watchnerd
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Make sure you go on Curry Club Thursdays for the most chavvy selection.
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So this thing costs 43k....
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Make sure you go on Curry Club Thursdays for the most chavvy selection.
Speaking of audio journalists, and I know we have some celebrities amongst us, I understand it is not an especially high-paying profession. Yet we hear many times of reviewers loving a component so much they buy it. I'm thinking of $20k+ amps, speakers, etc.
Are these folks otherwise wealthy/CEOs/big-firm law partners? Or is there another answer?
Are these folks otherwise wealthy/CEOs/big-firm law partners? Or is there another answer?
watchnerd
Grand Contributor
From what I've read, it's sometimes not at retail price.
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The mysteriously rich are everywhere, I met many in the wine scene. Like the 18 yr. kid whose father invented the menthol formulation for cigarettes. A really nice personable kid who happened to have a $100M trust fund in 1975. Dow had a policy of sharing patent royalties with the inventor, there was another guy, by benefit of his father, who would invite you to dinner and open a 1959 Romanee Conti and many more.
Ah! Romanee Conti Pinot Noir. The perfect pairing with Audio Note electronics...a transformative experience...
Sometimes a bottle of wine is never meant to be opened: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance...s-most-expensive-bottles-of-wine.html?image=3
I think that was the plan for this DAC. Don't open it. Don't turn it on. Just let it slip that you have one and let the prestige wash over you.
I think that was the plan for this DAC. Don't open it. Don't turn it on. Just let it slip that you have one and let the prestige wash over you.
My dad got 10 patents through his job, some of them for very successful products. Guess how many royalty checks. It's not hard to guess.
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1961 (exceptional vintage) Romanee Conti purchased at Post Road Liqueurs in Boston in 1968, $16.99 price tag was left on the bottles by the generous owner. I'll let SIY guess who.
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My dad got 10 patents through his job, some of them for very successful products. Guess how many royalty checks. It's not hard to guess.
A huge controversy at some companies, hi tech tended to offer equity rather than trying to manage product specific royalty deals. I preferred this, my tech, layout person, product engineer, etc. all shared in the bounty while it lasted.
pastorbarrett
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Just checking back in here with everyone here still playing the DAC5 and it thusly nicely warmed up and is now even sited on a siberian oak stand which seems to have added something of a woody but not wooden tone to proceedings. The wife is still beckoning from the other room now in more screeching tones but alas she competes with the very real sense of rosin on string lingering in the air from ultra rare Andre Levy's Bach cello on vinyl of course long out of print thanks everyone and thanks AudioNote
I hung some new paintings in the adjacent room, and unplugged the coffee maker, and it utterly ruined my soundstage. Fortunately, I have some photos of me in my youth, and I placed them in the freezer. Things opened up again.
As they say, *everything* affects the sound.
As they say, *everything* affects the sound.
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Richard Austen
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Well I am a reviewer for an online magazine and covered Audio Note for a long time. So I get the lunatic fringe and scam and various other comments leveled at them from time to time - though it usually always comes from people who have not auditioned the gear or in fact auditioned the gear level matched and blind. I am a proponent of both sighted long listening sessions and also blind level matched sessions because there is a lot of bias. Being scientifically minded does not shield you from bias either. The measurements suck so the product must suck is an assumption bias allowing your eyes reading a graph dictate what you think you will hear.
Someone mentioned the Hi-Fi Critic - it should be noted that the reviewer of that $192k DAC is an engineer who formed the speaker company Monitor Audio, he has written several books on loudspeaker design, chaired the Audio Engineering society, and was the measurements taker at Stereophile before John Atkinson. So he is not the sort of reviewer who just gets sucked in by pretty looks (which AN doesn't possess) or Price - there are plenty of other expensive products.
I won't defend Audio Note on technical merits - how can I - they are, to be blunt, awful. No one who buys an Audio Note (anything really) is going to be buying it because of the "great measurements" in the likes of Stereophile.
I merely point out that companies usually don't last selling smoke and mirrors at high dollars for 30 years as AN UK has done. Contrary to popular belief not everyone who has money is a dolt. Most Audio Note customers tend to arrive at Audio Note after they have owned Genelec, Revel, Paradigm, PSB, B&W, PMC speakers mated to Bryston, Adcom, Rotel, Classe, Naim, Bricasti, Levinson, Krell amplifiers. Not the other way around.
I began with PMC and Bryston back in the day because of the measured prowess of studio quality loudspeakers with amplifiers that were practically bomb proof in build and various technical merits like ultra low noise floor, vanishingly low IM and THD figures and flat response etc.
And what is more funny is the compounding measurements disaster that is Audio Note. Stereophile called their CD 4.1 "broken" in measurements (yet still gave it Class A and the reviewer felt it was the best CD player he had ever heard. Now good scientists would like to marry these subjective results (which are long and many) to "broken" measured performance.
Compounding the CD player is that Audio Note makes SET amplifiers - Single Ended Triodes. You know those crazy $20,000 8 watt tube amps with high distortion. So now you have the worst measuring amplifiers combined with the worst measuring CD players into their AN E speakers which can be described at best as - pretty middling measured performance. They go to audio shows and they always have this combination. Speakers in the corners (rear ported!!). They have now begun entering recording and mastering studios - shock horror.
Yes it all sounds very PT Barnum but I can't get past the fact that their crappy measuring amps beat up the Bryston and Arcam amps, and that their speakers beat up my B&W and KEF LS-50 and that that "broken" CD player (non oversampling stone age WTF are they thinking) designs actually sound "clearer" than the dozen Solid State CD players I have had over the years. It's baffling.
Further I would suggest that when Peter says Measurements don't matter - that is not entirely true - they matter from the manufacturing end of it and design stages. Further Peter owns the company but he is not an engineer - he hires engineers - and Andy Grove is their chief designer and Kondo was a Metalurgist who headed Sony's engineering team specializing in micrphones - so these people are credentialed people - not some guy in a garage. This factory tour of Audio Note illustrates the depth and breadth of the company - and this plant is in fact B&W's old plant.
I say again - I get the rubbish measurements - but they're not lying to anyone - they tell you the measurements suck - Peter said the DAC's "measure a bag of nails" but if they feel it sounds better - and so do people who buy their gear - then what's the problem. Listen level matched and blind. See what happens. Part 2 is a discussion with their head engineer Andy Grove
Someone mentioned the Hi-Fi Critic - it should be noted that the reviewer of that $192k DAC is an engineer who formed the speaker company Monitor Audio, he has written several books on loudspeaker design, chaired the Audio Engineering society, and was the measurements taker at Stereophile before John Atkinson. So he is not the sort of reviewer who just gets sucked in by pretty looks (which AN doesn't possess) or Price - there are plenty of other expensive products.
I won't defend Audio Note on technical merits - how can I - they are, to be blunt, awful. No one who buys an Audio Note (anything really) is going to be buying it because of the "great measurements" in the likes of Stereophile.
I merely point out that companies usually don't last selling smoke and mirrors at high dollars for 30 years as AN UK has done. Contrary to popular belief not everyone who has money is a dolt. Most Audio Note customers tend to arrive at Audio Note after they have owned Genelec, Revel, Paradigm, PSB, B&W, PMC speakers mated to Bryston, Adcom, Rotel, Classe, Naim, Bricasti, Levinson, Krell amplifiers. Not the other way around.
I began with PMC and Bryston back in the day because of the measured prowess of studio quality loudspeakers with amplifiers that were practically bomb proof in build and various technical merits like ultra low noise floor, vanishingly low IM and THD figures and flat response etc.
And what is more funny is the compounding measurements disaster that is Audio Note. Stereophile called their CD 4.1 "broken" in measurements (yet still gave it Class A and the reviewer felt it was the best CD player he had ever heard. Now good scientists would like to marry these subjective results (which are long and many) to "broken" measured performance.
Compounding the CD player is that Audio Note makes SET amplifiers - Single Ended Triodes. You know those crazy $20,000 8 watt tube amps with high distortion. So now you have the worst measuring amplifiers combined with the worst measuring CD players into their AN E speakers which can be described at best as - pretty middling measured performance. They go to audio shows and they always have this combination. Speakers in the corners (rear ported!!). They have now begun entering recording and mastering studios - shock horror.
Yes it all sounds very PT Barnum but I can't get past the fact that their crappy measuring amps beat up the Bryston and Arcam amps, and that their speakers beat up my B&W and KEF LS-50 and that that "broken" CD player (non oversampling stone age WTF are they thinking) designs actually sound "clearer" than the dozen Solid State CD players I have had over the years. It's baffling.
Further I would suggest that when Peter says Measurements don't matter - that is not entirely true - they matter from the manufacturing end of it and design stages. Further Peter owns the company but he is not an engineer - he hires engineers - and Andy Grove is their chief designer and Kondo was a Metalurgist who headed Sony's engineering team specializing in micrphones - so these people are credentialed people - not some guy in a garage. This factory tour of Audio Note illustrates the depth and breadth of the company - and this plant is in fact B&W's old plant.
I say again - I get the rubbish measurements - but they're not lying to anyone - they tell you the measurements suck - Peter said the DAC's "measure a bag of nails" but if they feel it sounds better - and so do people who buy their gear - then what's the problem. Listen level matched and blind. See what happens. Part 2 is a discussion with their head engineer Andy Grove
Here we go again
And why would I then spend $43K on a DAC with horrible performance, with absolutely no objective benefits? Why wouldn't I just get an inexpensive badly-measuring DAC off Ebay instead?
Audio Note's products exist only for the "more money than sense" club to buy, so they can lord their expensive purchases over their peers. Sold with woo-woo-mysticism to the overly-gullible.
Audio Note's products exist only for the "more money than sense" club to buy, so they can lord their expensive purchases over their peers. Sold with woo-woo-mysticism to the overly-gullible.
Richard Austen
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Hey man - it's a free country - sort of - so you are allowed to do exactly that
Money is just money - everyone on this board is gonna die and you can't take it with you - so spend it on silly audio stuff, cars, women, booze etc. Or not.
AudioSceptic
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Anyone interested can read more about Martin Colloms here <https://www.hificritic.com/colloms.html>, where a number or articles can also be downloaded for free.
I went to Audio T (West Hampstead, London) a number of times in the 70s. Martin was often the equipment demonstrator and he was largely responsible for me buying a pair of Spendor BC1s, which I still have! It was there that I found out that "FM Hughes", a reviewer for Hi-Fi For Pleasure and one of the first to subjectively assess amplifiers and other electronics, was actually Martin. I still have those mags, along with lots of others.
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Someone somewhere is supposed to have paid well over one hundred large for a banana taped to a wall. In that context, a 43 thousand dollar kind-of-DAC could be considered a bargain. I mean, you could buy three idiot DACs for the price of one idiot banana. If someone is trying to show off their idiocy, it's a pretty simple choice, it seems to me.
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