Value, lack there of, and "High End"

[crenca]

As I sit working procrastinating at my computer waiting for FedEx to deliver a $1,500 pair of ZMF headphones, I contemplate the place of "value" in this hobby.  Casualty perusing the show reports, I click on Stereophile's (I know, I know, crenca the hypocrite  ) report on Devore's recent $90k creation:

 

https://www.stereophile.com/content/devore-fidelity-orangutan-reference

 

Nothing surprises me about this overpriced bling, nor the Audiophile trade publication obsession with this stuff.  No matter how it sounds, it is simply irrelevant to 99.999% of even "Audiophiles"...or is it? I am pleased however that the commentary is almost uniformly negative.  No one believes that there is anything intrinsically rational to this pricing - it's a unique luxury market.  $90k, $180k, 1 million - it's all the same in that none of it makes sense.

 

On the other hand, are not my HP's just as irrational?  Maybe, but I don't think so.  Given the small boutique company that ZMF is, literally hand making each HP out of real wood, they are going to be expensive.  $1.5k is expensive, but is it irrational?  If they were $15k, ok.  There not, they are "only" $1.5k.  Is the delta between them and say, a $300 HD650 justifiable?  There are some irrational prices out there in the "personal audio" space - Sennheiser's Orpheus 2 for example.

 

What say you?  Has this hobby lost all sense of value?  Do the trade publications and webzines focus too much on "halo" products such as the Orangutan Reference?  What would Audiophile 'reporting' look like if they took seriously the reality of value?

[crenca]

I will respond to Bluesman's and others excellent thoughts but I just wanted to say my $1.5k HP's (ZMF Eikon) arrived and I am enjoying them.  Sweet sweet tone, if a half a step behind my goto's Focal Clear's in low level detail/resolution - but their closed back!  It just so happens a pair the pair of HiFiMan Edition XX I ordered from Massdrop 23 years ago arrived today as well.  Luckily I am not an obsessive audiophile so I only have two high quality amp's - I can enjoy them both without even unplugging anything, but you know, I have to take a pair off my head and put another on... 😋

 

 

Looking at my desk and adding up the cost of my DAC's, amp's, HP's, cables...yea I'm a freaking hypocrite talking about value 😂

[crenca]

1 hour ago, sandyk said:

Perhaps ?

For many years, until one capsule went o/c,  I used a pair of ATH W1000 headphones with Bubinga wood cups .

 It was recommended to me by a well experienced headphone guy that I use a small layer of Butyl inside the cups which doesn't harden. This removed most of the small amount of " boxy"  sound due to the wooden cups.

 Although my present much cheaper ATH M70x have similar extended frequency specifications they are far more microphonic due to the plastic type of construction. Even rubbing a finger across the headband results in a loud roar.

 

 

With closed back design cup resonances are a major design hurdle/compromise no matter what the cup material.   ZMF (and others) market the wood cups as having particular pleasing resonances/interactions similar to wooden instruments.  I don't know if I buy this.  Like so many things, it's all in the implementation.  Interesting about the butyl recommendation.  I think ZMF sticks with wool and foam.

 

This ZMF defiantly has a nice sound signature.  Much better than my AudioQuest Nightowl (which you simply can not EQ enough) and has significantly better technicalities than my two other closed backs, the Oppo PM-3 and NAD HP50.  The question is, will I want to travel with it at this price level....probably 😋

[crenca]

6 hours ago, Teresa said:

 

I'm sure you could guess my feelings on this. Most audio equipment is not only out of my price range but IMHO overpriced based on the increases in sound quality as one goes further and further up the ladder to astronomical amounts.

 

Right now I'm listening to music on my Sennheiser HD 518 headphones which I bought at Amazon for $65 (retail $130). They sound excellent to me and are extremely comfortable. The most I ever paid for a pair of headphones is $150 (retail $300). My father taught me to never pay retail.

 

Teresa,

 

Perhaps my only defense is the value of these on the used market.  $1500 is actually the used price I paid (they are not new - new with features/cables they were just over $2k).  Barring any change in the fundamentals of the market, a year or two down the road I should be able to sell them for $1,500 or close to it.  So they will end up costing me a "rental" fee of 1, 2, perhaps $300 for my time with them.  Still, I might be rationalizing my hypocrisy 😉

[crenca]

5 hours ago, firedog said:

 

Crenca-

I don't really get posts like these. Value is totally subjective. Think how many millions see no "value" in any speaker other than a BT speaker for $40. In addition, the subjective concept of value is often tied to your amount of disposable income. The more you have, the more you tend to see value in pricey items. 
 

More to your specific point: I'm not sure the Devore setup (two speakers and two large sub units powered by internal (not class D) amps) is any more overpriced that your $1500 headphones. I'm not being snarky. But we all know really good sounding full range headphones start at about $100; after that you get improvements on a steep sloped curve of diminishing returns. Your headphones may have "value", but I seriously doubt they give 15X the performance of some of the $100 ones I know of. 

 

 

 

I hear ya and I am willing to admit a significant amount of hypocrisy/inconsistency!  Still, I wonder.  Is value really "totally subjective"?  What is the relationship between cost and High Fidelity?  Why do the trade publication focus so heavily on the highest priced products?  Perennial questions I know.

 

Also, is there an value equivalency between "reasonably" priced Devore's (the ones around $10k) and these $1.5 ZMF's the $90K ones, and say a $300 HD 650 & these $1.5k ZMF's?  I want to say no...but perhaps I am a big fat hypocrite.  

 

I suppose I am looking for some correlation between cost and high fidelity that is not pure subjectivity.

[crenca]

30 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

...You want dCS bling along with your dCS sound? Fine. You pay for it. I just want the performance and the sound and don’t give a whit about the looks. Why should I have to pay for “bling” that I don’t care about, and which makes up as much as 70 - 80% of the unit’s retail price when all I care about is what the component can do?

 

Good point, but I wonder if it is just the casework/bling that is really 70-80%?  I wonder if it's not just "high end" markup that is expected and a part of the whole (dealer/show/publication) "high end" sales network?  So wild guess, of that 70%, half is actual casework 'bling' and half is just markup.  That seems to be the case with these new Devore's.  

[crenca]

11 hours ago, emcdade said:

If $90k speakers are what help Devore Fidelity and Stereophile survive, then I'm all for it.

 

I'd much rather live in that world than a world where no boutique Hifi brands can survive and we're discussing whether we should buy the Apple or Amazon home surveillance speaker model.

 

 

I actually don't think there is anything to this kind of thinking. 

 

First, the "high end" space occupied by these particular Devore's is often justified by the "trickle down" effect - the SQ gains in alleged to exist in this stratosphere eventually make their way down to more affordable products.  Yet, the evidence is slim.  Most real SQ gains appears to be made in places outside this niche "high end", such as the more general consumer electronic world and the pro audio world.  The myth of the artisan designer (such as Devore himself) making fundamental "discoveries" is just that, a myth.  Real research and gains is actually a much harder process that takes time and money these 1 man shops don't have.

 

Second (and building upon the first), the idea that Stereophile, Devore, and High End actually contribute something fundamental to real SQ improvement is part of the Audiophile myth.  The high end will never be large enough to support fundamental research.  It is more likely that Apple or Amazon would contribute something lasting in real SA improvement than Devore simply because they have the market size to justify it, even if it is "accidental".   Devore himself established his company on excellent sounding yet affordable equipment (relatively speaking).  If he is cashing in so be it, but lets not pretend he is doing anything worthwhile for real high fidelity.

[crenca]

23 hours ago, Albrecht said:

1st, - there is no objective measure of value in the paradigm of subjectivity.

 

While I find @bluesmanuse of the usual formula for value in economics useful and cogent, I can't help but wonder about it's presupposition of the "paradigm of subjectivity"

 

High Fidelity has this basis as an endeavour grounded in a real objectivity:  the "perfect" (or approaching perfection as much as possible) reproduction of the original performance and/or recording.  Given this, while granted we all have subjective preferences, the ultimate goal is subjective.

 

If I am right about this, then there is a basis for a value judgement in Hi Fi that is not based in the radical subjective preferences, financial means, and circumstances of the individual.

 

Related to this is how "high end" and "audiophiledom" has skewed (if not outright skewered it) the older/origninal quest for high fidelity...

[crenca]

"High Fidelity has this basis as an endeavour grounded in a real objectivity:  the "perfect" (or approaching perfection as much as possible) reproduction of the original performance and/or recording.  Given this, while granted we all have subjective preferences, the ultimate goal is objective."

 

Just an FYI - I meant to say "objective" and not "subjective" at the end of the above sentence

 

22 hours ago, Albrecht said:

...That doesn't mean that I can afford to buy a Meitner... but I'm not judging it's sound quality on whether or not I can afford it. Of course Meitner DACs measure well, and have very low jitter, - but so do a lot of other DACs that are both cheaper and more expensive: and don't perform nearly as well.

 

So, - just because a product is expensive, (and unaffordable to most of us), - doesn't mean that it sucks. There are two different types of judgements, - the affordability part of the equation is objective, - it's performance is not.

 

 

I think this is what I am trying to get at, that there is an "objective" quality to value to High Fidelity and price.  It avoids these two extremes:

 

1)  The radical subjective, where value is completely dependant upon the financial means and preferences of each individual.  

2)  The radical objective, where value can be reduced merely to measurements and an external "quality" that avoids the relativeness of value

 

So I think in some important way there is an objective aspect of performance (i.e. high fidelity), and while that is relative it is not radically relative in the sense that there is no consensus.  We are all human, so we all share the same make up (genetics, etc.), which means we are all much more alike than different (as important as those differences are).  In other words, there is a strong objective center to "high fidelity" and performance.  Hope I am making some sense...

 

By the way Albrecht, I heard that the long time founder/principle of Meitner (can't recall his name) sold off his share and is no longer part of the company

[crenca]

6 hours ago, Summit said:

Value is like beauty very much in the eyes of the beholder....

 

This is a good summation of what I call the "radical subjective".  

 

I maintain the opposite.  Value and beauty is not in the eye of the beholder - rather it has its own reality is that reality is compelling, it is its own truth.

 

 

[crenca]

10 hours ago, Summit said:

“Although modern economists believe economic value is subjective, notable past economists, such as Karl Marx, believed that economic value was objective

\Value is very much in the eyes of the beholder.

 

4 hours ago, lucretius said:

 

How Platonic of you.

 

4 hours ago, lucretius said:

 

This is the subjective theory of value. Contrast this with an intrinsic theory of value such as Crenca is proposing.

 

3 hours ago, accwai said:

 

How Positive of you

 

This is right guys.  I agree with Marx (well, not really - only one of his presuppositions) that economics serve the individual (and don't define the individual - though at bottom Marx believed this as well through his commitment to historical materialism), and that the individual is objectively valuable.  Most (essentially following Smith) modern economists ground their theory in one or another radical subjectivism/relativism.  I am a Platonist through and through.

 

So, related to audio, I would say that there is a perfect form of high fidelity out there for which all of our systems are but shadows on a wall 😉  The value of our systems is connected (even determined) to this perfect form.  This form is not a mere relativism - it really exists, even if we can only approach it in an imperfect and relative way.

[crenca]

6 minutes ago, bluesman said:

 

Crenca's statement that "...[v]alue and beauty is [sic] not in the eye of the beholder" also confuses these two categories.  Beauty is a value - they are not the same kind of entity.  Both objectivists and relativists considered beauty, goodness, truth etc to be values.  Objectivists believed you could quantify them and relativists believed that you could not.  But none of them in either camp discussed economic or other material value.  

 

 

Maybe 😉

 

Beauty and value are similar in that (like everything else that is a quality) can not be reduced in such a way as to be easily measured.  They withstand a nominalistic, materialistic reading, and theoretical reduction.  This is because they are not mere materialistic realities/ontologies.  They can only be seen and studied obliquely (through statistics for example).  Just because they are similar in this way does not mean they are not also quite different in other ways.

 

That said, they at the same time are not mere subjective realities either in a Cartesian/Kantian sort of way.   Whether it be modern understandings of art, truth, or just audio a radical subjectivism is very prevalent and has been for the last 100 years (and in western intellectual history for long before that).  I don't agree with this material/subjective dichotomy so succinctly expressed in "beauty is in the eye of the beholder", nor economic theory of value based upon it.

[crenca]

1 hour ago, Ralf11 said:

Value and beauty are certainly species specific, and likely differ among cultures within the species of most interest here.

 

Nonetheless, we know that visual beauty has some objective reality in humans, based on experiments.  No doubt the same is true for "auditory beauty" as well.  I am thinking about even/odd order harmonics in particular.

 

We can get more philosophical on this thread or more scientific... esp. since it appears that science is eating away at philosophical notions more and more these days.

 

It's an both/and, not an either/or, or "science vs. philosophy".  Science can measure(the what) but says nothing about the why, what is good (or bad).  It can't - it self consciously excludes itself from such questions and when it doesn't it is bad science.  Beauty, value (monetary, moral, etc.), character, the good life - these sorts of questions can be informed by science, but not judged by science.  

 

I know there is a scientism that confuses science with metaphysical truth (often a reductive materialism with some kind personalistic ethic incoherently attached to it - Dawkins being one of the high priests of such thinking), but most folk intuit (even if they can't articulate why) that such a thing is really bad philosophy masquerading as "science" and "common sense".  

[crenca]

57 minutes ago, lucretius said:

Now, Crenca could be suggesting that there is some objective truth to economic value. In fact, since personal, moral, and/or aesthetic values had not yet been discussed, only economic value, why assume Crenca was speaking about the former (i.e. personal, moral, and/or aesthetic values)?

 

What I was attempting to point out (not so successfully granted), is that there is something real called value (economic, but obviously dependent up other things like SQ), and that it is not so radically subjective as to be totally dependant upon means, perception, etc.  To put it another way, there is something objective in the value of a $300 HP and a $1500 HP, and rather you are a pensioner who can afford very little but otherwise likes music, or an oligarch (for whom in all truth $1500 is a rounding error on what he makes/spends every hour), the value of these HPs is objective and does not change (relative to the pensioner or the oligarch).

 

The "fill_in_the_blank is in eye of the beholder" is shorthand for radical subjectivism.

 

Unfortunately, the effort to try to get to some basic understanding of what value is in relationship to high fidelity requires that a mountain to be climbed and overcome, and that mountain is radical subjectivism.

 

Hopefully that helps...

[crenca]

15 hours ago, lucretius said:

 

Economic value is defined as the maximum amount of money an agent will pay for a good or service. Empirically, this amount varies among individuals, suggesting that it is subjective. Perhaps there are bounds to this subjectivity?  Perhaps the value of a good is (partially?) determined by some inherent property of the good or by the amount of labor necessary to produce it? This is going to require evidence.

 

8 minutes ago, christopher3393 said:

and conversely understanding how normative judgments are presupposed in all reasoning, is important not only in economics, but as Aristotle saw, in all of life.”

 

 

The evidence for value being at least partially determined (not a good word, but let's use it for now) by an "inherent property" is everywhere.  No matter what the economic station in life, most folks have an intuitive sense of value, when they are not being philosophers and trying to justify it (and when they come up short, they say things like "value is purely determined by the means/whims of the individual").  Sure, the poor pensioner and the oligarch might not be affected by this inherent character/property of value in the same way, but they both know value vs. cheap or trash when they see/hear/touch/smell it.   

 

As with most things important to being human, one can not measure a "value" directly, only obliquely (studying humanity with statistics for example).   So it depends upon what sort of evidence you're expecting.  If you are looking for a "law of value" in the same way you might look for a "law" in the physical sciences, your not going to find it because humanity is not the same thing as a physical property.

 

All this is probably too esoteric however - It might be useful to listen to what our guts tell us.  What does our guts say about the value of a $1500 HP, and does this instinct really change fundamentally (or only relatively, or in some other manner) when our bank account gets larger or smaller?

[crenca]

6 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

I value Neolithic technology more than Paleolithic but not sure if that is intuitive...

 

It is, or your sense is not "normative", and perhaps more not valuable...

[crenca]

1 hour ago, Ralf11 said:

What if it is purely a rational decision?

 

 

That's what I and others (and not just nobody's - Aristotle as @christopher3393notes above) are saying, that to be rational, it has to have the real character of value.  To be anti-value in any way is to be be non-rational to some extent at least...  

[crenca]

14 hours ago, lucretius said:

 

What is rational?  What do you mean by "the real character of value" and "anti-value in any way is to be be non-rational"?

 

 

Not sure I am following you but:  Simply reasonable, understandable, relatable, logical, and communicable.  To disconnect value from high fidelity, or to reduce it to the radical subjective, is to be unreasonable and unreal...that is to be in error...

 

I must not be following you...  😉

[crenca]

2 minutes ago, lucretius said:

It does not help the discussion by using words like "radical subjective".  Can you rephrase your second sentence?

 

By "radical subjective" I mean the idea (really, a set of ideas) that value is subjectively determined.  So the pensioner of limited means would say a $1500 HP is not a value because he or she could never afford it.  The Oligarch would say the $1500 HP is a value because any good or service to him or her below some amount (let's say a $1,000,000) is a rounding error on his bank account.  

 

In other words value lies outside of the subjective, the individual, and their particular (economic or otherwise) circumstances.