Thanks for the kind words Ceasar. What I try to do as a reviewer, among other things, is convey the things I always wanted to see as a reader of reviews.
Who is the best reviewer?
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Thanks for the kind words Ceasar. What I try to do as a reviewer, among other things, is convey the things I always wanted to see as a reader of reviews.
Caesar
I share this sentiment. Reviewing has come to this. The more expensive the better and with no end in sight ... What I can't fully understand is the reaction of the audiophile public. It seems that they may well be the most willing-to-be-gouged market segment ... There is no limit to the prices they are willing to accept ... $30,000 cables .. Cables??? are old-news ... $50,000 amps are slowly emerging as middle-priced and there are more $100k amps than I care to count and don''t even get into speakers where $300,000 !! is trivial ..The manufacturers simply have to prod them and they will fill the blanks and of course buy the ever more expensive products ... Systematically ..It is so rare to hear a reviewer reverting to a less expensive product (not necessarily the same brand) and finding it better ...
Total agreement with the above; pricing has become stupid, and apparently random. This is nothing new of course. I address this a bit in the aforementioned review by way of appreciating the value and sanity of the Bel Canto components. And btw, I'm not a cable guy. Usually windup returning expensive foisted on me because I don't hear anything worthwhile. Have addressed this in some past reviews.
This kind of pricing nonsense from some manufacturers and perpetuated by some dealers has played a role in turning people off from hifi buying. Music lovers who might want to get something good but are not into equipment often feel like they have no idea what value is in the audio market so often they just don't bother.
This kind of pricing nonsense from some manufacturers and perpetuated by some dealers has played a role in turning people off from hifi buying. Music lovers who might want to get something good but are not into equipment often feel like they have no idea what value is in the audio market so often they just don't bother.
Why is it that audiophiles whine about the prices of high-end equipment, yet they can appreciate and want to "own" a Ferrari (or insert your fave dream muscle car) and drive a Ford? You never hear anyone complain that Ferraris cost too much? Not so for audiophiles.
I'm not a car guy, but I can see the value in an Audi over a Honda for ex. The price doesn't seem entirely random and can't be, because there is too much competition that is easily compared. The size and nature of the market makes the pricing more rational from a value standpoint.
There are obviously a ton of audio manufacturers that provide real value w/o nonsense. But moreso than in most industries, partly because of the relative inability to compare directly and the limited demand, partly because many don't trust their ears (correctly or not); there are many manufacturers/products that just seem silly with their pricing.
Myles, this is a good point. But we have a real disconnect because in many cases the value that you are implying the Ferrari has over the Ford is not easily demonstrable to the end consumer in an audio product as it is in a car. Over a 24 hour period I can go out and drive the Ferrari, the Lamborghini, the Audi R8, and Porsche 911 Turbo. Not so with audio auditioning. The show reports are often tricky to make sense of. And the reviews are pathetic more often than not: Sircom reviewing the Dartzeel monoblocks, Harley reviewing the Vandersteen Model 7, Fremer reviewing dCS Scarlatti, Kessler reviewing amps from Dan D'Agostino.... They rarely compare the products in a similar price category, which is helpful to identify relative strengths and weaknesses, as I stated above. But, even more importantly, they frequently fail to concretely explain how the Ferrari priced products are better than Ford priced products and how the product performs along the diminishing returns scale. Something like this may entail trying the component with several systems, but is rarely done. Instead, most of the arguments we hear are trust me, I am the big shot reviewer, I have been at it for 30+ years, I got the golden ears, so whatever I say is gospel.
As I said before, for the vast majority of people, audio is a fantasy, It's kind of like going to a car show and sitting in a Porsche for 3 minutes once a year or picking up the Sports Illustrated Bikini edition. But for the few folks who are serious, and who may be giving up several years of vacations to get the audio component of their imagined dreams, there is not much substance in most of the reviews.
Frantz, yes I will take that $30K BMW over the $30K speaker cable! But I recently read a review of expensive Transparent cables in a British magazine (Sircom's rag?) that compared upgrading the cable to upgrading the source component from "good" to "state of the art"... But this has been covered in many a thread.
One of the things about pricing is that in reality a lot of people do associate high price with high quality, as you well know. But beyond this obvious point, many manufacturers create ultra expensive products - not necessarily sell them to a few "rich folks" (and they, of course, sell a few) but to "trick" the majority of the consumers to buy the product just below the most expensive one in the product hierarchy. Using a $300K speaker as a decoy, the consumer will choose the $69K speaker that has 90% of the performance of the ultimate speaker to the $300K speaker and to the $39K "cheap brother" speaker that is no where close to the $69K speaker. They end up selling a lot more of these $69K speakers with a $300K and $39K speakers in the line-up than if they just had the $69K and the $39K speakers alone. Just basic human psychology at work.
How does one separate out putting together essentially a lab project and/or using that technology in their lesser priced gear? Now know not all companies do that, but some do, most notably cartridges, CD players, etc.
Also, how do you factor in hand built, cost of development, essentially one off parts (try paying for machining on just say five chassis' or limited number of cabinets), warranty, shipping, advertising, etc?
And besides jealousy and social issues, how much of this stems from instant gratification. I don't think Steve, I or any on here with nice systems started out that way. We had humble beginnings and built over the years.
Myles
In case you don't notice .. Ferrari is no longer what it used to be.. Cars from "lesser" manufacturers routinely run circles around them for a fraction of the prices and this is known and admitted by the Car enthusiast community. It is also admitted that you are buying a luxury and status symbol when you buy one of these (admittedly beautiful) cars
.. You would not dare thread lightly around a guy with a BMW M3 !!! Even less an Audi R8 or a Nissan GT-R... if you have the "entry level" Ferrari don't mess with a Subaru XTi !!! Now are you suggesting we are to resign ourselves to go toward buying Luxury in our gears with no connection to performance ?? Why is it that the assumption follows that the Zygoil amp at $125Kis superior to the Hurricanes at $5000? Why the notion of price class if there is a performance metric however fuzzy it is at times ...
Let's take a few examples here? Magnepan MG 20.1, Revel Salon 2 ? Soundlab ESL? Martin Logan CLX?? Aren't they fully the equal or often superior of several vastly more expensive speakers out there ? Please tell me ? I am naming these yet you would hardly hear them in most discussion the focus would be on >100K speakers ...
Back to Ferrari if it is performance you are looking for .. I dare say there are vastly more economical alternatives than Ferrari some could be qualified inexpensive .. Observe the trend .. Better cars for much less money .. Aren't we in High End Audio going (lemming-like) in a different direction? Not a complaint a statement of fact. One some of us would like to see addressed or at the very least mentioned by the reviewers .. We have come to see them too easily going with the manufacturers .. Even we know it is simply practical for them to to be on the manufacturers side .. We would like to feel some more love ..
In case you don't notice .. Ferrari is no longer what it used to be.. Cars from "lesser" manufacturers routinely run circles around them for a fraction of the prices and this is known and admitted by the Car enthusiast community. It is also admitted that you are buying a luxury and status symbol when you buy one of these (admittedly beautiful) cars
.. You would not dare thread lightly around a guy with a BMW M3 !!! Even less an Audi R8 or a Nissan GT-R... if you have the "entry level" Ferrari don't mess with a Subaru XTi !!! Now are you suggesting we are to resign ourselves to go toward buying Luxury in our gears with no connection to performance ?? Why is it that the assumption follows that the Zygoil amp at $125Kis superior to the Hurricanes at $5000? Why the notion of price class if there is a performance metric however fuzzy it is at times ... Let's take a few examples here? Magnepan MG 20.1, Revel Salon 2 ? Soundlab ESL? Martin Logan CLX?? Aren't they fully the equal or often superior of several vastly more expensive speakers out there ? Please tell me ? I am naming these yet you would hardly hear them in most discussion the focus would be on >100K speakers ...
Back to Ferrari if it is performance you are looking for .. I dare say there are vastly more economical alternatives than Ferrari some could be qualified inexpensive .. Observe the trend .. Better cars for much less money .. Aren't we in High End Audio going (lemming-like) in a different direction? Not a complaint a statement of fact. One some of us would like to see addressed or at the very least mentioned by the reviewers .. We have come to see them too easily going with the manufacturers .. Even we know it is simply practical for them to to be on the manufacturers side .. We would like to feel some more love ..
Sorry to devolve the thread in this fashion but I need to vent some ..
Great Audio doesn't have to be a "fantasy" ... And it is not more always money in GEAR that brings great performance. You would be surprised how many modest systems outperform stupendously expensive ones. I read somewhere that a great speaker in a bad room is the same as driving a Porsche on ice and complaining about the poor handling ... Ask the question how many of these great speakers re in a great.for the purpose environments .. Funny that the marketing brochures of such gears rarely if ever show them in a suitable environment .. It is more Architectural Digest than we , audiophiles, would care to admit ...
One can with a relatively modest sum assemble a great system if one pays attention to the fundamentals ... We have been led to believe that the performance of these mega-systems is throughly unapproachable .. Well it is not always so ... it is rarely so .... And that is where the reviewers should blow a new air in High End Audio not going nicely with the more moeny more performance mantra .. They know it is not the case they may have persuaded themselves of such but deep inside ... they know the truth ...
Great Audio doesn't have to be a "fantasy" ... And it is not more always money in GEAR that brings great performance. You would be surprised how many modest systems outperform stupendously expensive ones. I read somewhere that a great speaker in a bad room is the same as driving a Porsche on ice and complaining about the poor handling ... Ask the question how many of these great speakers re in a great.for the purpose environments .. Funny that the marketing brochures of such gears rarely if ever show them in a suitable environment .. It is more Architectural Digest than we , audiophiles, would care to admit ...
One can with a relatively modest sum assemble a great system if one pays attention to the fundamentals ... We have been led to believe that the performance of these mega-systems is throughly unapproachable .. Well it is not always so ... it is rarely so .... And that is where the reviewers should blow a new air in High End Audio not going nicely with the more moeny more performance mantra .. They know it is not the case they may have persuaded themselves of such but deep inside ... they know the truth ...
Myles
In case you don't notice .. Ferrari is no longer what it used to be.. Cars from "lesser" manufacturers routinely run circles around them for a fraction of the prices and this is known and admitted by the Car enthusiast community. It is also admitted that you are buying a luxury and status symbol when you buy one of these (admittedly beautiful) cars
Let's take a few examples here? Magnepan MG 20.1, Revel Salon 2 ? Soundlab ESL? Martin Logan CLX?? Aren't they fully the equal or often superior of several vastly more expensive speakers out there ? Please tell me ? I am naming these yet you would hardly hear them in most discussion the focus would be on >100K speakers ...
Back to Ferrari if it is performance you are looking for .. I dare say there are vastly more economical alternatives than Ferrari some could be qualified inexpensive .. Observe the trend .. Better cars for much less money .. Aren't we in High End Audio going (lemming-like) in a different direction? Not a complaint a statement of fact. One some of us would like to see addressed or at the very least mentioned by the reviewers .. We have come to see them too easily going with the manufacturers .. Even we know it is simply practical for them to to be on the manufacturers side .. We would like to feel some more love ..
Frantz: What vastly more expensive speakers are you referring to?
And obviously high price doens't have to or mean good sound. Yes, there are some more moderately priced piece of equipment that sound quite nice, if the designers choose the right compromises. But all costs of research are charged against that top of the line product; otherwise, the manufacturer could not charge the price they do for their entry and midpriced gear.
Will not go into particulars .. You know from listening to some of them. Now, now let's not try to justify the prices with research and the likes ... A defense strategy that would fail very easily .. The reality is much more pedestrian. The audiophile market is not price-sensitive... It can be easily shown they are willing to pay a premium for difficult to sustain assertions. It could be also shown that they do not punish manufacturers that much .. Very lenient .. Very lamb-like. An obedient market if there is such a thing .. Gears come in fashion.. People flock to them , they recede from fashion and come back again this time with a more expensive product ... whose price has often been already tested by a competing manufacturer .. So the top of the Line Absolute Reason Corporation (ARC
) was 35 K .. Now my new top of the line will be $45 Kand I will still look reasonable since the Booololoi line stage is $85,ooo .. It is hard for me to accept that the price in High End reflect anything but basic marketing and pricing textbooks.. You charge what the market shoes it can bear and so far it has shown resilience so let's push the prices even higher one of us will eventually hit the ceiling so far it is a very high, incredibly lofty celing.. It could even be ceiling-less
I think we get into trouble painting with broad brushstrokes. Certainly there's been issues of gouging but I don't think the top of the line co's like ARC, cj, Rowland, Krell gouge.
Still what ultra-expensive speakers are you referring to? Let's take the Vandersteen 7s. Have you seen how much the Dueland caps used in the speaker's xover run? Same goes for those electronics manufacturers that use teflon caps. Even at their prices, the caps are hideously expensive
Still what ultra-expensive speakers are you referring to? Let's take the Vandersteen 7s. Have you seen how much the Dueland caps used in the speaker's xover run? Same goes for those electronics manufacturers that use teflon caps. Even at their prices, the caps are hideously expensive
Please let me have an idea of the prices of the caps you are taloking about .. I sincerely don't know ... Duelund .. Oh yes they are expensive ...
What do they do that other caps don't?
Has been proven that they are indeed superior? If yes, how?
Many more questions ... I will eave it at that for now ...
Even in cars there are numerous myths that a good quarter mile run quickly disproves? If you go to your friendly neighborhood Auto parts chain you're likely to find products that claim to reduce your consumption while increasing your horsepower ... Of course some people swear by these .. Do they really make a iota of difference in a car? Do we need to ask ?
So we also have myths in High End Audio and if I were a manufacturers I would go with what I think my public will buy ... I would not go against the grain like John Dunleavy did , telling them he didn't care about cables ...I would use the most expensive hook-up wire made by Belden marketed by one of the biggies in Audio Cables ... Why not? I will recoup my relatively expensive investment anyway ...
What do they do that other caps don't?
Has been proven that they are indeed superior? If yes, how?
Many more questions ... I will eave it at that for now ...
Even in cars there are numerous myths that a good quarter mile run quickly disproves? If you go to your friendly neighborhood Auto parts chain you're likely to find products that claim to reduce your consumption while increasing your horsepower ... Of course some people swear by these .. Do they really make a iota of difference in a car? Do we need to ask ?
So we also have myths in High End Audio and if I were a manufacturers I would go with what I think my public will buy ... I would not go against the grain like John Dunleavy did , telling them he didn't care about cables ...I would use the most expensive hook-up wire made by Belden marketed by one of the biggies in Audio Cables ... Why not? I will recoup my relatively expensive investment anyway ...
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I think your comment is valid for a small number of products, that compared to the whole high-end industry is too low to become significant.
Trying to connect the whole industry with a few cases, that after all this smoke, no one wants to nominate, seems to me an unfair situation.
While I was at the Newport Show on Friday, one of the reps ( who shall go nameless) had a conversation with me over lunch, that essentially went like this:
Rep:'Have you seen my room?'
Me, 'No haven't got to it yet'
Rep:'We are selling speakers that are not in the 'stupid' price category and you should hear what we can deliver for reasonable money.'
Me: 'What's reasonable money and how did you come to this conclusion?'
Rep: 'We figured that the general public can probably see through the 'BS' and wanted to stay alive in this economy, therefore we priced our line so that it can appeal to the "man in the streets" Our products are all below $2000.'
Me: 'I just came from the Magico/Synergistic room, which I felt was superb sounding. The cable manufacturer Ted Denney was asked if his line of Gallileo cables were $2000- by one of the audience members. Ted scoffed and said the connectors cost him $3000 per connector and that these cables were for the guy who buys Ferrari's. Unlike Odin and Tara Zero's which he said were akin to buying a Corvette at Ferrrari pricing.' So, my take was that these cables alone cost more than the Magico's and multitudes more than your gear.'
Rep: 'Laughs' .... 'That's just insane, but I guess there are plenty of people who couldn't give a darn about pricing which is what Ted caters to!'
Me: 'I'll come and give your room a listen, Thanks.'
I went to the rep's room, unfortunately, i thought you essentially got what you paid for
Agreed, that's why I qualified w/the following in an earlier post:
But again, more than in most industries, there's a lot of nonsense. Particularly in the cable realm.
I am curious of the reasons why some people who can easily accept a usd 25000 preamplifier or a usd 150000 amplifier find objectionable an usd 20000 cable. Question of size or weight?
Comparison with other industries is not meaningful, unless they have similar structures and purposes. What should we compare with the the high-end industry?
- Because I've never heard the value before. Everytime I've swapped in a super expensive cable vs. the good quality, simple copper stuff I primarily use, it's never better, maybe sometimes different though.
- I'm not an engineer, so take this as you will, but I've never read anything that's convinced me that some of the elaborate construction or exotic materials of some of the really expensive stuff adds anything over a good copper design. My BS detector goes off. And from an advertising/marketing staindpoint, something which is my business, the detector really screams.
- I open a good preamp for ex., let's take my ARC Ref 5. I see a ton of parts including wire, and a lot of design work. Then I see a piece of wire for the same $$$ -- there goes my BS detector again. And why/how is that speaker wire, at the end of a chain with a ton of wire already, transformative? If so, it points to a problem.
- Swapping out, say, the Ref 5 for a $2K preamp, I immediately here a difference and improvement. Usually easily discerned. Not my experience with cables. Further, I think a couple hundred bucks of room treatment, for ex. will always get you greater improvement than a couple thousand or more spent on cables. Bad value again.
- With so many variables/components in the equation, I really want cables that do nothing. My speaker choice, for ex., is my primary choice for how my system will sound (and it is the only one that interacts w/the room too) I don't want voicing from a cable, and I think that may be what alot of the expensive stuff does. I want this passive component to remain passive. And I don't see how the more expensive stuff gets closer to doing nothing.
I elaborate a bit on all this in this review:
http://www.sonicflare.com/archives/supra-sword-speaker-cable-and-plydual-wire-review.php
Listen, other people's opinions on cable are fine with me. Last thing I want to do is start this old argument. I consider myself pragmatic, not dogmatic; after years in this hobby, years of listening, this is where I've arrived. I just don't see value in cables -- first and last from a sonic standpoint, and from others in between.
To paraphrase Mark Twain, if I'd had more time, I would have made this post shorter.
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