Why aren't we bringing the equipment prices down with more published blind test demos?

[dguillor]

Price I paid for JBL LSR 305 MK2 brand new. No one should be complaining about hifi being too expensive.

Or really complaining about anything that is unnecessary being too expensive. When I was a sophomore in high school and realized I wanted to live a good life and thought "hey I should probably not be ok with Bs anc Cs and try and actually make something of myself" which ended up sacrificing my 20s to be able to afford all sorts of good stuff. People don't actually want to put in the work these days, it's manifestation BS (greatest scam of the 21st century) and entitlement.

Hifi isn’t necessary?

 

[EJ3]

Hifi isn’t necessary?

Now, if that is true, that IS NEWS!

 

[Littletycoon]

It can be but it goes sometimes overboard. I've noticed ASR has very bad reputation in certain places. Talking about snake oil cables etc. is fine but directly offending people who buy expensive hifi does not go down too well.

Being offensive is not good. But people also tend not to accept opinions that put their expensive gear in a less than stellar perspective. Everybody tends to be rather in denial, nobody wants to look like the fool who overpaid.

 

[TurtlePaul]

Everybody tends to be rather in denial, nobody wants to look like the fool who overpaid.

How many of these conversations have you personally had with “everybody” about their gear?

 

[tmtomh]

I don't know that a series of conversations with owners of expensive gear, especially things like very high-priced interconnects and speaker cables, is going to be a great indicator of why they actually bought that gear. I think of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle as an apt metaphor: the act of taking a measurement - in this case, asking people about why they bought that gear - has an impact on the result. In many cases - not all for sure, but many and possibly most - if the person has any inkling that the asker could be skeptical of claims that $2,000 interconnects produce better sound, they are likely to employ one of the other plausible answers instead: build quality, admiration for the design principle, "why cheap out given how much I've invested in the rest of the system," and so on.

Some or all of those answers might even be true for that person - but IMHO there's a very good chance that "I hear a sound quality improvement" is also true for them, and that is the answer they are most likely to omit when directly asked about why they spent that much on that gear.

So there's a bit of an impasse I think. Some folks feel like owners of very expensive gear are being unfairly characterized, creating an inaccurate picture of what's really going on. And conversely, other folks feel that if you ask those owners directly and simply take their word for whatever they say, then the claimed sound quality benefits of such gear will magically and misleadingly recede as a cited reason for purchase and ownership, also creating an inaccurate picture of what's really going on.

 

[Littletycoon]

How many of these conversations have you personally had with “everybody” about their gear?

Don't try to look so wise, you're not. Threads on internet forums are also conversations, there are countless threads where you can observe the "in denial" behaviour

 

[kemmler3D]

If you have paid a great deal of money for a component and you read that it doesn’t offer any sonic improvement you are bound to be vexed.
Their anger should be directed at the manufacturer for selling them an expensive crock but of course it never is.
Keith

People are repeatedly told not to shoot the messenger throughout their lives, and still end up doing it anyway... human nature is truly barely within shouting distance of rationality.

 

[KeithR]

I think that there’s a level in between top brands and the bottom brands that provides outstanding value. Audiophonics amps with Hypex or Purifi modules comes to mind. Some very inexpensive gear has flawless performance. Like the Wiim Ultra. And the Wiim mini and Pro are better than most of us can Hear for a very small amount of money. The advances in those are due to advances in semiconductor technology and electrical engineering. Speakers are a different story. Lots of the cost in in the construction of the cabinet, mainly the cost of materials.

I agree. There is a sweet spot of cost v performance where you can get most of the performance of top shelf gear for not much more than the price of low fi brands by researching what you purchase. Even with speakers, I've found that brands like Osborn and the Adelaide Speaker Company for example, due to their business models, can produce products that give comparable performance at much lower to much more expensive brands sold through the usual retail channels.