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In Reply to: RE: Perhaps you might try posted by E-Stat on July 05, 2015 at 07:51:14
what I am saying.
If in 2000 the year I spend $20K and in 2016 I spend $20K, I am getting worse performance for the same cost.
This is all a racket!
Follow Ups:
...mostly because the goal posts keep changing for the industry.
Recession, depressions, devaluations, pressure to put out new products, competition (which on the whole, in my view, makes things worse rather than better...everybody says they're better when they're not, and prices increase for the stuff that really is better while most money goes into mediocre stuff) and the move to PC audio, ipod like equipment, and streaming technology, reduces the actual performance because the focus is less on good sound but on convenience, archiving, etc.
But this process started decades ago (with transistors, and CD, and think about how much money we, and the industry has spent trying to get those technologies to sound right).
The best system I ever had cost me around $12,000 in 1999 money, but it took a lot in terms of system matching, mods, etc., upgrades, buying and trying and selling, etc. before it reached that 'wow' factor. Unless you're really rich and have somebody do an install for you, the mods and the dedication to the hobby are the only way to get superior sound, whether now, 10 years ago, 30 years ago, etc.....
This is not a sustainable hobby, and it's not a sustainable industry. It's run by nuts for nuts.
Again, you are assuming that there is a strong price/performance correlation. There is not, especially once moving beyond mass market to specialist hifi.
It is probably true that the MATERIAL cost in a 20K system were relatively higher in 2000 than now because of inflation but that doesn't necessarily mean that it will result in a worse sound...it might, it might not (see again my comment about price/performance correlation).
Is it a racket if your manufacturing costs keep going up that you keep raising your prices to compensate (just, in fact to get the SAME profit?). You are actually making less money, adjusted to inflation, if you only increase your prices to keep the profit static. So you actually have to increase your prices ahead of inflation so that your profit margin increases so you can keep pace with inflation in other areas of your life (buying food, paying rent, going on vacation etc.)
So, naturally, if your budget is static at $20K then if you buy new you will get less for that money, at least in material terms. Sonically it is no guarantee of a drop or a gain.
The way most beat this is buying used and taking advantage of depreciation of formerly very expensive stuff.
..than they were 15 years ago, due to the explosion of the IT markets and the explosion of the 'world' economy since the 90s, when the Chinese got 'most favoured nation' status in the US and almost all remaining manufacturing moved there.
There is more than ever low performance low cost material being manufactured than ever before in the electronics industry, meaning the actual materials costs (supply of the raw materials is ultimately limited by actual availability and higher costs to mine, etc.) have increased on the whole.
At the retail level, only the very low volume stuff can be really good, and prices increase virtually exponentially with low volume (who can live on designing and manufacturing expensive pieces that only a few people buy? Almost no one.)
"At the retail level, only the very low volume stuff can be really good"
The deal is (IMHO) that to this day we still don't have a comprehensive handle on the factors and their limits that are necessary to control to insure the best listening experience. Bummer.
The implementation is a level below that and really should be driven by it. Currently that is not typically the case so our systems tend to be "tuned" rather than "optimized" because we don't know what optimization means. It has nothing directly to do with production volume.
Rick
It is unfortunate that the review magazines (SP in particular) tend to think so little in terms of system synergy and review components as such.
But this is market and cost-driven (SP for example, won't review anything that isn't available in a dealer network, for advertising reasons IMO).
Consumers then come to think of components as better than other components at what they do (in traditional component categories), when everything should really be designed with the whole chain in mind.
The market has moved towards swiss army knives of audio to save costs,
True optimization is expensive because 1) each listening room is different 2) every recording is different 3) ears vary 4) only the super rich can afford optimization.
It's what keeps people on the 'upgrade mill', in addition to just getting tired of the way their mid fi electronics are reproducing the recording.
By the way, in our focus on the reproduction, we forget that the recording and mastering is also crucial. Give me a great recording on a boombox ANY DAY over a poor recording on the world's most expensive stereo.
And it does, indirectly, have to do with production volume. Everyone's tastes, ears, and rooms are different, just as every piece of music is different. Making products that reproduce them all with reasonable facsimile is truly an engineering miracle, which is only made 'affordable' with mass production.
Even the most expensive amplifier uses production parts, not one-offs.
"It is unfortunate that the review magazines (SP in particular) tend to think so little in terms of system synergy and review components as such."
Well, in a way I think they're kinda stuck. The potential field configurations are almost limitless and the device I/O's are poorly specified especially for out-of-band susceptibility and emission and longitudinal currents.
On the other hand for users, say me for instance, it's a different story. If I am changing just one link in the signal chain and anticipate relative stability in the rest of the system's environment then it's a matter of finding the best fit for my particular case. My dealer allows trials and when I find a good fit, I keep it. Maybe crude but It has proven quite effective...
Rick
"you are assuming that there is a strong price/performance correlation. There is not,
Amen!
Rick
And that equation changes over time as designers learn more and have access to better parts.
The speakers I bought this year for $4500 sound a lot better than the Snell B's I bought in 1992 for the same price. The W4S STP preamp I bought last year for $2k beats the snot out of the Classe DR6 I bought in 1994 for double the money. The amps I bought 2 years ago for $2k sound a lot better than the ones I bought for $7500 in 1993. The turntable I bought for $3k in 2011 sounds better than the TNT/ET2 I bought in 1995 for about $5500.
By my math, I have upgraded every major component in my system in modern times with components that are, at best, the same cost or as little as 1/3 the price I paid for the components long ago. And, my system sounds better than I ever dared to hope for when I started out. The common thread is that is that being retired means that I have to be more careful what I buy than I was before. Doubling or tripling the cost of components is a good way to go broke for only a marginal return. System setup often matters more than the cost of a component in getting good sound.
Everything is going to the dogs
What amps , what speakers ..?
I bought a pair of Genesis 6.1 speakers from Audiogon for $4500 including delivery. The Snell B's I had before are still fantastic speakers, but the metal dome tweeters can't compete with the round ribbon tweeters on the 6.1s. The Snells 10" woofer and subwoof can play low in the 20s for bass but each Genesis has a pair of aluminum 12" servo-controlled woofers that can be as clean as your room lets you play.
The amps I have now are a pair of B-stock (show demo) D-Sonic 600w mono-blocks that double at 4 ohms. I didn't audition these - I bought them on a hunch that they could fill some pretty big footsteps left empty when my MA-1 100 w/channel OTLs went belly up. I just flat out did not have the money to get them repaired. The 1200 watt D-Sonics were highly praised in a 2012 6Moons review and I threw the dice and ordered a pair of their baby brothers for around $1800 shipped. They did not go effortlessly into my system, although they had some stellar qualities right out of the box. They were so close to sounding good enough that I became obsessed with getting the maximum performance out of them before giving up and reselling them. It seems that they were far more transparent than my aging OTLs had been late in their life, and they were showing me problems that had been masked. Determined to give them the best chance to show what they could do, I read everything I could find on-line about class D amps, including interviews with some of the all-star amp designers who were dabbling in them like Merril Audio, Jeff Rowland, Steve McCormack to see what the 6-figure amps have. In all cases the class D amps seem to respond more than other amp classes to audiophile fundamentals: Footers, platforms, EMI/RF abatement, power cords, cables supported off the floor, etc. The common denominator was that small-signal interference such as EMI and vibration-spawned noise was far more detrimental to Class D amps and must be prioritized before further component sound quality can truly show its full potential.
Since I have upgraded my system as redically as I have, it is unfair to attempt to describe the sound of the Atma-sphere amps. They never had the footers and maple platforms or all the brass or the clean power or the benefit of properly dressed cables; it's just not fair. I hope that I will have the money to bring them back to life someday, but the rest of the system has become even more transparent and it is telling me to upgrade my power conditioning. I am waiting for a new UberBuss that will cost me about a hundred dollars more than I paid for my first power conditioner - an original Tice Power Block that cost a grand.
The point I am trying to make is that the strategy of throwing more and more money at your system in an eternal cycle is not the only way to improve your sound. The improvements in material science, manufacturing and process improvements and a lot of creative designers plus a thriving on-line marketplace for used equipment make it possible to actually improve your system despite the reduced budget that retirement brings, and to bring hope to others who are dreading the day when their old gear needs replacement. The world has moved on and I'm glad it has.
Everything is going to the dogs
...but I am not one to thinks that 'things are always better than they were, because now is now and then was then' - half of the pressure in the industry to change technologies comes from factors other than 'improving sound' - like convenience, archiving, energy efficiency, etc....
And, comparing new equipment to 20 year old equipment is fraught with difficulties, leaving aside that aural memory is extremely short, the Classe cannot possibly sound as good now as it did then (even electronics age).
Also, maybe your OTL were not matched to the right speakers. The research you did on the Class Ds, would have worked for the OTLs as well in terms of system matching (although precious few speakers match well with this technology).
I'd be surprised when much of anything made today still works in 20 years.
Hell, we might not even be using A/C anymore then.
The Genesis was originally a 10K speaker , OTL's can be pretty colored , their sonics are very dependent on the impedance curve of the speakers being used , because of their high output impedance , so no surprise their ....
Regards
I am getting worse performance for the same cost.
Only if you choose poorly.
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