"Rich Guys and Reviewers Running Amok in Hi-Fi"

[dtaylo1066]

Would you like to name high end audio companies whose innovations have trickled down to consumer audio? Wilson? Audioquest? Wavac? Koetsu?

Sony ES. Kind of did quite a bit for digital. Wadia. HK. Meridian. Krell. B&W.

 

[SIY]

Sony ES. Kind of did quite a bit for digital. Wadia. HK. Meridian. Krell. B&W.

Mixed bag there.

 

[raistlin65]

You can get a quality DAC for $300 from the likes of Topping

Why not ~$100
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/jds-labs-atom-dac-review.23701
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/schiit-modi-3-review-stereo-dac.18480/

Or how about $60 for a dongle that won't take up any room?
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...sonata-hd-pro-review-headphone-adapter.22625/

 

[JeffS7444]

If Doug Schneider feels so strongly about it, he should refuse free and indefinite-loan products, and "industry accommodation pricing" and acquire his review samples in the same manner as a typical end-user would.

I seem to recall that The Absolute Sound originally identified reviewers only by initials, apparently in an attempt to avoid preferential treatment from vendors: Not a bad idea, too bad it didn't last.

 

[MarkS]

winding the smooth mechanism of a Vacheron Constantin or Patek Philippe is an experience to be savored.

But could you identify a holy trinity movement blind, by winding feel alone? I have my doubts ...

 

[Old Listener]

The reviewer who wrote this article is very much part of the problem he discusses. I had a battle with him over his advocacy of Exogal, a totally failed product that was supposed to be run via apps. The apps disappeared necessitating the use of a cheap, plastic remote. Then Schroeder wrote a review of the remote recently on Dagogo. Who reviews remotes for an obsolete product that was never intended to have one? None of his reviews have any scientific data which he disparages. I had no idea of his history with this site and recommended that he read ASR in order to learn how to write a review. Needless to say, that didn’t go over well. But sometimes he is worth reading.

Doug Schroeder is not the guy (Doug Schneider) whose opinion piece is cited in the OP.

 

[Helicopter]

The excellent Chinese DAC implementation didn't trickle down from luxury brands. Topping and others have been the center of healthy competitive innovation.

 

[Gorgonzola]

It is lazy-minded to blame some mythical "rich fuck." There is no money to be made for most companies in the U.S. or Europe in producing low-cost hi-fi gear. Their lower cost products are offered to get consumers into the brand franchise. Their financial existence is grounded in selling higher-priced, higher-margin products rather than large amounts of mass-produced items.
.

That's right. It's not fair to castigate US and European makers for high priced products. The are simply priced out of the market for mass produced items by lower costs in places like China. More power to them if the can find willing niche buyers for their products. Higher price allow higher margins and shorter production runs

Shrewd the maker who pays $250 for a case machined from billet of aircraft-grade aluminum if he can charge $2500 more on account of it

 

[richard12511]

Some good points... The writer seems to be somewhat on the objective side of things, yet is obvious that the state of things is not sitting right with him - pls, feel free to remove if posted before or to correct if my impression is not accurate...


https://www.soundstagehifi.com/index.php/opinion/1573-rich-guys-and-reviewers-running-amok-in-hi-fi

Agreed with everything in that article. Almost all reviewers are tricked into thinking that more expensive always sound better, and thus they perpetuate the problem.

It's a runaway train. The best way to improve the subjective reviews of one's speaker is to simply raise the price. Take a competently engineered $2,000 stand mount that would get great reviews. Raise the price to $10,000 and the reviews will be outstanding. Raise the price to $50,000 and reviewers will be saying it's the best stand mount speaker they've ever heard. The recommendations get stronger and stronger, despite the value getting worse and worse, and this just encourages further price inflation.

I think we all underestimate the power of the placebo. For speakers, I truly believe that for most listeners(and reviewers) the placebo has more impact on the "quality" we hear than than any differences in objective performance. For electronics, it's 95%+ of what we hear.

 

[restorer-john]

Mixed bag there.

As an upper-tier of products, from a single company encompassing all aspects of HiFi, over a number of decades, there's no other brand to touch Sony and their ES gear of the 70s(Esprit), late 80s(ES) and into the early 90s (ES).

Not one other major Japanese brand had the manufacturing clout to do everything from SOTA turntables to loudspeakers, CD players to power amplifiers in their own factories- not farmed out to OEMs.

The trickle down technologies from Sony have shaped more of high fidelity than any other single brand in my opinion. They are single handedly responsible for the mass adoption of digital (CD) as they produced the chipsets and the low cost laser assemblies that Philips couldn't do well. Philips rode on the coat-tails of Sony from the get-go.

Sure the ES moniker has been cheapened to mean little in this day and age, but Sony did the world a favour when it was one of the very first to create a line of superlative products, priced reasonably for the level of engineering that was in them.

 

[restorer-john]

I had mistakenly assumed he was making those measurements.

That was painfully obvious in an interaction I had with him over incorrect terminology and errors in an amplifier review. He employs a "measurements guy" apparently.

 

[cochlea]

Rich Guys Run Amok would be a great name for a band.

 

[Joe Smith]

I've never had much interest in the high end, as there is so much good stuff and sound to be had for very little money these days. I get my fun from seeing how good it can get, without having to spend a lot, using a mix of affordable new and restored or perfectly fit vintage equipment. "Bragging rights" is kind of silly as almost none of my friends care about my hobbies. Sometimes, someone will say, "wow, that speaker sounds great" listening to my L series ADSs or "cool watch" re one of my Russian Vostoks, but that's about it.

 

[audio2design]

I am looking at the review and it is very certainly by Douglas Schroeder. I had a big argument with him about it on Audiogon. He is quite pompous.

The article that is the topic of this thread ....

. . Doug Schneider
[email protected]

.... and yes, Shroeder is pompous too, but then most are at Icanthearagon.

 

[Putter]

His schtick was that none of us are qualified to read frequency response measurements so we better not bother. I had not seen this side of him and as you, I thought I highly of him over the years. I had mistakenly assumed he was making those measurements. Turns out he just pays for that service for NRC to test so he doesn't have personal experience or involvement with those measurements which is part of the problem.

At least he does pay for frequency response measurements. As far as I'm concerned that is typically the only part of speaker reviews worth paying any attention to, well maybe a slight exaggeration. It's kind of funny that he considers that data to be incomprehensible and still pays for it.

Similar credit goes to Atkinson at Stereophile, notwithstanding the same nonsense that the article spotlights.

 

[MattHooper]

Doug is part of the problem he is talking about. He also has good bit of mistrust in measurements.

Wow, that sure doesn't match the Doug I know.

I'm not privy to whatever Amir has talked about with Doug so I wouldn't pronounce on that.

But it sure doesn't match the general tenor of what I'm familiar with. I've been acquainted with Doug (e.g. occaisional conversations over the last 20 years or so) and some members of the Soundstage crew over the years, and if there was an overriding theme from early conversations with Doug onward it was his appeal to the value and importance of measuring products, especially speakers.

I'm sort of surprised anyone thought Doug was measuring them himself when it's long been known (and indicated on the site) that the NRC folks are measuring the speakers for Soundstage. Doug may not be an engineer himself and maybe someone more technically educated can catch him out on technicalities, but good on him for sending gear to the pros to get it right, as they have been doing for so many years before this site ever showed up.

I know people on ASR love to carp about other audio sites/reviewers (and I do that too), but geeze, sometimes it's like almost no one else can ever be good enough to pass the ASR Purity Test.

 

[dtaylo1066]

Why not ~$100
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/jds-labs-atom-dac-review.23701
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/schiit-modi-3-review-stereo-dac.18480/

Or how about $60 for a dongle that won't take up any room?
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...sonata-hd-pro-review-headphone-adapter.22625/

Yes, you can go lower than I stated. I was just picking some ranges.

 

[dtaylo1066]

The excellent Chinese DAC implementation didn't trickle down from luxury brands. Topping and others have been the center of healthy competitive innovation.

My POV is you open up a major can of worms if you wish to exclaim Chinese DAC brands as the "center of healthy competitive innovation."

At this point in digital audio the design of a quality audio DAC is neither a feat of great engineering or innovation. The burgeoning success of the Chinese DAC industry is mainly the result of utilizing chips and engineering that were pioneered or developed by other companies. Their advantage is they can produce in mass, and with quality, at price points that can virtually undercut any free-world produced (or based) product, and receive state sponsored benefits in doing so.

I would not associate the word "healthy" with that. Yes, most certainly, it is a direct, immediate and major boon to the free world consumer, as I indicated in my initial comments. But the indirect consequences can certainly be debated, which I will briefly undertake.

Now that these Chinese DAC companies have secured a major share of the low cost free-world marketplace, and eliminated or avoided the middle man in doing so, their next strategy is to focus on producing higher cost DACs in order to fully capitalize on the $500 to $1,200 market segment. One also cannot neglect the fact the Chinese DAC/Hi-Fi companies also enjoy an ever-expanding consumer class and base within in their nation of 1.3 billion people, all hungry for such consumer goods. Thus their capabilities of scale are unequaled in manufacturing history.

If you are a free-world independent company how do you survive against that? Mainly in three ways: 1) you move your manufacturing to China or another cheap labor market to contain costs; 2) you focus more, if not exclusively, on high-end, expensive products aimed at a smaller but affluent target audience; 3) through M&A you aggregate with one-time rivals as a way to achieve more scale; or 4) you work a combination of 1-4. In the long run you still stand a good chance of loosing.

I happen to see that as the antithesis of healthy competitive innovation.

 

[dtaylo1066]

As an upper-tier of products, from a single company encompassing all aspects of HiFi, over a number of decades, there's no other brand to touch Sony and their ES gear of the 70s(Esprit), late 80s(ES) and into the early 90s (ES).

Not one other major Japanese brand had the manufacturing clout to do everything from SOTA turntables to loudspeakers, CD players to power amplifiers in their own factories- not farmed out to OEMs.

The trickle down technologies from Sony have shaped more of high fidelity than any other single brand in my opinion. They are single handedly responsible for the mass adoption of digital (CD) as they produced the chipsets and the low cost laser assemblies that Philips couldn't do well. Philips rode on the coat-tails of Sony from the get-go.

Sure the ES moniker has been cheapened to mean little in this day and age, but Sony did the world a favour when it was one of the very first to create a line of superlative products, priced reasonably for the level of engineering that was in them.

Yup. Here is some innovation for you: https://www.stereophile.com/content/sony-pcm-f1-digital-audio-converter

Please read the most insightful commentary by J. Gordon Holt in this Stereophile piece. 39 years later it is astonishingly profound and prophetic. thanks, Sony, and thanks to the rich F'ers who bought these first machines for $1,800 in 1982, which would be the equivalent of $5,021 today. Without these affluent, fanatical hobbyists, who were accused of using their check books to the ruination of hi-fi, we might not have digital audio today.

 

[Frank Dernie]

Actually watch savants get a kick out of the fact that their Patek Calatravas are indistinguishable from a Timex, at least to the uninitiated. Rolex is nothing compared to the elite companies though their classics like the Explorer I are very fine and actually work. For the most part Rolex is bling.

The Rolex movement is a very good design.
They were started by a marketing guy, not a watchmaker, and have invested huge amounts in marketing and keep the prices high by limiting availability of what are, in fact, not that expensive to make nicely finished but mass produced watches.
They are one of the most successfully marketed brands in the world.
They work well in fact and with the exception of the gold ones I don't consider them bling.
A friend of mine has a business servicing high end watches and he says the Rolex movement is one of the best he deals with but they are way over priced.
The big three, Patek, Vacheron and Audemars charge like a wounded bull for servicing, another excessive profit stream.