British equipment generally Low/Mid-Fi compared to American equipment?

[Anonymous]

[quote user="JoelSim"]I bought a copy of Stereophile and am busy searching for the Hamburger dispenser right now. The closest I have come is one which fries Donuts so far, having said that it's very very good as every 15 minutes it stops for a 3 minute break and all these cheerleaders come bursting into my room[/quote]

AWESOME, jam doughnuts?

 

[Anonymous]

[quote user="unleash_me"]
Well well....

What do you all think about these babies?

http://www.higherfi.com/spkrlist/speakerlist.htm

Now who wants to buy the Kharma Grand Enigmas?!
[/quote]

Those? They're not hifi, they are for rigging up at an outdoor music festival. I wonder how much actual design work went into those, or did they just bung a load of speakers together and adjust the output levels of each to get the perfect flat response?

 

[Anonymous]

[quote user="hifikrazy"] If this is true high end hi-fi, then British makes must then be operating predominantly at the low/mid level. But I must correct my earlier impression that American makes dominate high-end. In the Top 10 of this list are 1 Dutch, 3 Americans, 3 Germans, 1 Swiss and 2 Swedish.[/quote]

I think you are confusing big with high quality.

 

[Anonymous]

[quote user="hifikrazy"][quote user="Fraziel"][quote user="hifikrazy"]I have been reading a few issues of Stereophile magazine and it's prompted me to wonder if American equipment are truly Hi-Fi while British equipment generally operate at the Low/Mid-Fi level? In Stereophile, US$20k to US$60k pre/power combinations, US$20k to US$50k speakers, US$100k turntables, and US$10k cables seem to be the order of the day. Even in their Awards issue, they just have one category for "Budget Components", while the rest of the Award categories organised by component type is represented by models in the price ranges mentioned above.[/quote] All it means is that particular magazine is targeted at the high end market. Why would you possibly think that because one american magazine is full of high end kit that it means british hi fi is low/mid level? What a bizarre assumption to make.[/quote] I apologise for making the wrong conclusion... but then again, it wasn't a conclusion.... Take note of the question marks and the words "I wonder". It's just that in my part of the world, Stereophile is the most common American hi-fi publication, as is WHF among the British publications. But comparing the two, I see a huge price gap between what is categorised as high-end in WHF (like the GBP1700 ClearAudio Performance turntable which won the award in the highest price category) and the award winners in Stereophile. It just made me wonder whether every second American household had the Stereophile award winning turntable from Continuum Audio Labs (costing a mere US$90,000) in their service. No no, I'm really not that foolish to think that would be the case, but it was just food for thought.[/quote]

Ok i apologise.i will rephrase.What a bizarre question to ask.

 

[Thaiman]

Many people find it hard enough when upgrading....well, try down grade! it's a lot harder.

Once you get used to high quality hifi equipments, it can be very hard to live with budget system again and many of us here will be looking at High end (I don't like that word btw) products in the future unless you can stop being a hifi addict!

 

[Anonymous]

I love this forum and this topic specifically! As an American I can confirm that most Americans do think Bose is the best money can buy. They have a very powerful marketing machine over here. However, the real Audiophiles are a different story. Sure, many of them do like power and if it goes to 11 they want it. You guys are right on with that one.

I have to say Wilson Audio makes he best speakers I have ever heard. But the B&W Signature 800 that was out a few years ago is a close 2nd place. One of my local dealers is full of British HiFi gear. To many of us we don't care where it is from or if it is priced low or high as long as it sounds good!

Nice forum and I look forward to chatting with you guys.

 

[hifikrazy]

[quote user="Nigel Proctor"] I think you are confusing big with high quality.[/quote]

So Oldphrt... I mean Nigel Proctor, based on your reasoning, the B&W 800D costs more than the 805s only because it's bigger? Now I'm not going to say that the 800D would sound good in a small room, but given a large enough space, I would dare say that it would be able to bring one closer to the scale of a 100 piece symphony orchestra than any small speakers could. So is that high quality.... or is that just bigger?

 

[Anonymous]

[quote user="Thaiman"]Many people find it hard enough when upgrading....well, try down grade! it's a lot harder.

Once you get used to high quality hifi equipments, it can be very hard to live with budget system again and many of us here will be looking at High end (I don't like that word btw) products in the future unless you can stop being a hifi addict![/quote]

lol, that's something akin to convincing a hells angel to ride a pushbike

 

[Anonymous]

oops dbl post, delete pls

 

[Anonymous]

[quote user="hifikrazy"][quote user="Nigel Proctor"] I think you are confusing big with high quality.[/quote]

So Oldphrt... I mean Nigel Proctor, based on your reasoning, the B&W 800D costs more than the 805s only because it's bigger? Now I'm not going to say that the 800D would sound good in a small room, but given a large enough space, I would dare say that it would be able to bring one closer to the scale of a 100 piece symphony orchestra than any small speakers could. So is that high quality.... or is that just bigger?[/quote]

Well, there is 'a bit bigger' 'a lot bigger' and 'absolutely impractically massive'. Now of course, I am talking from a hifi in your living room point of view. Those.. thingamywotsits... are obviously made for a massive arena, perhaps a high quality listening auditorium of some kind or something. In that case, I would say money has been poured into making them bigger rather than just higher quality. or rather, money has been poured into maintaining musical detail and accuracy when moving to a much bigger scale of speaker.

That said, I have never been in favour of a speaker unit that posesses a million driver units, I cannot see how that will do anything but hurt your stereo image - although it can of course provide other tangiable benefits.

Ok, my crazy pipe dream.

I win more money than sense on the lottery or something, here is what I would do. Coming from a physics and engineering background it would float my design boat too. Make a concert venue. But make a concert venue that uses a single pair (or perhaps I could go surround too) of speakers with a normal 2 or probably 3 way driver system.

Now this is a concert venue, so it has to be loud.. so it has to be BIG. I wanna create two buildings (left and rght) the size of a three storey house. Somehow I'll have a single tweeter able to tweet loud enough for this. I'd imagine the mid bass driver being roughly the size of a dinner table. A deep bass driver even bigger. The power required to drive this would be phenominal and I could see the drive coils using superconducters to get the magnetic field strength up

A pipe dream because the technical difficulties to overcome would be immense, but the result would be awesome. The coolest looking concert venue ever. I wouldn't want to be standing inside the bass unit when they hit the low E string on that bass guitar though! instant liquification :S

that's *MY* idea of big anyway))

 

[hifikrazy]

Mr Poletski, I do share your view that many driver units can't be easy to integrate. But at the same time, I think very large driver units have their fair share of problems too from a physics perspective. Harbeth seems to be going with the "fewer is better" philosophy, the only problem being the resulting humongous bookshelf design of the M40.1 that is far from pretty (to my eyes anyway).

 

[Anonymous]

[quote user="hifikrazy"][quote user="Nigel Proctor"] I think you are confusing big with high quality.[/quote]

So Oldphrt... I mean Nigel Proctor, based on your reasoning, the B&W 800D costs more than the 805s only because it's bigger? Now I'm not going to say that the 800D would sound good in a small room, but given a large enough space, I would dare say that it would be able to bring one closer to the scale of a 100 piece symphony orchestra than any small speakers could. So is that high quality.... or is that just bigger?[/quote]

Big is all important to Americans. Look at their cars, big and inept.

BTW very clever way of spelling old fart but why not stick to the proper spelling? For your information I'm not all that old, only 39.

 

[Anonymous]

[quote user="Nigel Proctor"]Look at their cars, big and inept.[/quote]

Unless you want to cross half of America in which case they're very very comfortable. Utterly inappropriate for a late 20th century city or a small country with windy roads like ours however. Horses for courses. What their car industry is now lacking is the adaptability to cope with the demands of those big cities and cheap air travel that makes that interstate car journey redundant. Oh everybody else plus unions plus... the cars are rubbish

[quote user="Nigel Proctor"] BTW very clever way of spelling old fart but why not stick to the proper spelling? For your information I'm not all that old, only 39.[/quote]

You're not he? Or are you being subtly self congratulatory and obfuscatory at the same time?

 

[Anonymous]

[quote user="nigel proctor"]Big is all important to Americans. Look at their cars, big and inept.
BTW very clever way of spelling old fart but why not stick to the proper spelling? For your information I'm not all that old, only 39.

[/quote]

oldphrt is the name of a guy who used to post here, he is under the impression (I guess) that you are the same person posting with a new nick.

And yeah, big and inept. They claim they like their cars more than anyone... then go and drive an automatic!

 

[hifikrazy]

Nigel Proctor is definitely Oldphrt. Same style, same way of disputing individual quotes, same pig-headedness and even the same exclamation :O