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In Reply to: RE: If you can hear it, can you measure it? posted by magiccarpetride on February 17, 2011 at 10:32:42:
I keep thinking of those Volkswagons that had Rolls Royce grilles on them.
Honestly, I'm saddened by what happened to consumer audio. It started to lose me in the 80's, when what had been a solid progression towards better sound became increasingly about conspicuous consumption. I was always a Keds guy, not a designer sneaker one, though I hasten to draw the distinction between money spent to produce something of high quality and money spent on status. Which is to say that $100,000 speakers don't bother me, *if* the $100,000 actually goes towards improved quality.
Re what you said, I don't remember if I mentioned it in this thread, but a high end manufacturer once told me that when his company tried offering a version of his amp with a cheap faceplate, along the lines you suggest, nobody bought it. So they had to go back to faceplates that cost more than the electronics.
Some of this may have to do with the desire for status, but some of it also, I'm sure, comes from the assumption that people have that plain means cheap and cheap means bad quality. An assumption which is sometimes true, but sometimes not, as when a fellow grew so fed up with the unreliability of his Rolls that he painted lemons on it. Or was it yellow paint? It's years ago, I forget.
For myself, I just try to find the relatively few products that emphasize sonic quality rather than status. Which is one of the reasons I like Maggies so much. They're one of a handful of companies that created the high end, but they've stubbornly stuck to the high end as it originally was -- oriented towards solid engineering and good sound, rather than snake oil and prestige. And, really, they sell a lot of speakers, a lot more than most other high end speaker manufacturers. So maybe we aren't alone in feeling this way?
At the same time, I can't help but feeling that high end audio became so pricey, esoteric, and set in its ways that it contributed to its own slow demise.
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Follow Ups
- RE: If you can hear it, can you measure it? - josh358 11:23:46 02/17/11 (3)
- RE: If you can hear it, can you measure it? - dromney 15:23:18 02/17/11 (2)
- RE: If you can hear it, can you measure it? - josh358 09:23:37 02/18/11 (1)
- RE: If you can hear it, can you measure it? - dromney 15:21:58 02/20/11 (0)
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