Why "High end" exist?

[Bogda89]

i do understand that there is couple sucessfull high end companies and that main reason for them being succesfull is a status symbol, not just the sound. but there is hundreeds of small companies that make "high end" products from tens, to hundreeds of thousands of dollars and being a no name is not a status symbol either.

There is a great podcast with Aleksandar Radisavljevic, founder of Raal, company that makes ribbon tweeters and headphones. unfortunatelly its in Serbian language, but i think he has great explanation. he said:

reason for so many high end companies and products is because they dont make money and pay bills by making speakers. usually 2 or 3 middle aged man who had succesfull career get sick of paying for high end gear, and then they decide to make it. and main reason is because they want publicity, they want to be featured in magazines and take pictures, but nobody is buying that stuff. and when they make high end speakers main goal is what exotic and expensive to put in it (drivers and crossover components) and how speaker finish and design to look expensive. not too many of them have good sound, with some exceptions, and more the product is expensive, more chance for mistake in design and sound.

 

[gwing]

Hi end audio is in principle no different to high end anything. Whether it is audio, or porcelain, or paintings or jewelry people who are interested and enthusiastic enough about something will pay anything they can afford chasing down whatever is the perceived top quality or fashion. And if people are prepared to pay for it someone else will make it, if that maker is also an enthusiast they may just make it anyway even if nobody will buy it.

Nothing to do with 2 or 3 old men

 

[fordiebianco]

Veblen good - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Bogda89]

Hi end audio is in principle no different to high end anything. Whether it is audio, or porcelain, or paintings or jewelry people who are interested and enthusiastic enough about something will pay anything they can afford chasing down whatever is the perceived top quality or fashion. And if people are prepared to pay for it someone else will make it, if that maker is also an enthusiast they may just make it anyway even if nobody will buy it.

Nothing to do with 2 or 3 old men

i do understand what you are saying. and i do understand that some people are willing and happy to pay for some famous brand like Wilson, or Magico, Dan Dagustino or couple more famous brands in that class. but when you go to big audio expo, there is hundreeds of brands that you never heard off.

 

[ZolaIII]

You must be kidding with 2 h podcast, by the way they have horrible background hum.
What's a high end?
Not prestige, rare elements, snake oil and price. The research and development cost, first products coming out of it won't be cost optimised. Then come highly developed, tuned and cost optimised products, those are still quality and high end. From there it goes downward to the commercial, low cost, quality compromised consumer grade not high end one's. A simple example JBL LSR-4328P, LSR2328P, JBL 308P Mk II.
Burek is with meat, without it's just pie. What Ei-Niš did no one of them will ever achieve individually as small firms.

 

[gwing]

i do understand what you are saying. and i do understand that some people are willing and happy to pay for some famous brand like Wilson, or Magico, Dan Dagustino or couple more famous brands in that class. but when you go to big audio expo, there is hundreeds of brands that you never heard off.

Yes, there are many cottage industries and indeed individuals producing exceptional articles. For folks interested in such products, being a known popular brand is probably a turnoff rather than an advantage.

 

[robh36062]

To spend and make money!

Rob

 

[SIY]

Burek is with meat

The cheese bourekas I'm eating for breakfast disagrees.

 

[Waxx]

Those small cottage brands serves an audience that wants exclusivity. It's not about quality anymore, it's about "i have this and my friends can not". It's the same with supercars. Brand make many limited series of a certain basic model and so drive the price up. If you got 1/5 made of a certain Bugatti Chiron special series, you will pay more for the exclusivity. You won't wonder if that car is worth the 10 million on technical specs, compared to the 5 million "basic model", mostly it's technical the same even... It's the exclusivity of that series you pay extra for.

The same applies for those boutique "super high end" stuff.

 

[ZolaIII]

The cheese bourekas I'm eating for breakfast disagrees.

Etimology of the word says otherwise.
Ribbon tweaters aren't superb solution for any application. They are good when done good (transformer among other things) for close to mid field but not better than Berilium one's regarding coverage, not suitable for horn or long horn utilisation and worse than any of them for lower highs/uper mids than very good full range dynamic drivers and so on. Every technical aspect is limited by it's own physical properties.

 

[007Shortz]

... It's not about quality anymore, it's about "i have this and my friends can not". It's the same with supercars. Brand make many limited series of a certain basic model and so drive the price up ... It's the exclusivity of that series you pay extra for.

The same applies for those boutique "super high end" stuff.

I absolutely agree!

Humans are still hunters and gatherers. Hunting for exclusive things of excellent quality is part of this. Whether it is really excellent plays a subordinate role. People try to impress each other with how successful their hunt was. The lyrics of the following track (English subtitle) sums it up well (it's sick!):

 

[Ordin Aryguy]

This something I wrote in a previous, similar thread…

Post in thread 'How people choose very expensive High-End speakers?'
https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...xpensive-high-end-speakers.52520/post-1896106

The decision to buy “high end” has little to do with actual value, quality, or performance, no matter how one tries to justify that it actually does.

 

[mhardy6647]

If you can afford one of these:

you can afford one of these:

 

[EERecordist]

Veblen good - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Thanks for that reference. Veblen was an influence on writer Vance Packard. On the mid/low end, he proposed the "ideal factory" would just run continuously regardless of demand. When there was demand, the goods would be put on trucks and delivered to consumers. When there was not demand, the goods would be dumped in the landfill. That idea relates to planned obsolescence and unreliable products we have discussed on ASR. We have that in Chinese industrial policy today. A fun book is Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Human Behavior by Geoffrey Miller. The writer is a university professor and the book does a lot of luxury brand name dropping, so he can be an annoying professor. Psychology is all models, mostly non-scientific. So Freudian, Jungian, behavioral, etc. psychology are all models. Evolutionary psychology, another model, Miller's area, is cynical and reductionist. But the book ends on a hopeful note, what would the world be if people "showed off" or based their identity on not consuming material goods, or consuming reused goods?

The beauty if ASR is it grounds the high-, mid-, and low- end in science. I was shocked having a conversation with a very high end PhD technology customer researcher that they had faith in their high-end hobby with respect to vinyl turntables. Personally, I think the most valuable thing for audiophiles is to support is live music for ear training.

 

[Blumlein 88]

The answer depends upon if you mean why it exists now or how it came into existence? I think there is more cynical snake oil taking advantage of the situation for profit than was the case at one time. One could say in times past people believed it even if it was also effectively snake oil. Really does not matter at this point does it.

 

[Justdafactsmaam]

Maybe someone can start a thread on the Steve Hoffman forum or What’s Best audio forum “Why does ASR not get high end”

And then we can see their psychoanalysis of this group based on a similar notion that different beliefs can not truly be informed, rational and honest.

Sure, there are high end audio companies that know damned well that they are fleecing customers and committing consumer fraud. But those companies show their hands when they straight up lie about doing scientific research. No reason to doubt the sincerity or intentions of the ones that don’t make that claim or other obviously bogus claims about their process.

 

[mhardy6647]

Plenty of insight on the ASR mindset available at myriad hifi audio forums.
I have to say -- I'd probably agree with some of it, were it not for the fact that I really enjoy the topics and (most of) the discussion here -- and despite my audio proclivities, I am well tolerated by all y'all (or at least by most of all y'all).

 

[FrantzM]

Hi

I would like to offer a different take:

Back in the 1950's up to the late 1970's there were just "High Fidelity". It is true , however,, that some companies, did offer components of superior quality or of "supposed" superior performance. There were those brands that elicited wet dreams from the audiophiles of the time, Mac Intosh comes to mind, but also Harman Kardon, Quad, Williamson, Garrard and many others...
THen in the mid 70's came the idea of over building the gears. Betetr power dupplies capable to power a house were fitted in some low power amplifers to show what could be done.. In Japan there were a race toward real measurable performance while in the USA (in particular) things took a different turn. True the gear continued to be overbuilt and , even over specs, but measurements started also to take a backseat...
We saw , during those years 70 to early 80's some sriously overbuilt amplifiers for example the Mark Levinson ML-2..


inside:

That was the beginning...

That may have started The design aesthetic language of the Audio High End... and also its philosophy.. Mark Levinson, the man, a person with an incredible salesmanship proclaimed that there was more to sound that measured figures and give just enough specs about the operations of the amplifier. That amplifier may have started the "Monoblock" craze. And the market segment known as the High End Audio segment... What is quite infuriating to me is that during the same of time, Japanese manufacturers, such as Technics (Panasoni), Pioneer, Sansui, Kenwood, Yamaha, Sony et al...were producing that were probably superior to any of those Rube Goldberg contraptions... The Mark Levinson Ml-2 was unreliable, and that is putting it charitably.. meanwhile the equivalent Japanese would be found working per their specs 50 years later..

Many believe this to be one of the original High End amp .. Production started in 1977 and stopped in 1986becasue of the reliability or lack of, issues...

BUt and that is the big one, Pioneer came with a similar amplifier , before, the ML2, the M-22 and the specs are very simialr: as is the design lanuage..

I would thihk it was more beutiful but that is a subjective call anyway ..

That was it.. Nothing else, the amp was , just naked.. there were no front or top , you bough that apr and ..
22-watts per channel.

From there sprung a complete market segment , served by a few magazines... two of these remain in existence: The Absolute Sound and Stereophile ...



And prices started to climb and products were getting more outlandish and so were claims.. A manufacturer claimed that by tuning a preamp upaide down, it sounded better! Another would claim he never measured , only listen to the circuits or the amps or the speakers and so on... And the subjective audio market was born, its name was High End Audio, some time during the late 70's and it continues to this day with a mantra of:
Moh Expensive = Moh Better. No measurements... but price is the metrics... if it is expensive, it is good, more expensive? More better.. Your ears and wallets are the determinants. There are so many products that occupy that space it is laugnable among these a pair of mononlock costing over $400,000 (no typo, five zeroes ) THat barely hit 50 watts at 10% THD

I lived in that space for years, I spent money, at times I didn't have in that space.. I learned the truth rather late, around 2016: My current system full range (yes People) and all $3000 or so of it, will beat the pants of several I heard, some costing well above $250,000.oo, Yes. And I have the measurements to prove it .

There is much more to say about the High End Audio Industry. I'll stop there. I have to work.

later, maybe.

Peace.

 

[ZolaIII]

HSR 160 Ei Niš 1978, three way boxes with Peerless driver's, schematics still available and still possible to find a working one.
A good book from the time we still had (real) audio industry.

 

[Ken Tajalli]

View attachment 366856

Love the caravan electrical connector!
What is it, a tube-based welding gear?