented data on decay rates versus frequency to prove their points and also analyzed several elastometer and sandwiches of several materials that could self damp themselves. I think it was a printed article from a speaker manufacturer, unhappily I do not remember whom.

The sand damping technique was also used by people building big subwoofers for active horn systems in the 70s - Onken, and even the Mark Levinson HQD system used subwoofers with sand damped boxes. Curiously they found that the sound of the subs depended a lot on the granularity and type of sand.

Sound reproduction is not only an engineering problem. It is a very complex mix of subjects, most of them based in psychoacoustic research, and ignoring any of them can compromise a product. Besides, one of the first thinks an engineer must learn is that engineers do not design perfect products. This is particularly true in sound reproduction.

IMHO, we can not bring examples taken from the pharmaceutical, electronics or military industry and expect them to map directly in high-end audio. Surely high-end can gain using good engineering practices, but we must be careful about not throwing the baby out with the bath water when analyzing it.

 

[microstrip]

-----I

DCS, it's made in Germany right?

I think they are fully designed and manufactured in the UK.
http://www.dcsltd.co.uk/

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Hi

I have been following this thread with interest and did in the meanwhile some introspection

. There are brands I like and have found myself wanting them to be different. It maybe the same for most of us: We need to justify our purchase. A high ticket item needs something to make it worthwhile: Exclusivity, unusual qualities, exceptional performance, etc .... It has reached a point where exclusivity has to be pushed and for many the thought of unusual performance takes holds and become reality. Aren't we audiophiles at that juncture? I am not about to declare that AVR are the equal of high end better stuffs. I don't think in Audio we are where watches are that is, where inexpensive items perform better than luxury ones. Any Casio watch performs the function of giving time better than any Rolex you want to think of. I don't think we are there but we may closer than we want to believe

We want our High End , high priced items to sound better, we are not about to relinquish the quality throne to the pedestrian pro components, even if they were superior in our applications. Our determination of how good the components are, is likely, I repeat , likely biased. Maybe some High End are superior but do you think that all High End amps are superior to any Lab Grupen, Crown, to the best QSC? I have my doubts...

As for the price of components inside our dear gears.. We also want to believe these to be expensive.. In reality they are often downright cheap... Some cabinets can be said to be not cheap again how much do they really cost? How much of this is really necessary? Do we need those thick faceplates? Those carved from billet of Aluminum ( I am thinking Ayre here by the way) or those shiny jewelry boxes?

Luxury markets need PR and the High End has its own , whether we admit it or not ... The PR is now working on components ... Back then the buzz was about Resistors.. Vishay was big in resistors... but now it is the capacitors that get the notoriety: Duleand seems to be the end-of-it for caps .. they are purported to have the best sound... whatever that means and their mere presence on a circuit board elevates the creds of a component .. It goes from for example "new" to "have to be taken seriously" .. Of course inductors are made of specially treated wire .. I don't know any particular objective measurements that make those particular components any special and frankly do they represent a size percentage of the component price? Do we think that there is $10 K of components part in a 100K amp? Again not sure .. As for cables it is a dream for any entrepreneur .. finding a way to have returns of more than a 1000% .... I am still waiting to be convinced about parts cost...

This is all I was trying to say with the AV receiver remark. The comparison of pro to "high-end?" I think that could be some serious competition. I'd love to compare a class D Crown to its sister from the Mark Levinson line. I'd love to compare QSC and Yamaha pro amps to respected high-end stuff, in the same system.

Tim

 

[FrantzM]

FrantzM,

Your interesting introspection suffers from mixing pseudo high-end and true high-end in the same analysis, some thing that does not allow any positive advances in understanding the item under debate.

IMHO, using the poor cases to create doubts or feed doubts is good to create an environment propitious to denigrate something, not to understand or debate it.

And yes, Burmester equipment uses common very good quality inexpensive electronic parts, but selects and individually tests some of them according to their "secret" and stringent criteria.

microstrip

Care to tell me the differences "true" between High End and "pseudo" High End ... It will also be interesting to name a few brands you consider high end and some that are: "Pseudo"...
Must say you have a gift to distor people post. I made no mention of any particular case in my post yet you wrote:

IMHO, using the poor cases to create doubts or feed doubts is good to create an environment propitious to denigrate something, not to understand or debate it.

Where do you see that in my post? What poor cases have I mentioned or posted about? What have I denigrated? Please, if that is not asking too much

 

[NorthStar]

I think they are fully designed and manufactured in the UK.
http://www.dcsltd.co.uk/

-----Yes, I should have known DAC.

* The dCS Ring DAC; from Cambridge in the UK. ...Some German parts perhaps.

 

[mep]

I think some good points have been made on both sides of this argument and the truth lies somewhere in the middle like it usually does. Having a large company that is ISO certified to the latest ISO standards doesn’t guarantee you a damn thing other than the fact that the company has procedures they can produce when the ISO auditors who are paid to perform the ISO certification audits come around and ask to see them. It doesn’t mean the procedures are worth a damn and it doesn’t mean that people read and follow them. It just means that you have them.

If you have a large company with lots of white coats and Q.C. people, it also means you have lots of overhead that is added to the cost of your products. Having Q.C. people doesn’t guarantee quality products anymore than being ISO certified guarantees anything beyond having procedures in place. I have been to companies that have lost their ‘recipe’ to build products in order to find out what has changed and I have been appalled at some of things I have found in ISO certified companies with a large engineering and Q.C. staff.

Out of all the areas of expertise that you can branch off into as an electrical engineer, one of the easiest areas has to be designing tube audio electronics. It’s just not hard in comparison to other electrical engineering endeavors. Audio engineering has been well understood for over 60 years. Designing components to be flat across the audio band (or even well outside it) is a piece of cake assuming you are designing with SS. Tube amps will never be flat across the audio band because of output transformer limitations. ‘New’ tube amps may have built in hour meters (and that’s a cool feature) and some may have housekeeping circuitry that monitors output tube health, sets bias, and shuts down the amp if it senses a tube is going south, but the basic amplification circuits themselves haven’t changed that much since tube amps first hit the market. The only exceptions I can think of are better quality parts, SS rectifiers, and big capacitor banks in the power supplies that SS rectifiers can push. Those changes are responsible for today’s tube amps having much better bass response than their early predecessors. The fact that we have better quality resistors and much higher quality film coupling caps have also improved the sound of today’s tube amps. But, one could go back and build an early Williamson tube amp circuit and beef up the power supply and use high quality resistors and film caps and have a thoroughly modern sounding tube amp I do believe. To my knowledge, no one has come up with a new type of phase splitter and/or driver circuit that wasn’t invented in the 1940s. I don’t see where tube output stages have changed much either. You are either single-ended Class A, push-pull Class A, or push-pull Class A/B-all of which have been around forever. The biggest difference with output stages that I see is how much feedback is applied with today’s amps.

With regards to the optimization of a company in order to have the ‘correct’ ratio of design engineers, technicians, assembly workers, buyers, technical writers, marketing and sales people, etc., that is what separates the good companies from those that struggle. You can’t have a lone genius designing and building audio gear and have any type of efficiency of scale and any type of a production delivery schedule that would keep you in business.

Now, getting to the point about pro-audio electronics vice high-end electronics is another bag of worms. The argument is being made that pro-audio companies have engineers and large Q.C. staffs that build rugged, reliable, and cheap audio gear that will match or beat high-end audio gear. Of course now the argument has shifted to strictly SS because pro-audio isn’t involved in tube gear (outside of possibly tube microphone preamps).

I can’t tell you whether or not if the high-end SS circuits being designed by today’s best SS engineers are better quality circuits than what is being turned out by the pro-audio companies-although I suspect they are. Companies like Ayre have figured out ways to build SS circuits that are exceptionally linear and require no feedback. I think we are pretty confident that the parts used to build SS high-end gear are more expensive and arguably sound better than the parts used to build relatively mass-market pro-audio gear. I think we can expect the parts used in high-end gear are better matched in terms of tolerances than pro-audio gear. When you build to a price point, compromises have to be made. We can all argue if those compromises are audible. I think the bottom line here is that if you are strictly buying according to specifications and you think specs are the be-all end-all of audio electronics, pro-audio gear is probably real tough to beat at each of their respective price points. Whether or not the pro-audio gear would actually beat out the high-end gear with regards to sound quality in a double-blind, triple-blind, poke your eyes out shoot-out is open for conjecture.