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In Reply to: RE: TAS serves up another crock of cognitive dissonance. posted by ark0884 on March 20, 2008 at 07:43:46
“The Be 20's that were reviewed by CM and featured on the TAS cover is our flagship, top - of - the line, product that we believe competes effectively with loudspeakers costing 2 to 3 times as much.”
Should your belief prove to be accurate then I applaud your efforts! A $16K speaker offering the same sonic performance as speakers approaching $50K gets Usher close to what I call the “Hafler Effect.” You may recall that in the late 1970s David Hafler introduced a small, nondescript preamp (DH-101). The unit retailed for $299.00 ($199.00 kit form).
Its performance embarrassed many hi-end audio “engineers” of that era, sending them back to their drawing boards mumbling, “How’d he do that?” Suddenly, anyone could partake of the hi-end without suffering financial difficulties. This was unprecedented. Audiophiles could benefit mightily from more Hafler moments.
If a speaker designer were to tell me he’d built the best floorstander on the market, and that it retailed for $50K, I wouldn’t be overly impressed. (Even if every high profile reviewer on the planet concurred.) After all, any designer worthy of the title should be capable of building a “world beater” with such a lavish budget as that. But let another designer come along offering the same sonic characteristics in a speaker costing about $15K and one can’t help but be impressed.
Yours is the sort of “giant killing” design philosophy that real-world audiophiles crave. Best of luck to Usher in future endeavors designed at knocking down price barriers.
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