Stereophile Recommended Components Fall 2020 is out

[TankTop]

Stereophile uses ABCD grading system. It is explicit that a consumer can choose a component from any category and get excellent sound. That is, category C and D components are recommended components, and considered standouts in their categories. What is implicit is that a component in category A is in some way superior to category B, and both are superior to C. Various factors go in to the rankings, but ultimately, in order for a component to make the list, one of the reviewers has to really like what s/he heard, and persuade the editor and other staff members it deserves to be listed. Price is not the sole factor determining a product’s ranking, and there is considerable price overlap between the categories, but there is a trend.
Revel Ultima2 Salon2 is still on the A list, along with other selections costing up to $255,000/pair. Floyd Toole, speaking to an audience of students in one of his lectures that are available online, pointed to a pair of $2,000 Revel speakers as the point of diminishing returns. I take that to mean that what you get as you spend for the F36 vs the F35 is more than what you get if you choose the F206 over the F36, and so on up the line. What is the point of zero return? I cannot say, except to observe that Kal, who owns the Salon2’s, could not reliably tell the difference between the Salon 2’s and the F228Be’s in a blind test conducted at the Harman facility. Reading that in his column a couple years ago was a real eye opener for me. Kal is exceptional by depth and breadth of experience, knowledge base and intellect, so I’m quite confident that if he can’t hear a difference, I’ll never hear it. So $10,000 is the performance ceiling for me. The only reason to spend more is that you like how it looks. Or you want bragging rights for how expensive your gear is. Or you simply want a unique product that not a lot of people can afford, or care to spend that much money on.
My first job out of business school was as a financial analyst for Ford Motor Company. It is absolutely staggering how much it costs to bring a car to market. Materials, tooling, plumbers and electricians to install the tooling, designers, engineers, support staff, union labor, regulatory compliance, and more. $7.3 billion was the number reported by Ford for engineering, research, and development for one year, 2016. That covers multiple vehicles and model years, but is only a part of the cost for producing a vehicle. Of course, spreading that over the large number of units sold helps. But how big is the market for an Aston Martin? Yet, it can be produced, put on a boat to the US, and sold at retail for $175,000. A speaker, even the largest, heaviest, with the finest finish, is ridiculously simple, light and cheap to make by comparison. For me, there is simply no way a $250,000+ speaker can be worth the money paid. I’d get more out of an original Picasso sketch.
Individuals are free to spend their money any way they wish, as it should be. I would not criticize someone for making the choices they do. It is important to be civil and considerate of those whose opinions differ from our own, and every human should be treated with a basic level of respect and patience. Still, it seems to me that the Stereophile system is likely to be misleading in that it is simply untrue that you have to spend $10,000 to get top sound quality from a DAC, pre amp or power amp, yet it is most likely that the casual, nonprofessional reader is going to come away with the idea that you do. And I think that is the outright lie that those here find upsetting and angering.

I’m sometimes tempted to buy the Paradigm Signature Sub 2 but my wife would probably get it in the divorce.

 

[mafelba]

Yes, to be "rich" where I live, your net worth must be eight figures. Otherwise your existence will be a middle-class one, which is fine for me.

Simple things, simple tastes, that's where its at. Good food, good recipes, not too many moving parts.

 

[Angsty]

Revel Ultima2 Salon2 is still on the A list, along with other selections costing up to $255,000/pair. Floyd Toole, speaking to an audience of students in one of his lectures that are available online, pointed to a pair of $2,000 Revel speakers as the point of diminishing returns. ... What is the point of zero return? I cannot say, except to observe that Kal, who owns the Salon2’s, could not reliably tell the difference between the Salon 2’s and the F228Be’s in a blind test conducted at the Harman facility. Reading that in his column a couple years ago was a real eye opener for me. ... So $10,000 is the performance ceiling for me. The only reason to spend more is that you like how it looks. ... For me, there is simply no way a $250,000 speaker can be worth the money paid.

I agree on your point on diminishing utility for speakers. I think $10K would be my limit, too, but I've never actually spent that much on speakers.

The point about manufacturing is important, though. Most high-end audio companies are small scale, boutique manufacturers. Even well-known companies like VPI, Grado and Magico only employ in the dozens of employees, a few million in top-line revenue. They don't have the ability to spread the cost of research and overhead across the large volumes a company like Technics has. Some are famously low-overhead; watch a VPI video of their facilities. It genuinely costs them a lot to produce a premium product, even if the premium product performs measurably not much better than the upper-midrange product. The cost of the dealer sales channel also inflates the pricing to achieve the same net margins of a high volume audio manufacturer, which is why Schiit sells direct.

To deal with this, even high-end manufacturers often split their lines between (relatively) high and low volume products. This allows them to soak up more overhead with the higher volume stuff (lower margin) and generate more profit off the lower volume stuff. R&D for higher-end stuff provides some tax shields (U.S.) and trickle-down improvement opportunities.

So why is this relevant on a thread about Stereophile? Stereophile is part of the need (mostly small) manufacturers have to get recognized (with fairly low ad budgets) and support their business models. It would be harder to do that with only low-priced, high-volume gear.

The need to sell at least a few high profit products drives them to get reviews and advertise, even if the bread-and-butter, pay-the-bills kind of equipment is not fully on display. Most would likely rather see a premium product get a review slot over a lower-margin product. They hope to glean a halo effect for the down-the-line equipment.

This supposes that most manufacturers do drive incrementally better products up the line. I can't explain Totaldac.

 

[Robin L]

This supposes that most manufacturers do drive incrementally better products up the line. I can't explain Totaldac.

Lucky would be my guess.

 

[anmpr1]

There is a reason that Consumer Reports accepts no advertising and pays for the products it reviews. I would not pay any attention to anyone who reviews products while accepting advertising from said manufacturers.

It's not a simple equation. When Gordon started out he didn't accept any financial remuneration other than subs. People were tired of waiting a year between mailouts, so in order to help fund the project he started accepting dealer ads. And we have to realize that dealers were less than a neutral marketplace force. A 'bad' product review could put a big hurt on a dealer.

However, even that didn't solve Gordon's cash flow problem. It was the same for Peter Aczel. He couldn't do it, either. And all the others no one remembers anymore: StereOpus, Hi Fi Heretic, Audiogram, Audio Forum, International Audio Review, Sound Advice, Audio Views and the list goes on. Sure, Stereophile was a different animal when Archibald took over, but one thing you could say about Larry is that he made the trains run on time. Unfortunately, once you got to his destination you soon realized that you really didn't want to spend any time there.

But it's not only the fault of the press. Manufacturers are the flip side of the coin. Think of McIntosh. For years they didn't play the 'high end' magazine game. In fact, they didn't even give the time of day to mainstream outfits such as Audio or Stereo Review. Frank and Gordon understood that they had nothing to gain from sending review samples. The 'high end' press didn't think much of their 'sound', and Julian Hirsch's measurements probably weren't any better than those of the Pioneer, Kenwood or Sansui that you could buy for half the dollars McIntosh was asking.

For Mac, word of mouth and a strong dealer network carried them. As a result, whenever the 'high end' press mentioned Mac, is was almost always disparaging. Later, with principals (and principles) gone, the company's new owners better understood how marketing could work for them. They understood which side of the bread was being buttered and who was doing the buttering. For old timers it was kind of a shock to see Mac in the press, but now the company is part of the 'club', and they now get the reviews they hitherto never cared about.

I've said it before, but for the most part the 'high end' audio press is like pro-wrestling journalism. Stereophile is the Pro Wrestling Illustrated of the hi-fi world. Actually PWI is probably more legit than Stereophile, since I've heard PWI doesn't uphold kayfabe, anymore. It's a sad commentary when pro-wrestling is actually more 'real' than the 'high end'.

 

[mafelba]

Stereophile is part of the need (mostly small) manufacturers have to get recognized (with fairly low ad budgets) and support their business models.

There is another way to get noticed - make products which are superior. That is how Tesla did it without a dollar of advertising. If you have nothing special and are just one of many fish in the sea of choices, then yes, you probably have to market, market, market.

 

[David Harper]

I guess by not doing any research and assuming more expensive is better.

exactly.

 

[Angsty]

I would not consider a mere millionaire rich by today's stds. COLA etc. - esp. in a large city

Even if you don't feel wealthy, a millionaire in the US is still in the top end of the wealth brackets. Regardless of where you live, since many people in urban areas have zero or negative net worth.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...bution_by_percentile_in_the_United_States.png

"A household in the U.S. has an average net worth of $692,100, according to the most recent data from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances. Shocked by that figure? That’s because the average (aka the “mean”) is skewed by the nation’s super wealthy. The median net worth of the average U.S. household is $97,300. Median is the middle point where half the households have more and half have less."

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/whats-your-net-worth-and-how-do-you-compare-to-others-2018-09-24

With a median of $97,300 of net worth, the super wealthy are destined to make most of the upper quintile feel poor by comparison. Given those numbers, I'd suggest that less than 10% of all households have audio assets worth more than $10K. Stereophile circulation is only about 75,000.

 

[David Harper]

I wonder how you folks respond to expensive cars and expensive home.

there's a fundamental difference; an expensive car or home may actually be worth the price. A $145,000 turntable is most assuredly not.

 

[TankTop]

Even if you don't feel wealthy, a millionaire in the US is still in the top end of the wealth brackets. Regardless of where you live, since many people in urban areas have zero or negative net worth.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...bution_by_percentile_in_the_United_States.png

"A household in the U.S. has an average net worth of $692,100, according to the most recent data from the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances. Shocked by that figure? That’s because the average (aka the “mean”) is skewed by the nation’s super wealthy. The median net worth of the average U.S. household is $97,300. Median is the middle point where half the households have more and half have less."

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/whats-your-net-worth-and-how-do-you-compare-to-others-2018-09-24

With a median of $97,300 of net worth, the super wealthy are destined to make most of the upper quintile feel poor by comparison. Given those numbers, I'd suggest that less than 10% of all households have audio assets worth more than $10K. Stereophile circulation is only about 75,000.

I don’t understand why people care how wealthy the top 1% is. The average American is the top 1% in wealth of all people to have ever lived. For people to complain that other people are a lot wealthier than them is mind numbingly stupid.

 

[Angsty]

There is another way to get noticed - make products which are superior.

Possibly. But my counter-example is Topping. I'd suggest that by the ASR measurements, Topping makes superior products to the median of market. Yet, how many people do you know who have purchased a Topping audio product versus a Bose audio product?

 

[Wes]

I don’t understand why people care how wealthy the top 1% is. The average American is the top 1% in wealth of all people to have ever lived. For people to complain that other people are a lot wealthier than them is mind numbingly stupid.

Nero was Emperor but didn't even have electricity - they had to wind up his freakin' analog turntable to play vinyl on it.

 

[Angsty]

I don’t understand why people care how wealthy the top 1% is. The average American is the top 1% in wealth of all people to have ever lived. For people to complain that other people are a lot wealthier than them is mind numbingly stupid.

Which is why we are having a debate about the mind numbingly expensive products in the Stereophile recommended components list. I'd assert that for the super-majority of the US population, spending $700 on just a DAC is mind numbingly stupid.

Even in my own household, the super-majority finds my last (sub-$700) DAC purchase to be stupid...

 

[mafelba]

Given those numbers, I'd suggest that less than 10% of all households have audio assets worth more than $10K. Stereophile circulation is only about 75,000.

I've never met a single person who has spent more than $5k on audio assets in my life and i've met rich and poor and everyone in between. Even my system only costs $3,500 total so I can't even count myself. Has to be much less than 1 in 10.

 

[mafelba]

Even in my own household, the super-majority finds my last (sub-$700) DAC purchase to be stupid...

You actually show your purchases to your family??

 

[Dialectic]

there's a fundamental difference; an expensive car or home may actually be worth the price. A $145,000 turntable is most assuredly not.

I think an extremely well-engineered turntable could be "worth" $145,000.

There are some pretty shabby-looking $1MM-$2MM houses in the NYC area.

I've never met a single person who has spent more than $5k on audio assets in my life and i've met rich and poor and everyone in between. Even my system only costs $3,500 total so I can't even count myself. Has to be much less than 1 in 10.

I'm sure some of the rich people you've met have custom-installed in-wall speakers (with the necessary accoutrements) that they overpaid for.

There are people on this very forum who have spent over $500K on audio assets.

 

[Dialectic]

Which is why we are having a debate about the mind numbingly expensive products in the Stereophile recommended components list. I'd assert that for the super-majority of the US population, spending $700 on just a DAC is mind numbingly stupid.

Even in my own household, the super-majority finds my last (sub-$700) DAC purchase to be stupid...

I run all purchases by my wfie first. She almost always approves them and then holds them against me later.

 

[Feanor]

I don’t understand why people care how wealthy the top 1% is. The average American is the top 1% in wealth of all people to have ever lived. For people to complain that other people are a lot wealthier than them is mind numbingly stupid.

Wrong, I'd say: definitely something to worry about. The top 1% of the world population controls a whopping 44% of the world's wealth; the top 1% of Americans actually own a bit less, 38% of America's total wealth. I'd say these are worrying statistics, especially when the portion of the wealth going to the top is rapidly increasing.

Increasing concentration of wealth portends social problems -- and this certainly true in the USA as elsewhere. So, for example, the polarization of US politics is closely correlated with the increasing wealth inequalities in the last ~40 years.

Incidentally, the median, (more relevant than average), wealth of Americans in about USD 70,000 per person, the world median wealth is about $7000 per person. The math isn't easy but I doubt that puts the "average" American over the top 1% of world population

 

[TankTop]

Just over a year ago I pressed the button on an eBay auction for a pair of Dynaudio special 40s for just under $2000. Luckily I was holding a beer and was able to blame my foolish decision on my current mental state. My wife was kind enough to let me take them out of the box 2 months after they arrived.

 

[Angsty]

Increasing concentration of wealth portends social problems -- and this certainly true in the USA as elsewhere. So, for example, the polarization of US politics is closely correlated with the increasing wealth inequalities in the last ~40 years.

I'm staying away from politics, but I'm fine with discussing how wealth distribution impacts audio purchases! Back to that Stereophile list...

For those that do subscribe, what do you consider to be the best VALUE on the list?