Hearing is a physical phenomenon: wavelengths of air pressure. What we hear can be measured completely. It’s not magic. It’s math and science.
I'd also like to know!
For that price, it should also clean the house and cook meals.
Or at the very least offer state-of-the-art performance, which it does not. There are <$100 DACs that outperform it. I’d feel ripped off. It still offers objectively good performance, but at what cost?
$9995
I didn’t think I was being snarky. It’s just that the unit offers merely good performance at an extremely high price. It’s not a good value proposition, even with its feature set.
With that, we get into the Bugatti Veyron vs Toyota Supra discussions though. If you have the $$$, you can do whatever you want with your money, and it is about completely different value propositions. At least here you don't get a boat anchor made out of gold.
Sorry to say, but the car analogy to hifi has never worked. If you spend a lot of money on a car, you can either get a luxurious sedan or a fast sportscar or so, but it's performance will be in one sense or another vastly superior to a cheap car. For so-called "high-end" hifi gear, it is often only the looks, design and materials that are better, the performance itself, i.e. the orginal purpose, be it amplification, streaming, digital-to-analog conversion or generating sound with transducers, is either indistinquishable or many times shockingly inferior to good measuring cheap gear.
At least it real…
Well, you could say the same about a 120dB SINAD DAC vs a 110dB one... :-D Real but... relevant? Overdesigned? What do you tell your GF when she absolutely wants a $9K designer bag? :-D I think there have been far worse offenders in the price-performance race in ASR. In this case, you pay for the brand and looks, and those who buy into that value proposition at least know that this isn't any bad by rational performance criteria.
You seem to miss the central point. It is most of the times even the cheaper DAC that has the 120db SINAD in contrast to the 110dB from the expensive one. No cheap car is as fast as the Veyron. That might not matter to you, but the purpose of cars is to drive, and a good one drives e.g. faster or smoother or whatever. Much of the expensive gear does nothing better for what is was designed to do in comparison to cheap, good gear. The analogy just does not work.Well, you could say the same about a 120dB SINAD DAC vs a 110dB one... :-D Real but... relevant? Overdesigned? What do you tell your GF when she absolutely wants a $9K designer bag? :-D I think there have been far worse offenders in the price-performance race in ASR. In this case, you pay for the brand and looks, and those who buy into that value proposition at least know that this isn't any bad by rational performance criteria.
I converted myself to a more minimalist lifestyle, but heaven knows I did overspend on luxury products in my time. I just happen to see both sides of the coin, never more appropriately stated.
I am not going to argue with you. The problem with analogies is they are not universally valid, ever. A Pollock painting is worth $150M to some, while others declare it garbage. A Veyron is the most impractical car you can buy, and yet you clearly seem to submit to its irrational appeal. (Heck, if you gave me one I'd take it until the first maintenance is due]). :-D
I wouldn't call it snake oil as it, basically, does it's job. I also would not think that the unique selling proposition is luxury, as it looks quite minimalistic, but rather, coming from a studio context, utmost performance. And it is exactly in this respect that the device fails badly.
Sure not problem. There is per se nothing wrong with luxury. But everybody should be aware of what is offered. I think nobody buying a Luis Vuitton bag would claim that it has superior functionality to a standard bag. And if you like fast and extreme designed cars and buy a Veyron, that is fine. In "high-end" audio, and that is where the car analogy breaks down, you more often then not get the Veyron look and price with the Prius performance.
