Value, lack there of, and "High End"

[Ajax]

1 hour ago, crenca said:

 

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.  

One of my hobbies (personality?) is to strive for the best possible deal I can get no matter what the situation. 

 

e.g. Living in Australia it is very time consuming, exhausting and expensive to travel anywhere. A few years ago my son did a ski racing course just outside Turin (Italy). It is 24 hours from Sydney to Milan (9 + 3 + 12). I'm a big fellow (6'2" and 220lbs) so I would spend a lot of time checking out flights, plane types and availability to get the bet possible deal AND comfort. The best I found was to catch a fight out of Sydney so that we could make the 1am flight out of Asia (any asian carrier via Bangkok, Singapore, HK, KL etc) as at that time of the morning the Asia - Europe flights were never full. We would get on this second flight last so that we could see where the empty seats were. Often I would get 4 seats across in the middle at the back and my son (then a small 13) would get 3 on the side. I would take 2 sleeping pills (he got a half) and after 8 hour sleep on a 12 hour flight arrive in good shape. Business class was about US$5k return and economy US$1k, however, as long as we got a sleep that was all that mattered to us.

With Audio I am always on the look out for such deals, which usually come in the shape of used gear, but not always.

 

The opposite to bling has to be the Benchmark Media range. Their engineering is superb, however, their appearance is at best bland. In stereophile over the years JA has raved about the measurements of their range of DACs and in particular the performance of their AHB2 power amp. In a "normal" domestic situation a DAC 3 / AHB2 combination would drive just about any speaker to say 90db with sonic excellence. That front end would only cost you $5k new ($8k if you needed more power and bridged 2 x AHB2s). If you shop around you can get a very similar "sound quality" by purchasing the older DAC2 with the AHB2 (used) for about US$4k. Just add source and speakers. Using the DAC3 with its remote (as a pre amp) you could hide these two pieces of gear out of site if you were hung up on appearances.

 

I know US$10k is a lot of money to some people for a hifi system, however, I still have my beloved 10 year old Benchmark DAC 1 as part of my home office system. I just turn it on each day and it does it's thing, unbelievably reliable and still sounds great. That's value. It acts as a preamp for a Nord Hypex Ncore power amp driving a pair of ATC SCM 19 speakers.

 

There are plenty of other examples of high quality manufacturers available at "reasonable" prices to those who have the knowledge. Knowledge is the difference between paying silly money, $50K +, and reasonable money <$10k.

 

My 3 cents.

 

All the best

 

Ajax