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What items have you NOT purchased as a result of ASR?

balletboy

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That is because Audio Note are great at advertising and marketing. Their glossy advertising is seen as a halo effect to the buyers.

S.

They do little marketing and advertising. Their market is for hand-built bespoke made-to-order from components up, mostly valves, and relatively high sensitivity speakers. Most is exported. They also have a significant component business.

Whether you like their product or not, they have carved out a unique niche, which is a sign of a successful business.

I can't imagine that anyone who goes by measurements would ever consider Audio Note.
 

BillG

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Anything from PS Audio; I never really trusted Paul anyway, and the performance analysis I've seen of his products here proved that I was right.

Klipsch loudspeakers; yes, that copper woofer looks good. But the measurements? Not so much.

Boutique brands; I'd read enough subjective reviews of their various products to realize that the reviewers were basing their assessments not on science, but rather emotion. Logic dictates that I avoid that on principle until I see an analysis. Now that I've seen a good number of them reviewed here, I know where my money isn't going.
 

balletboy

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Anything from PS Audio; I never really trusted Paul anyway, and the performance analysis I've seen of his products here proved that I was right.

Klipsch loudspeakers; yes, that copper woofer looks good. But the measurements? Not so much.

Boutique brands; I'd read enough subjective reviews of their various products to realize that the reviewers were basing their assessments not on science, but rather emotion. Logic dictates that I avoid that on principle until I see an analysis. Now that I've seen a good number of them reviewed here, I know where my money isn't going.

What‘s wrong with boutique brands? Most brands start as “boutique”. AHB started in a garage in Dallas.
 

Southall-1998

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They do little marketing and advertising. Their market is for hand-built bespoke made-to-order from components up, mostly valves, and relatively high sensitivity speakers. Most is exported. They also have a significant component business.

Whether you like their product or not, they have carved out a unique niche, which is a sign of a successful business.

I can't imagine that anyone who goes by measurements would ever consider Audio Note.

Yeah, right :rolleyes:

S.
 

balletboy

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Yeah, right :rolleyes:

S.

Because their market is largely overseas, they do a lot of trade shows internationally to support their distributors.

It is the job of the regional distributor to decide how much marketing to do, as they normally pay for it.
 

balletboy

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Stuff like Kii and D&D is pretty "boutique" too.
Did I trigger you? Why do you care about my dislike of them? I've already stated my reasons... :rolleyes:

I thought ASR was meant to be about objectivity rather than prejudice. What does the size of a business have to do with whether it can make a good product?

The last audio product I bought for myself was well reviewed on ASR from a fairly new company set up by crowdfunding.

The word "boutique" started to be used in the business world about 30 years ago for businesses that by being smaller, allowed them to be more innovative, able to react faster and be more customer focused.

It was seen as a good thing, now it seems to be a negative quality.

From my perspective, the more boutique businesses coming up with new ideas the better. (Like Kii and D&D.)
 

BillG

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What does the size of a business have to do with whether it can make a good product?

I see. You're here to debate my apparent prejudices. Fortunately for me, I've no interest in such talk, and I don't really care about how I'm preceived by total strangers... :p
 

maverickronin

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What does the size of a business have to do with whether it can make a good product?

It doesn't.

I was more or less taking your side by pointing out boutique brands can have solid engineering as well.
 

balletboy

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It doesn't.

I was more or less taking your side by pointing out boutique brands can have solid engineering as well.

I appreciated that and hence quoted your examples.

There is no organisation in the world that has done more research in broadcasting, and and AV than the BBC, as they invented a lot of it, and many of their engineers left and set up "boutique" audio businesses, many of them very successfully. Hypex nCore and derivatives like Kii originated from Putzeys after he left the Phillips powerhouse. No one complains that Hypex is a "boutique" company.

Topping is also one of myriad manufacturers in Guangzhou and is certainly boutique. They even profess to employing audiophiles in their R&D team and to making audiophile products. Heaven forbid. http://www.tpdz.net/profile
 

maverickronin

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I appreciated that and hence quoted your examples.

Oops. Guess I misunderstood you.

There is no organisation in the world that has done more research in broadcasting, and and AV than the BBC, as they invented a lot of it, and many of their engineers left and set up "boutique" audio businesses, many of them very successfully. Hypex nCore and derivatives like Kii originated from Putzeys after he left the Phillips powerhouse. No one complains that Hypex is a "boutique" company.

Topping is also one of myriad manufacturers in Guangzhou and is certainly boutique. They even profess to employing audiophiles in their R&D team and to making audiophile products. Heaven forbid. http://www.tpdz.net/profile

"Boutique" to me seems to be more about the size of the company and their marketing strategy and not anything to do with quality.

I think that in many areas, just playing the odds, a new boutique brand is likely to have inferior engineering to something from a larger and more established company. This causes an, IMO justified, waryness of boutique brands. OTOH, some people seem to forget about how tiny and boutique a brand is once an independent source verifies its performance.
 

balletboy

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Oops. Guess I misunderstood you.



"Boutique" to me seems to be more about the size of the company and their marketing strategy and not anything to do with quality.

I think that in many areas, just playing the odds, a new boutique brand is likely to have inferior engineering to something from a larger and more established company. This causes an, IMO justified, waryness of boutique brands. OTOH, some people seem to forget about how tiny and boutique a brand is once an independent source verifies its performance.

As I mentioned above, "boutique" used to be a good thing, whereas @BillG thinks it's bad. How representative his is, I don't know.

I agree entirely that a lot of it has to do with branding. Some small businesses want to look big, which they can do with effective marketing and is very common with audio companies, and some big companies want to look small. A lot of the latter has to do with exclusivity, think the Esoteric brand of TEAC, Lexus brand of Toyota, etc.

The advantage in UK and Europe is that corporate financial, directors and ownership information is publicly available online, whereas in the USA it is only available for public corporations. So here you can get some sort of idea who you are dealing with.

Still, you can have larger companies run into problems with OEM components, like PS Audio who used Oppo transports (closed the business) and Leica who used Kodak sensors (went bust).

I have a boutique turntable, one of only about 50 made. It was a side project by a design/fabrication engineering company with incredibly expensive machinery and is better made than just about anything else out there. They weren't interested in the time and money to market it, but still do lots of design and fabrication for other audio companies. Because they have the in-house manufacturing capability, it was a lot cheaper than competitor products. They also sensibly bought in industry-standard motors and belts. I love it, which is good as it has $0 resale value.

I think corporate profile is an important issue often overlooked, much more complicated than the @BillG generalisation I picked up on.
 
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richard12511

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Boutique brands; I'd read enough subjective reviews of their various products to realize that the reviewers were basing their assessments not on science, but rather emotion. Logic dictates that I avoid that on principle until I see an analysis. Now that I've seen a good number of them reviewed here, I know where my money isn't going.

Even if those boutique brands have provably SOTA performance? ex: (Kii, D&D, Benchmark, Topping, Hypex, Dirac)
 

tomtan

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I have a boutique turntable, one of only about 50 made. It was a side project by a design/fabrication engineering company with incredibly expensive machinery and is better made than just about anything else out there. They weren't interested in the time and money to market it, but still do lots of design and fabrication for other audio companies. Because they have the in-house manufacturing capability, it was a lot cheaper than competitor products. They also sensibly bought in industry-standard motors and belts. I love it, which is good as it has $0 resale value.

I think corporate profile is an important issue often overlooked, much more complicated than the @BillG generalisation I picked up on.

Probably has a rather high resale value by emphasizing the exclusivity etc..
 

balletboy

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Probably has a rather high resale value by emphasizing the exclusivity etc..

When I read listings for "rare" audio items for sale, I assume they were either not very good and no one bought them, or they were overpriced and no one bought them.

My turntable is very good and underpriced, but turntables are really dependent on brand value. I'm stuck with it and I really don't mind.
 

weasels

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Didn’t buy used Modi 2 -> bought new Modi 3 instead

Didn’t buy used Chord Qutest or Bryston BDA-2 -> getting new Topping D90 instead

Would have bought Revel M16 instead of KEF LS50, but that ship had sailed already and I was happy enough with KEFs to not sell them.

Almost exactly the same, with the exception of the speakers. I'm still researching speakers.
 

weasels

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I'm just saying there's various points of view - but you need to try all options.

This is a really interesting perspective, I think.

I, and I would guess most of the ASR members, value objective facts. Measurements are how we observe those objective facts, thus the emphasis on products that measure well.

Enjoyment, however is a subjective thing. If you enjoy something that measures poorly... good for you. You found something that you like.

Where I take exception - and I'm not saying that snapcrackle is suggesting this - is when a subjective claim is made about the superiority of a product that objectively measures poorly. I'm not going to argue with someone who like objectively poorer performing products. That's their prerogative. They aren't even wrong when they say something that is measurably better is "missing something". It is missing something - distortion, colored frequency response curves, etc.

I believe a better strategy is to buy something that measures well and then tweak it to meet your listening preferences, but if you enjoy hunting through the quasi-magical ecology of audiophile products... have at it.
 

Angsty

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What‘s wrong with boutique brands? Most brands start as “boutique”. AHB started in a garage in Dallas.

I agree - some “boutiques” take special care with designing and building great products. I have items from VPI, Thiel and Sutherland that I don’t plan to part with. If critics think of “boutiques” as “small businesses”, perhaps they are more palatable.
 
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