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It costs a fortune for better sound quality. Everything costs a lot and there's no clear scientific evidence that can prove for better sound. Yet a few wealthy audiophiles are willing to purchase them and appreciate them.
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The higher priced stuff -should- sound better (witness the Recommended Components listing in some magazines) but that's not necessarily the case.
Yup, some of the stuff is way over priced in my opinion but nothing evil about trying get what the market will bear. And this market is full of folks with very very deep pockets.
And "value" is relative. If you think the very costly stuff is overpriced, don't buy it! Simple.
As in other 'high-priced' items.......
I heard someone talking about the clothing industry and was remarking that Women's Clothing on Average costs 2 to 3 times more than Men's Clothing and was wondering why? The answer, according to the Retail Clothing expert is that Women will pay more than Men....
Cut-Throat
I don't know if it's still common practice to charge women more for dry cleaning.
Furniture also has a huge markup but you can usually see and feel the differences in high quality vs the more main stream department store furniture. It's all very high margin stuff though.
I have been trying to get the best sound I could afford for 50 years. This is what I have noticed:
Gear that will fully deliver the musical experience has become much cheaper. A Mac Mini driving a Mytek Brooklyn and HD800 gives a deep experience. I can listen a little longer and a little deeper by outputting the Mytek to a Leben 300 (I am so little interested in gear I would have to get up and look, to see which Leben 300 it is; it is the one that does not hum). The Leben sounds great driving ancient Rosinante Signatures, but when I really listen I use cans.
An iPhone driving a dragonfly and good portable phones will give you a remarkable experience of the music for what it costs.
If you want speakers it will cost you a lot more to get the musical experience.
Systems that move a lot of air in large spaces with good acoustics are a great experience for music that you want loud, but it probably has as much to do with the space and power was the gear. This will help dance music and other kinds of music where the experience is as much physical as auditory. Really getting a kick in the solar plexus costs a lot of money. That's fun but I can satisfy the need by going to live performances.
If are interested in things like the difference in sound in the great violins that many professional violinists play, you will probably need really highest end gear from your AC power source to the room. That level of detail is hard to come by.
I heard a system once, playing vinyl, in which the illusion was so perfect that one could tell where Louis Armstrong was standing and how tall he was. I think there are relatively few recordings that have that kind of detail, and it is a kind of parlor trick. I think the turntable in that system cost more than any system i have ever owned.
Getting to interested in the details of the sound will distract you from listening to the music.
> > And "value" is relative. If you think the very costly stuff is overpriced, don't buy it! Simple.
BINGO! Give that man a cigar. Just as with artwork, designer clothing, cars, food, and pretty much every other item that exists, different people have an endless list of reasons (or excuses/justifications) to buy what they buy.
For really expensive stuff, status and exclusivity are big factors, but ones to which many people don't want to admit, even to themselves. So they often invent other reasons that sound more acceptable.
The other thing to consider is there is rarely just ONE factor that drives a decision to purchase expensive equipment. There may well be differences in quality, longevity, warranty, appearance, and who knows, even sound quality! The mix of factors is going to be unique to each buyer.
As long as fraud on the part of the seller is not involved and the buyer isn't messing up other people's lives (like leaving his kids shoeless), it really doesn't bother me that wildly expensive gear is out there.
"It costs a fortune for better sound quality."
Not necessarily. Solving a ground loop in the system might be free and give tons of perceived performance boost.
Finding the balance between utilizing your technical acumen to optimize and get more bang for the buck as opposed to throwing godlike resources at the problem and never having to worry about optimizing anything since either the gear is so good or the team setting it up does all the work for you.
In my case I spend very little since that's all I have available but spend more time stressing over how bad it turned out. :) Though I must say I have learned tons about optimizing low cost gear ever since the first time I decided to try and get pc audio going on in my system and all the problems that came up the first time I hooked my stereo to my Pro Audio Spectrum 16 to hear Doom cranked to 11 back in the day.
yes, it is similar to alchemy/
I've heard it said; "That you've got to spend a lot of money in this hobby, to learn it doesn't cost a lot of money".
There were some great speakers and amplifiers in the 1950s and 1960s..... that are not that inferior to what is made today.......But, we keep upgrading and upgrading and sometimes we take some steps backwards.
Cut-Throat
"That you've got to spend a lot of money in this hobby, to learn it doesn't cost a lot of money"
I like this statement. It could be mostly true to many highend accessories. Though some good highend gears are still very expensive and I can't deny there's money involved for building better performance audio product. :)
It costs peanuts for better sound quality. Everything is getting cheaper and there's more and more scientific evidence that the sound is getting better. Most people these days can afford devices that give them sound quality unheard of 10 years ago.
Now everyone can appreciate high end audio.
http://mqnplayer.blogspot.co.uk/
antagonistic whining about the cost of some audio gear?
It's not just "gee, I don't understand why", but the root cause is based upon "evil" or "they just believe in snake oil" or "they have more money than sense".
If you don't hear or value differences others hear, don't buy that stuff!
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I would consider the Schiit gear to be budget, yet great sound!
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"Humility is the true mark of genius. Just get used to it."
-Anonymous
I recommend visiting a bricks and mortar audio shop and listen to audio set-ups of various price points in order to hear how lower-cost systems sound vs. higher cost configurations. It can be a real ear and mind opener in terms of appreciating price to performance cost ratio factors.
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