Value, lack there of, and "High End"

[esldude]

I've the opinion real performance gains scale at the 4th power. 16 times more is twice as good.  Until improvement isn't possible.

[esldude]

Speaking of McLaren's, I think a $100K pair of speakers are probably a better deal.  I recall a while back a short show that said Mr. Jackson of Barrett-Jackson fame had driven his McLaren more miles than any other McLaren owner.  Apparently they keep up with such stuff during servicing.  So did he drive his McLaren 100,000 miles because he's rich enough not to care and he owns dozens of other much more rare automobiles?  Nope he had driven it 17,000 miles over several years.  And he has a huge piece of property with his own private paved roads where much of the mileage was accumulated.  I also think they said he had more than twice the miles of the next most driven McLaren.  

 

At least with a $100k pair of speakers, even if they are more show or prestige than performance, you can get some hours of use unless they are purely for show.  My limited experience of those owning such speakers is they listen to them a lot. 

 

Value is a hard thing to determine.  It is a personal judgment of course.  Opportunity cost is one you could use more usefully.  Even then value will interfere.  Because someone has to make their odd unique personal judgment about what opportunity cost is worthwhile in trading off one thing they could do versus another.  I also think relative opportunity is why they find people are more satisfied spending money on experiences than material items.  

[esldude]

15 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

Two comments on the above Bluesy post:

 

unlike driving a high buck exotic car, over-spending on an audio system won't kill you or others

 

also, I prefer ego-diatonic thoughts and feelings as they scale much better with respect to monetary input

I wonder if more people die form exotic cars or electrocution working on their electronic gear?  I don't think either is a big deal. 

[esldude]

4 hours ago, bluesman said:

It's not a biased sample.  In addition to being a competitor for decades, I was the race physician for Philly Region SCCA for about 20 years and for VSCCA and SVRA at multiple events from 1984 to 2000 - and I fished many a wealthy dilettante out of the wrecked exotic he had no business buying let alone driving in competition.  I pulled the same lawyer out of the same ex-Gurney GT-40 at Summit Point in '87 or '88 and the Grand Bahama Vintage grand Prix in '86. We had guys driving Allard J2Xs who couldn't handle a 948 bugeye.  One of my friends wrecked a gorgeous Turner in an end-over-end at Summit Point and his 944 on a local road - so he bought an E-type.  My wife's former dentist totalled his 944S in a "track event" at Watkins Glen.  And so forth and so on.

 

These guys also have great audio systems.......

Allard J2X.....now there's an easy car to drive..........hahahahha!

 

There is the thing a few years back about doctors and twin engine airplanes.  (Not a dig at you bluesman).  A flight instructor explained quite logically how mostly doctors had the money for them.  But those can be hard to fly especially if you have trouble.  And doctors are pressed for time and don't have time to become proficient.  So it was a cliche whenever a twin Beechcraft crashed to ask, " so which doctor was it?"

[esldude]

On 5/18/2019 at 5:39 PM, fas42 said:

 

Amen. The poor quality of the RCA interface is probably the number one killer of subjective quality in rigs; it doesn't take long to become aware of the general 'offness' of the sound, no matter how expensive the setup, caused by this feature - people live in a fantasy, that the priciness of everything surrounding a poor piece of implementation can somehow magically make up for its shortcomings - ummm ... the last time I checked, this idea doesn't go down too well in other fields of endeavour ...

 

 

Perhaps gold can be made to work. I tried this in the beginning, but it never held up; always audibly degrading over time. Genuine gastightness is the only method I've found to date that has sufficient integrity for worthwhile audio.

Too bad Camac/Lemo connectors didn't replace RCA's.  They are fairly simple and gas tight. Levinson used them on some gear at one time. 

[esldude]

58 minutes ago, lucretius said:

 

The gold plating is so thin and soft it quickly wears off.  Therefore, it's not good for constantly connecting/reconnecting. In that case, I'd take a nickel plated connector any day.

Or rhodium plating which is better than nickel I think.  Lots of pro cables are nickel plated for the added durability vs gold. 

[esldude]

16 minutes ago, lucretius said:

 

I like Type N connectors like this (but probably good for only unbalanced cables):

https://www.amphenolrf.com/connectors/n-type.html

Yeah, those look good.  But they only work up to between 10 and 20 ghz.  They'll be totally insufficient for DSD 32,768 when it comes out in about 6 years. 

[esldude]

19 minutes ago, lucretius said:

 

By my calculation, DSD768 requires 0.036864GHz (36864kHz). and double for DoP.   Can you check your calculation?

Not DSD768, DSD 32768. 

 

But I did make a decimal error.  The rate for DSD 32768 would be 1.445 ghz.   So that should have been DSD 524288.  Probably be 11 years before we see that offered in DACs.  By then most recording gear will probably be able to do DSD 256 (maybe).  

[esldude]

2 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Long term, high integrity gastightness is the key; soldering is the simplest, but least convenient solution, well done silver pastes, etc, application also works.

 

The ultimate solution is to have everything in one chassis; but that then introduces other concerns; vibration, adequare isolation and shileding  between electrical areas - and disrupts the audiophile's need to fiddle, .

Camac connectors were originally designed for instrumentation use in French Nuclear reactors. Gas tight, ground first, vibration resistant.  

[esldude]

Opportunity costs anyone?