Value, lack there of, and "High End"

[Blackmorec]

Thanks for your reply. A friend of mine is one of the founders of a well known company manufacturing high-end hi-fi electronics..,..amps, pre-amps etc.   His biggest cause of failure, by far?    ‘Contact enhancers’ applied to sockets and contacts.  Stabilator 22A may work, may be chemically stable over time and at elevated temperatures and may not migrate to places to don’t want it.....but a great many contact enhancers end up doing far more than desired and end up being very noisy.  Metal fatigue, oxidation, non-gas-tight crimps,  poor mechanical design that impacts contact integrity, materials chosen without reference to sonics....just a few of the problems with cheap RCA sockets 

 

More to do with how far they have to climb.....absolutely correct. And what provides the fuel and impetus for that climb?  The desire for more wealth in already wealthy countries, who create jobs in these poorer countries because labour costs are lower, raw materials are available, etc. So the wealth created in the United States, Europe, China trickles down to these poorer economies by way of investments. Low cost manufacturing, need for raw materials, factories in places close to the raw materials and/or markets.  Take companies like Shell and BP. They make massive investments....but very few in the US and Europe. Nigeria is quite wealthy and would be quite prosperous were it not for corruption. Their biggest industry? Oil and Gas. NIgerian companies doing the exploration, drilling, refining and distribution? Nope.....all US and European companies. 

Gold has several characteristics that make it ideal for electrical connectors. Firstly due to its electron configuration it does react with other materials or gases at mildly elevated temperatures...so it remains pure in a connection

Second, its quite soft, so high spots wear down and bed-in to make better, high-percentage surface area connections. 

Third because its surface remains clean and smooth it has the feeling of being self lubricating, which means connectors can be mechanically very tight without the connection seizing.  So ultimately a well made gold connection can be tighter, with better surface contact and no degradation. 

[AnotherSpin]

Material "wealth" is not everything in this world. Many societies doesn't have it as primal priorities. What doesn't make people more miserable at all, quite opposite.

[Shadders]

31 minutes ago, Blackmorec said:

More to do with how far they have to climb.....absolutely correct. And what provides the fuel and impetus for that climb?  The desire for more wealth in already wealthy countries, who create jobs in these poorer countries because labour costs are lower, raw materials are available, etc. So the wealth created in the United States, Europe, China trickles down to these poorer economies by way of investments. Low cost manufacturing, need for raw materials, factories in places close to the raw materials and/or markets.  Take companies like Shell and BP. They make massive investments....but very few in the US and Europe. Nigeria is quite wealthy and would be quite prosperous were it not for corruption. Their biggest industry? Oil and Gas. NIgerian companies doing the exploration, drilling, refining and distribution? Nope.....all US and European companies.

Hi,

I think you may need to examine :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics

It specifically states :

"Trickle-down economics, also called trickle-down theory, refers to the economic proposition that taxes on businesses and the wealthy in society should be reduced as a means to stimulate business investment in the short term and benefit society at large in the long term.....Whereas general supply-side theory favors lowering taxes overall, trickle-down theory more specifically targets taxes on the upper end of the economic spectrum"

 

This is not about investing in other countries to lower costs. It is about very affluent people reducing their taxes on the basis that they claim it helps everyone. It does not. It is pure myth, to justify greed.

 

Investing in other countries - sounds good, but the downside is offshoring. Companies offshore their work, which reduces the costs, but at the expense of jobs locally, and the reduction of skills within the company since those jobs are not required anymore.

 

Regards,

Shadders.

[Blackmorec]

Getting back to the OPs original question, are $1,500 headphones irrational or do they represent value for money?

 

Take 3 people:

a pensioner trying to make ends meet and deciding between heating and eating

A young graduate doing well in his chosen career 

A mega rich entrepreneur

 

How would the 3 respond to your question? 

 

You would guess that the pensioner would find them wildly, insanely extravagant,  the graduate would possibly order some, and the entrepreneur wouldn’t even register their price or would buy something better.

 

Given that this is an audiophile forum, you need money to be an audiophile so I would guess that from an audiophile perspective the headphones would be viewed as OK value,  provided their SQ is commensurate with their price. 

[DuckToller]

46 minutes ago, Blackmorec said:

Take 3 people:

a pensioner trying to make ends meet and deciding between heating and eating

A young graduate doing well in his chosen career 

A mega rich entrepreneur

 

A well meant explanation.
Please reflect, that there is no equal distribution of your 3 examples in any modern society.
Giving their "assumed" opinion about the value of 1500 $ headphones approximately the same importance, even when audiophilism is a hobby with an instrinsic need to spend money, is obviously not that school of statistics I have visited once in higher education.

Imho, the lion's share of audiophile hobbyists have serious concerns when it comes to spend a grand or more, and that is the basis for Crenca's reflection of value in this hobby.

Best, Tom

[Blackmorec]

6 minutes ago, DuckToller said:

 

A well meant explanation.
Please reflect, that there is no equal distribution of your 3 examples in any modern society.
Giving their "assumed" opinion about the value of 1500 $ headphones approximately the same importance, even when audiophilism is a hobby with an instrinsic need to spend money, is obviously not that school of statistics I have visited once in higher education.

Imho, the lion's share of audiophile hobbyists have serious concerns when it comes to spend a grand or more, and that is the basis for Crenca's reflection of value in this hobby.

Best, Tom

Hi Tom,

The point of my post is that one’s opinion of value is first and foremost based on the combination of wealth, the personal importance of having a certain capability (listening to fine music through headphones in this case) and what one needs to sacrifice in order to achieve that capability. 

In the case of my fictitious pensioner sacrificing food and heat isn’t going to fly, the graduate will weigh the value of having headphones vs some other things he may want, and the entrepreneur has no need to weigh the relative value because there’s no sacrifice involved.  So there’s no good answer to the question as the answer depends on a number of highly influential variables. 

Equal distribution is irrelevant. 

I agree that within the audiophile community, the same variables still apply, but to a far lesser extent than the general population. By definition audiophiles have discretionary disposable income and a tendency to value good sound.....but opinions will still divide around the above listed variables. 

[DuckToller]

2 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

Equal distribution is irrelevant

Let's agree do disagree.
I value much your, imho essentially elitist and well educated, expertise/opinion/knowledge when it comes to music and technology.
Less so, when the topic is related to economy and philosophy (ethics included). That's fine with me. 😉

Tom

[jmsent]

On 5/16/2019 at 3:40 PM, Panelhead said:

  That was how RMAF was when it began. Lots of high value gear for people to hear and see. 

  Pricing just escalated.

 

Or, in other words, it turned into a standard, run of the mill, high end audio show.

[Panelhead]

  I have no recent experience. I had an office in Denver and would schedule trips to allow attending RMAF. 

  About 10 years ago I got to where there was not much of interest there. Have not attended any shows since. But the reports are discouraging. 

  I am glad there are people who do not mind dropping 10k on a phono cartridge, 20k for a tonearm, and 50K for a table. Or 20K for amplifier and 3 - 5k on a dac. 

  I am too cheap for this. Would experience serious buyers remorse. 

[bluesman]

On 5/17/2019 at 4:01 AM, pdvm said:

I just hope some of the folks that buy 12000 dollar speaker cables will support the classical music scene, so it will stay affordable, and thus alive.

(Seriously, what will happen when the current popularity of Mahler/Bruckner/Shostakovich wanes, and even those names won't be sufficient any more to ensure a full house? Where is your audience in 20-30 years, if you don't draw young people to the concert hall now? Off topic, but I think about that stuff a lot)

Actually, it's not at all off topic and it's well worth discussing.  Many of the people who buy high end audio support the arts by buying high end, high quality program material - and many also patronize live music venues of all kinds.  And many of the young 'uns whose systems center around their phones (both mobile and head) are, in fact, attending more and more arts events of all kinds.

 

From US Trends in Arts Attendance, we learn that

 

• "between 2012 and 2017, the share of adults who attended visual or performing arts activities grew by 3.6 percentage points to 132.3 million people, representing nearly 54 percent of the U.S. adult population. Performing arts events range from dance to theater performances while visual arts events include going to art museums, galleries, and craft festivals
• For most art forms on the survey, including musicals and non-musical plays, classical music, jazz, ballet and other dance performances, opera, and Latin/Spanish/salsa music, attendance rates held steady despite a five percent growth in the adult population over the five-year period. Therefore, the number of adults attending those events increased over the time period studied
•  29 percent increase in the rate of attendance at these types of activities is reflected in greater participation by demographic subgroups—specifically, African Americans, Asian Americans, and 25-54-year-olds".

 

Art and culture (like language) evolve through use.  So it may well be that Mahler et al will go the way of Gregorian chants as civilization embraces and supports change in the arts. I suspect few miss Pachelbel's presence in major concert halls.  But those who buy high end audio pieces have to be listening to something!  The average person between 16 and 64 in the 20 largest music markets worldwide listens to music 18 hours a week, and 87% of them use on-demand streaming services.  Local music genres are flourishing:  66% of consumers in Japan listen to J-pop, 69% of consumers in France listen to Variété Française, and 55% in Brazil listen to Música popular brasileira.  Even better, 96% of consumers in China and 96% in India listen to licensed music.  This is all quite positive and reassuring.

 

The 2018 music industry sales stats show that 25% of revenues came from physical media, 12% digital, 47% streaming, 14% performance rights, and 2% synchronization.    The last category is fascinating and important to this discussion - it represents "...investment record companies are making in their offerings to artists, in their people and in their global presence. Record companies are investing more than one-third of their global revenues, or US$5.8 billion, in Artists & Repertoire (or A&R) and marketing each year, to break, develop and support artists".

 

So I'm not worried about the future of the arts because it's strong and growing worldwide. I'm also not concerned that those who buy $1500 headphones would have bought more music programming if they'd spent less on their cans, because I don't think it's true.  I'm not worried about Shostakovich, who replaced Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev in the hearts and minds of many Russians after they fled to the US.  And I'm not worried about the younger generations because they're listening to more music and attending more and more art events every year.  It's not 1950 any more, and it's not going to be 2019 all that long.  If we don't adapt, we'll atrophy.

[fas42]

14 hours ago, Blackmorec said:

Thanks for your reply. A friend of mine is one of the founders of a well known company manufacturing high-end hi-fi electronics..,..amps, pre-amps etc.   His biggest cause of failure, by far?    ‘Contact enhancers’ applied to sockets and contacts.  Stabilator 22A may work, may be chemically stable over time and at elevated temperatures and may not migrate to places to don’t want it.....but a great many contact enhancers end up doing far more than desired and end up being very noisy.  Metal fatigue, oxidation, non-gas-tight crimps,  poor mechanical design that impacts contact integrity, materials chosen without reference to sonics....just a few of the problems with cheap RCA sockets 

 

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 ...

 

Quote

Gold has several characteristics that make it ideal for electrical connectors. Firstly due to its electron configuration it does react with other materials or gases at mildly elevated temperatures...so it remains pure in a connection

Second, its quite soft, so high spots wear down and bed-in to make better, high-percentage surface area connections. 

Third because its surface remains clean and smooth it has the feeling of being self lubricating, which means connectors can be mechanically very tight without the connection seizing.  So ultimately a well made gold connection can be tighter, with better surface contact and no degradation. 

 

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.

[emcdade]

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.

[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.

[Albrecht]

On 5/15/2019 at 12:46 PM, bluesman said:

Let's go back to basics: the traditional business definition of value is "worth divided by cost".  Before we can decide what cost is reasonable, we each have to decide what's worth what to us.  If worth were determined only on the basis of sound quality, I suspect there'd be far fewer 5 and 6 figure products and systems in audio.  The worth of some high end pieces might reasonably be related to the cost of design, creation, manufacture etc - but a lot of it seems to be driven by hype as much as by its actual cost basis.

 

Many buyers of high priced equipment seem to find value in elements of ownership that have nothing at all to do with listening to and enjoying music.  Some are buying (or trying to buy) the adoration of their jealous friends and neighbors or a false sense of accomplishment.  Others think they're buying the appearance of wealth, taste, etc.  And yet others are simply distracting themselves (at least temporarily) from ego-dystonic thoughts and feelings.

 

More than a few owners of high end equipment of all kinds believe that having bought it proves them to have superior knowledge, skill etc.  Of course, driving a McLaren doesn't mean you're a world class driver.

 

Those who hear (or think they hear) a difference and believe it and/or some other perceived benefit to be worth the cost are being true to the above definition of value - they simply have a skewed sense of worth.  As most such determinations are based on subjective observations lacking widespread agreement, many (most?) of us choose not to spend $100k on a pair of speakers because our sense of worth tells us the cost is too high for the benefits we would realize from ownership.

1st, - there is no objective measure of value in the paradigm of subjectivity. All (relevant) knowledge can only ever be a-posteriori. The determination of value is based on good sound which for many, - (not all), - is toward the faithful representation of the recording. And that to a large part, - (how faithful), - is based entirely on EXPERIENCE. EXPERIENCE is KNOWLEDGE.  The person who goes to 1000 concerts, and listens to hundreds of different violins, choral arrangements, - (for example), - and then in turn, - listens to 1000s of different playback systems, - is the person who is BEST able to determine the VALUE of any playback system. As we have seen time again, - this is not necessarily based on price, but how the flaws of some components are mitigated by strengths of others in the overall system. It is a Gestalt.

 

Musicians who are audiophiles, also have some very good knowledge about what value is.

 

There are many reasons why a certain component may be very expensive. To ignore the cost of the parts, time to build, etc, ... adds to the ignorance. In my experience, - I've found that the most expensive components do NOT yield the greatest performance value anyway.

 

[Albrecht]

On 5/18/2019 at 2:17 AM, DuckToller said:

 

A well meant explanation.
Please reflect, that there is no equal distribution of your 3 examples in any modern society.
Giving their "assumed" opinion about the value of 1500 $ headphones approximately the same importance, even when audiophilism is a hobby with an instrinsic need to spend money, is obviously not that school of statistics I have visited once in higher education.

Imho, the lion's share of audiophile hobbyists have serious concerns when it comes to spend a grand or more, and that is the basis for Crenca's reflection of value in this hobby.

Best, Tom

Very excellent points: thanks

 

Ever since the early 2000s, - the "standard" to beat, and the "state of the art" was Ed Meitner's $12000 SACD/CD player. This is likely one of the best players at the time, and perhaps still. There was a reason why it was ubiquitous at shows. Namely, - it showed us that redbook level performance could greatly be improved upon, and hitherto before, - SACD wasn't necessarily "better." Even today, - this (expensive, and some would say very expensive) player stands tall as one of the best, - if not the. It is much cheaper than other players, (some of which have high value and do perform quite well), that do not perform as well, - or are poorly matched to other components.

 

Personally, - I could never afford one of Meitner's players, - yet that doesn't stop me, (I have heard several of Ed's players in what is likely hundreds of times), from making a determination of the VALUE of the work. It's also why the words, - "sounds almost as good as a Meitner" is said everywhere. There are so many players out there that are cheaper than a Meitner that sound great for sure, - but there are very few shared opinions that they equal the Meitner in performance.

 

Cheers,

 

[lucretius]

On 5/18/2019 at 3:45 AM, Blackmorec said:

Gold has several characteristics that make it ideal for electrical connectors. Firstly due to its electron configuration it does react with other materials or gases at mildly elevated temperatures...so it remains pure in a connection

Second, its quite soft, so high spots wear down and bed-in to make better, high-percentage surface area connections. 

Third because its surface remains clean and smooth it has the feeling of being self lubricating, which means connectors can be mechanically very tight without the connection seizing.  So ultimately a well made gold connection can be tighter, with better surface contact and no degradation.  

 

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.

[Blackmorec]

15 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.

Surely that depends on the quality of the connectors you’re using? I’ve never had this problem, although it has to be said that I’m nothing “constantly connecting/reconnecting”  I can imagine that for such applications, where the plugs are perpetually in motion, gold is probably not the best element to use. 

[Albrecht]

15 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.

And to the point... is that if there's $5000 worth of single crystal gold or gold plating in a $7000 component, - it can be of high value, - but still not "perform" (with faithful sound reproduction) as well as a $4000 component. But, on the other hand, it still has $5000 worth of gold in it. To cavalierly dismiss it outright as a "rip off" or "scam" is not doing the research....

[lucretius]

2 minutes ago, Albrecht said:

And to the point... is that if there's $5000 worth of single crystal gold or gold plating in a $7000 component, - it can be of high value, - but still not "perform" (with faithful sound reproduction) as well as a $4000 component. But, on the other hand, it still has $5000 worth of gold in it. To cavalierly dismiss it outright as a "rip off" or "scam" is not doing the research....

 

Hmm ... point me to the cables/connectors with $5,000 worth of gold.

[lucretius]

6 minutes ago, Blackmorec said:

Surely that depends on the quality of the connectors you’re using? I’ve never had this problem, although it has to be said that I’m nothing “constantly connecting/reconnecting”  I can imagine that for such applications, where the plugs are perpetually in motion, gold is probably not the best element to use. 

 Yes. The nickel plating may be really thin but on better connectors it's thicker.  Gold-plating on connectors is always very thin.

[Albrecht]

5 minutes ago, lucretius said:

 

Hmm ... point me to the cables/connectors with $5,000 worth of gold.

I was just using it as a point of analogy, - to illustrate that there are many high value components out there that have very expensive parts inside and many of these parts are much more expensive and are part of the reason why the overall component is more expensive. No matter what you may think of the performance (and the application) of Wilson's $40,000 speakers, = their cost to build is more than other company's $40,000 speakers.

[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. 

[John Dyson]

1 hour ago, crenca said:

 

 

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.

 

I basically agree with the statement above about '1 man shop' -- excuse me -- 'like h*ll'.   Sometimes I think that people feel like the world should be like the days where Edison invented the 'light bulb', 'phonograph', 'movie stuff', etc....  Heh...  That thought comes from people who didn't know what Edison did.  He was one of the biggest exploitation experts ever...   Nowadays, people workign at a company, patent is gotten in the person's (group's) name, and the assigned to a company.  Edison skipped  a step and just got the patent himself...  Lightbulb?  Oh, you mean the 'Edison' screw base (probably designed by one of his employees.)  Ford loved Edison, not necessarily for his inventiveness, but his ability to exploit people.  Edison was a really, really effective marketeer and figure head.  If he understood what he was doing -- he would have agreed with Tesla about AC.

 

There is really very little 'individual' inventor stuff going on, and when there is -- it is often one-off.  When working (at the AT&T/Bell Labs location where I worked) we had some of the rock-solid brightest people to develop products -- and it always required more than a few people to do useful things.   If my satellite project wasn't quashed (effectively by me -- too early for the technology), we would have needed at least a couple of  departmental groups to do the job (a department might be 5-10 supervisory groups of 5-10 people, each.)  That wouldn't include the work to get the launch vehicle, put together the origination facilities, etc....  Actual innovation and design  takes a lot of time, a lot of people and a lot of money. (Each one of the 10-20 analog developers would likely laugh -- the cry -- at the antics of the snake oil salespeople in the audiophile world.)

 

Some people enjoy listening to music, playing with their equipment, (those are cool), HAVING nice equipment (greed), and SHOWING nice equipment (pride), and spending lots of money for a small marginal gain (or perhaps sometimes not as good) (IQ problems.)  Well -- not true, much of it is about ego...   I know -- I used to do 7 figures from time to time.  One doesn't 'feel' the money, and something goes haywire with personal priorities, then the person starts doing strange things...

 

Nothing wrong with having nice things, nothing wrong with the ego boost (really), but best not to confuse that stuff with technical accuracy or quality.  When doing that, the whole hobby might actually be more related to personal completeness.

 

John

[bluesman]

3 hours ago, Albrecht said:

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

 

And that's exactly what the "value formula" is telling you.

value = worth / cost

Value is subjective, i.e. there's no universal unit of reference against which to measure it.  But it's an ordinal (i.e. rankable) measure with categorical objectivity that varies from person to person.  Your ranked list of values for everything in your world is your value scale, and you place everything that comes into your life somewhere on that scale to decide whether and how avidly to pursue it.  Each of us (if not totally insane) devotes our resources to the things we value most highly.  So whether or not to buy something is an objective decision that's based in large part on perceived value measured on your personal value scale.

 

When we buy (or marry or eat or move to....) A rather than B, we're valuing A over B because we perceive it to have greater worth relative to its cost.  Many Americans today (sadly) have to apportion their money between food and medicine. They do so by deciding which is worth more to them, hunger or their symptoms and/or progression of disease.  Do you make your kid go to a state college so you can buy a Benz or spend the money on an Ivy League education for him / her and a Prius for you? It depends on your value scale.

 

3 hours ago, Albrecht said:

The determination of value is based on good sound which for many, - (not all), - is toward the faithful representation of the recording. And that to a large part, - (how faithful), - is based entirely on EXPERIENCE. EXPERIENCE is KNOWLEDGE.  The person who goes to 1000 concerts, and listens to hundreds of different violins, choral arrangements, - (for example), - and then in turn, - listens to 1000s of different playback systems, - is the person who is BEST able to determine the VALUE of any playback system.

 

You need only read competing reviews of the same concert to realize how much the same experience can differ from person to person.  Some highly trained and experienced musicians and acousticians love the same concert hall that others hate.  Some of us prefer the sound of a Steinway to the same size Bosendorfer or Yamaha while others do not.  There are many ways to temper the scale while tuning a piano, e.g. equal tempered vs well tempered.  Players, conductors, and highly schooled listeners may have their own preferences.  But most people (probably including many ASers) do not know that all pianos are not tuned the same.  Further, the same instrument will sound quite different depending on how it was tuned, yet it's "in tune" regardless of the chosen temperament.  Experience alone is not knowledge.

 

The determination of value in audio is (apart from non-sonic considerations) largely based on how you hear things, how you define SQ, and how much of your resource base you're willing to devote to those SQ characteristics you value most highly.  As no audio reproduction is 100% faithful to the source, each of us therefore determines value in SQ by the cost of acceptable compromise.  Our personal preferences shape our audio value scales.  Some will give up extended high end for more dramatic bass.  Others want higher SPL to the exclusion of the most precise sonic image / soundstage.  Quads and KLH 9s are not valued highly by Deadheads, and few Haydn fans buy Cerwin Vega speakers.  But none of us will value a system highly if the cost of ownership exceeds what we're willing to pay for what it will bring us.  And none of us (again, if sane) would pay a lot for a system that lacked a sonic quality we value highly, even if we could well afford it and it's very highly rated.

 

Experience is only knowledge if it results in durable education and retention of factual information gained from that experience.  Discerning but impecunious concertgoers will assign their own values to the characteristics of a playback system, so they can attain the best possible compromise for them and their budgets. No one can determine the value of a playback system for you except you.