The Great Wall of Better Audio

[John Dyson]

3 hours ago, gmgraves said:

Mea Culpa. You're right, I did miss that previous post. Still GUTB's rant is without any real value because his premise is wrong. In audio as in so many things, price dos not always equate to quality.

(I cut some of your quote.)

I agree 150% with your statement.  Adding my opinion -- when claiming that setup A is better than setup B because of higher price, that is almost like an appeal to authority like:  'my setup is better than your setup' (my daddy can beat up your daddy) or j.random.expert agrees with my position, while not actually being in the argument.

 

Price does not equal quality -- many times, it does purchase more elegant packaging, sometimes better irrelevant specs, and sometimes actually slightly better quality in some ways.   Audio *electronics* is pretty much perfected WRT what perfect human hearing really needs, and transducers aren't too far behind, but there are still probably some marginally superior (but very esoteric) transducer/mechanical devices like turntables for a lot of money.  Most differences seem now to be a matter of preference/taste -- for example, absolutely 'flat' headphones would probably not sound really good to most people.

 

Some of the hobby enthusiasts go off-the-rails because they don't know where to go, and are influenced by snake-oil.  Sometimes, where there can be MAJOR improvement, it is relatively ignored because the real/actual improvements are not elegant.

 

My opinion is that too often, elegance (and associated hucksterism/snakeoil/etc) wins out over quality from the standpoint of the audio hobbiest.   Flashy adds win, sophistry/fake-misleading technical claims -- those also win.

 

This 'problem' isnt' all bad -- in a perverse way, it shows that the available audio equipment quality is actually pretty good.  How does it get better?  That answer is less a matter of 'equipment', but more of the quality of the consumer material itself (I tend to focus on the older stuff -- like 1965-1990 timeframe material.)

 

John