Waxx
Major Contributor
I don't see that in my enviroment. People who see music as background want a simple solution without looking to quality. But most who active listen to music want a good sounding system and are searching to find that for a cheap price. They don't mind some technicality, but what is here often promoted is to complicated.
But a thing like that Audiophonics DA-S250NC amp reviewed a few days ago by Amir is a good solution for that (altough a bit pricey for most). That kind of amp with a pair of good speakers that are not to big or expensive is what most music lovers want, a simple one box plug and play device that gives good quality stereo sound to their speakers from whatever digital source they want. Add an analog in with an MM phono stage (for turntables, that are getting more and more popular among them) and make it a bit cheaper and you got a device that will please them all.
It's a minority on the market, but a large minority today (here in Europe at least) and is an open gap in the market that Audiophonics (smartly) try to fill with it. Many of those now use vintage second hand amps and speakers from the 1970's to the 1990's as those in general are better than what is sold today for reasonable prices and buy topping or smsl or similar cheap chinese dac's (with a laptop or mobile phone) or streamers to connect the digital (streaming) world to a higher quality system. An AVR is mostly not what they want, and not that good in quality or out of their budget.
But it's true this site maily gathers the freaks, the nerds and the engineers who go for the last bit, and the solutions here are often way to complicated technically for most of those people. Topping and SMSL amps are not trusted for expensive parts because chinese with no local support department or store. A Topping D10 is cheap enogh to take the risk, a PA5 or PA7x is to expensive for that risk. Audiophonics is also expensive, but made in France with support in France following EU rules.
that "at least 3/4".
