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In Reply to: RE: I am sure there is some lesson to be learned posted by caligari on April 14, 2014 at 00:08:10
I think they wanted prospective buyers to view the Certus as a TOTL ideal, while they continue(d) to market and support their rim drive option ("Verus?") and their belt-drive line of tt's, which were much less expensive than the Certus, while the Verus option could be applied to the belt-drive tt's. They tried to "do it all" in other words. The path they took is now to some degree followed by VPI, which also now has all those options. I hope VPI will not stumble on that road.
Or maybe it's just that Chris got tired of the business. I'd loved to see and hear a Certus in action.
Follow Ups:
> I'd loved to see and hear a Certus in action.
Do you go to audio shows? You can see a lot of exotic turntables at audio shows. The thing that impresses me most is that none of them sound better than my own and most of them don't sound quite as good. That's the best part of going to audio shows for me. ;-)
See you at AXPONA Chicago.
Best regards,
John Elison
I've been on both sides of the numerous shows, the consumer side and the manufacturer side. I can honestly say that I've never heard a system at a show that comes anywhere close to the equivalent systems people have in their homes. Shows are not about the best attainable sound, they are about approximating sonic characteristics of components and showing product. They are about introducing components to consumers, dealers and distributors. Letting people get up close and personal with products.
Typical room conditions at shows are absolutely terrible for listening to or evaluating equipment. It is a manufacturer's nightmare.
Mr. Elison, after hearing you describe the quality sound you get from your system and the ability to dig out details when comparing cartridges, I would be surprised if any table performed as good as your table under show conditions.
Its convenient for those in the hifi biz to blame hotel rooms (including the adequately large rooms I've heard some rotten sounding megabuck systems playing in which had multi-thousands of bucks worth of room treatments placed by the manufacturers/dealers) for bad sound at shows. I've heard plenty of rooms at shows that had good sound coming from setups ranging from downright cheap to waaaay past my financial limit.It always seems silly to me when people blow off how something sounds at shows due to "room conditions", as if our own listening rooms are all acoustic gems, not to mention plenty of reviewers' listening rooms.
I've been to four hifi shows in NYC. Of course there were exceptions, but the overwhelming majority of rooms that hyper-expensive products were playing in were at least adequate to the task and AFAIK as acceptable as the listening rooms of plenty of hifi reviewers and many of our own. I came away from all four shows feeling a lot of those very expensive hifi products weren't even remotely worth the asking price. Actually I felt many were sucker bait. Conversely, my impressions of most relatively inexpensive setups was that they sounded at the least worth the asking price, and quite a few shamed a number of the high priced spreads. Bear in mind I'm not talking about situations like humongus spkrs. set up in tiny rooms where they have no chance to display what they're capable of.
Naturally its best to judge hifi when listening in a room with great acoustics, and there's no substitute for auditions in our own homes. But to automatically discount what we hear at shows seems ridiculous to me. If you're gonna take your products to a show, set 'em up and play music thru 'em rather than just have a visual display, spare me the bullshit excuses. Think your products can't sound good in a hotel room/hall? Then either don't bring them to a hifi show or don't have people listening to music in your room.
Edits: 04/14/14
Rick W: "If you're gonna take your products to a show, set 'em up and play music thru 'em rather than just have a visual display, spare me the bullshit excuses."
Agree.
While I tend to be sympathetic to your arguments I'm also sympathetic to those manufacturers/retailers who find themselves in terrible rooms and it's too late to back out. I've also heard systems that sound bad on the opening day of a show and -- for whatever reasons -- just fine on the closing day. Too bad for the people who weren't able to give them a second chance (not to mention the manufacturers).
I've always made 2 or 3 visits. Sometimes setup on the first day is rushed due to any number of things, and exhibitors may make adjustments for the 2nd day. If I either really like what I hear in a room or think a very high priced system should sound much better, I may go three times.
'Course some of those visits may be very short if each time I go to a room they're playing either basically sound effects to demonstrate frequency extremes or audiophile pap :-)
I've been told by an exhibitor that his AC was sagging greatly with every room on a floor hosting a high-end system. I wonder what the sonic impact of that was.
The shows I've attended have been at the Hilton and the Waldorf. They were big shows in big hotels, loaded with hifi setups playing music, loaded with guests using AC, loaded with running appliances used by the hotels.Funny how some rooms in the same hotels with the same AC hassles sounded damn good and others didd't, and the good sounding rooms weren't all small setups (as opposed to "current hungry" systems).
Many of the exhibitors who find one excuse or another for bad sound are not show novices. They know what to expect. Just as I mentioned the elaborate room treatments some of 'em employ, I've seen some very expensive line "conditioners" and power re-generators employed in rooms with systems that sounded either bad, mediocre, or nowhere near worth the $$$$$$$.
I don't buy into the excuses. If its such a shitty place to showcase SOUND, why the hell do they play music in their rooms and why are they charging us to listen?
Edits: 04/14/14
As a consumer who values gear that ignores the differences between perfect power and the ugly type of power I'll surely see at my outlets I'd say this type of real world performance evaluation is a great opportunity for hearing the truth for yourself.
I'm surprised the manufacturers with the types of designs which only perform well under optimal conditions even display at all.
Such a rough world when to make sales you must show your equipment under real world conditions and the gear miraculously can't achieve the performance it does under ideal lab conditions. Wah! I'm with you Rick.
Well, if true it would affect different rooms differently since each design would have a different tolerance for it. Some power supplies can operate on a wide range and some go way out of spec if the power droops by 5-10VAC.
We can give all the explanations and rationale we want. He's clueless.
If equal parts of arrogance, condescension and ad hominem guaranteed achieving good sound at shows.........exhibitors would be lining up to hire you as their setup man.
nt
You obviously are clueless about what manufacturers are faced with at shows. No sense in even trying to explain how #$^@$* you sound.
nt
Well, once you reach a certain level of performance, it just doesn't get any better. There really aren't any turntables that sound better than mine. I'm sure there are many that sound just as good and there are many that sound different, but once you reach a certain level of performance, it just doesn't get any better -- only different.
Best regards,
John Elison
I'm not sure improvements can't be made, but the better you get, the more subtle the improvements. It becomes the point of very highly diminishing returns on investment.
You've sort of explained why, after one trip to RMAF, I have chosen not to attend any audio show beyond driving distance, which fortunately for me still allows me to attend the Capital Audio Fest, each of the last 3 years. And the reason is that I can tell very little about a component in the context of an audio showroom. For example, how do you really know that no turntable you've ever heard at a show is as good as your own, since most likely no other part of the system you are hearing has much in common with your system? Perhaps you can do that. I cannot unless the turntable is truly awful. Same goes for cartridges, interconnects, AC cords, phono stages, CDPs, etc. On the other hand, I agree that one can make a pretty good judgement about speakers even at an audio show, by comparing one room to another, etc. It's a lot of work. At RMAF, I quickly learned that some highly touted and very expensive speakers that I previously admired from afar were not worth the lusting for. That was therapeutic.
Edits: 04/14/14
The main reason I go to audio shows is to get together with friends and to see people I haven't seen in awhile.
Best regards,
John Elison
Great reason. After a while, that's why I went.
Edits: 04/14/14
I fully agree, that WAS the best benefit of my one visit to RMAF.
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