Question Is expensive hifi worth it today?

[npxavar]

The market is not that significant and given that hi-fi import/export has no special control and shipping is not that expensive (in comparison to cars for example) a luxury tax is probably pointless.

 

[npxavar]

Not that hi-fi gear cannot cost more than an expensive supercar:

Wavac SH-833 monoblock power amplifier ($350,000/pair in 2004)

2x150W, so it's more than $1000 per watt.

 

[Dom]

$350,000 for Monoblock's. Outrages.

 

[Friesiansam]

Not that hi-fi gear cannot cost more than an expensive supercar:

Wavac SH-833 monoblock power amplifier ($350,000/pair in 2004)

2x150W, so it's more than $1000 per watt.

Still cheap compared to the very top end of the supercar market, Bugatti for example.

 

[npxavar]

Still cheap compared to the very top end of the supercar market, Bugatti for example.

And most don't outrage about that ... while at the same time they are appalled with the price of a "mid-fi" setup.

 

[Friesiansam]

And most don't outrage about that ... while at the same time they are appalled with the price of a "mid-fi" setup.

I don't care if people are daft enough to pay so much money, not my problem and, it keeps people in well paid jobs, making the top-end cars and hifi.

 

[AJM1981]

I'd recommend an experiment to anyone that doubts the the harm reverb does:

If you can, take a good quality wireless speaker and carry it with you whilst listening to music (or even just speech).
Note the feeling you experience as you move between a bathroom and a well damped room.

It's as if a weight has been lifted from you.
The sound becomes focused - all effort to hear the detail has gone - a feeling of relaxation and relief (real relief).
Now you might ask who'd be stupid enough to listen in a bathroom.....but have you seen some of the listening rooms in people's photos?

Excellent example.

To me those photo's often seem to be like placing a pair of speakers in an empty room with the question "how do we solve this? ". I am not an interior designer but I would suggest making it a little more like a home first with the options given before going to anything else.

As has been said, if a recording has added reverb, fair enough - but your music needs as little reverb added from your environment as possible.
(Your speakers were likely to have been designed, if not tested, in an anechoic chamber - somewhere with no reverb whatsoever - no such thing as a listening room being "too dead" as far as I'm concerned).

Two credible sources here. Paul McGowan, PS audio who is perhaps not a equipment builder, but to say that he has at least some experience with rooms for auditioning gear would be an understatement. It was actually his quote.

Second. Andrew Robinson. As an experienced reviewer he currently reviews and tests hi-fi for the audiolover in his living. He mentioned that there was perhaps a fraction of an amount of reverb but considering this acceptable to enjoy music and reviewing home gear. If he can't do that or isn't credible for this reason it is fine to me. But he is sailing the same waters as Whathifi and other sites reviewing luxury hobby products.

Up to a certain point the level of reveal is there and it won't be more revealing beyond that point. So yes, a hang towards a more dampened room is really ok. Just try to kill as much as reverb as possible till a point dialogs in audio are crisp and clear.

I have seen instruction videos on how to place panels that start with 1 panel and end up stuffing the whole room with panels like making walls and ceilings with that stuff like the whole room becomes one big panel. At that point I think it is probably $afe to say that they "might" want to sell the viewer a couple of panels.

 

[SteveR750]

Easiest way to appreciate reverb is to ring your mate when he or she is sat on the toilet in a tiled bathroom as opposed to the furnished lounge.
I'm pretty sure that someone like Andrew Jones considers direct and indirect radiation when designing a speaker, given that we use them in a non anechoic setting. The measurements in the chamber are useful for making reference calibration profiles, but rather like Harmon curves for headphones, it's probably better to design to an "average" listening environment. Jones talks a lot about using his ears as part of the design process, which messes with the strictly objectivists of course, but they're missing the point.

 

[AJM1981]

Another spotlight. I would not be the first to say that expensive hifi follows expensive homes. I can place a set of Tannoy Westminster or Klipsch LaScala in my living and it would fit but it would not integrate that well into the interior as it does in some ballroom style rooms with classical furniture in which they blend in.

All add up.Golden or silver badges, verneer, uniqueness in design, kraftmenship in details. Those are apart from audio all things that count for people who spent big on loudspeakers as a consumer.

 

[podknocker]

Modern kit is so overpriced. If a CD player costs over £300 it's a waste of money. This technology is 43 years old and hasn't really changed, apart from shorter wavelength lasers and improvements in DACs etc. My Sony 4k Blu Ray player was £249 and built like a tank. It would play any format and codec and the picture and sound quality were superb. There's no reason to spend more on this type of device. I sold it when I got rid of my Toshiba TV. I remember reading a Cary Audio CD player review, several years ago and this thing retailed for nearly 4 grand. I checked and researched the specs and it used a £7 (SEVEN) Sanyo CD transport. Along with the case, PSU and a sprinkling of chips and capacitors, this thing would have cost about £200 to build. Retailing for £400 would have given Cary a decent profit. These companies are ripping people off and I will no longer fall for this nonsense.

 

[WayneKerr]

Modern kit is so overpriced. If a CD player costs over £300 it's a waste of money. This technology is 43 years old and hasn't really changed, apart from shorter wavelength lasers and improvements in DACs etc. My Sony 4k Blu Ray player was £249 and built like a tank. It would play any format and codec and the picture and sound quality were superb. There's no reason to spend more on this type of device. I sold it when I got rid of my Toshiba TV. I remember reading a Cary Audio CD player review, several years ago and this thing retailed for nearly 4 grand. I checked and researched the specs and it used a £7 (SEVEN) Sanyo CD transport. Along with the case, PSU and a sprinkling of chips and capacitors, this thing would have cost about £200 to build. Retailing for £400 would have given Cary a decent profit. These companies are ripping people off and I will no longer fall for this nonsense.

Best I keep my head down on this one

 

[Deleted member 201267]

Modern kit is so overpriced. If a CD player costs over £300 it's a waste of money. This technology is 43 years old and hasn't really changed, apart from shorter wavelength lasers and improvements in DACs etc. My Sony 4k Blu Ray player was £249 and built like a tank. It would play any format and codec and the picture and sound quality were superb. There's no reason to spend more on this type of device. I sold it when I got rid of my Toshiba TV. I remember reading a Cary Audio CD player review, several years ago and this thing retailed for nearly 4 grand. I checked and researched the specs and it used a £7 (SEVEN) Sanyo CD transport. Along with the case, PSU and a sprinkling of chips and capacitors, this thing would have cost about £200 to build. Retailing for £400 would have given Cary a decent profit. These companies are ripping people off and I will no longer fall for this nonsense.

Are you suggesting that £300 would buy me a state of the art CD player ?

 

[Nico69]

Are you suggesting that £300 would buy me a state of the art CD player ?

£350+ will make the '0's rounder and the '1's pointyer 😄

 

[nopiano]

Sometimes I think that there should be a luxury tax in hi-fi ...

There was for a while! In the mid-1970s, soon after I started working in a Hifi shop each Saturday, VAT was cut from 10% to 8%. But on luxury items, including Hifi gear, it rose to 12.5%. Then to 25% a year later!! There was a massive boom before the 25% rate came in. We had to manually record every item sold because no till could cope with two different rates.

The weird thing was that some accessories were taxed at 8% and others at 25%. It was something like the description that affected it. Tape machine cleaning fluid was higher rated than record cleaning fluid, because software attracted the lower rate. The ingredients were identical! Completely barking mad, and thankfully it was scrapped within a year or so.

 

[Gray]

There was for a while! In the mid-1970s, soon after I started working in a Hifi shop each Saturday, VAT was cut from 10% to 8%. But on luxury items, including Hifi gear, it rose to 12.5%. Then to 25% a year later!! There was a massive boom before the 25% rate came in. We had to manually record every item sold because no till could cope with two different rates.

The weird thing was that some accessories were taxed at 8% and others at 25%. It was something like the description that affected it. Tape machine cleaning fluid was higher rated than record cleaning fluid, because software attracted the lower rate. The ingredients were identical! Completely barking mad, and thankfully it was scrapped within a year or so.

That was the time of my first job, for a Hoover service agent.
Got vague memory of (some?) spares being classed as luxuries 🤔

 

[Symples]

Not that hi-fi gear cannot cost more than an expensive supercar:

Wavac SH-833 monoblock power amplifier ($350,000/pair in 2004)

2x150W, so it's more than $1000 per watt.

I am using a pair of these with my desktop computer

 

[nopiano]

That was the time of my first job, for a Hoover service agent.
Got vague memory of (some?) spares being classed as luxuries 🤔

Quite possibly; it was pretty chaotic. You’d maybe find a Hoover itself was a luxury but a cleaning product like a cloth wasn’t. Then an identical spare part might attract a different rate depending on what it was intended to be fitted to.

I recall quite a few Hi-Fi bits being hastily relabelled to attract the lower rate!

 

[podknocker]

Are you suggesting that £300 would buy me a state of the art CD player ?

That's EXACTLY what I'm saying. Any brand new CD player will be, by definition, state of the art, but the stuff that goes into a CD player hasn't changed in 40 years. From what I see on tech spec sheets, when I go digging, a £300 CD player and a £3000 CD player will probably use the same £20 optics/transport/servo/DAC and capacitors and you'd struggle to hear the difference, when these little 1s and 0s get sent down that digital cable, to an amp. It's nonsense to think a £3000 CD player, like a Cyrus, will extract more 0s and 1s, or polish them, to make them sound better. Improvements in DACs and power regulation do help, but at 10 times the cost? No chance. It's delusion and fantasy and these things are overpriced, by a considerable amount. Having luxurious finishes and fancy XLR sockets, isn't making a difference.

 

[Deleted member 201267]

That's EXACTLY what I'm saying. Any brand new CD player will be, by definition, state of the art, but the stuff that goes into a CD player hasn't changed in 40 years. From what I see on tech spec sheets, when I go digging, a £300 CD player and a £3000 CD player will probably use the same £20 optics/transport/servo/DAC and capacitors and you'd struggle to hear the difference, when these little 1s and 0s get sent down that digital cable, to an amp. It's nonsense to think a £3000 CD player, like a Cyrus, will extract more 0s and 1s, or polish them, to make them sound better. Improvements in DACs and power regulation do help, but at 10 times the cost? No chance. It's delusion and fantasy and these things are overpriced, by a considerable amount. Having luxurious finishes and fancy XLR sockets, isn't making a difference.

Thanks for the clarification.

 

[Deleted member 201267]

That's EXACTLY what I'm saying. Any brand new CD player will be, by definition, state of the art, but the stuff that goes into a CD player hasn't changed in 40 years. From what I see on tech spec sheets, when I go digging, a £300 CD player and a £3000 CD player will probably use the same £20 optics/transport/servo/DAC and capacitors and you'd struggle to hear the difference, when these little 1s and 0s get sent down that digital cable, to an amp. It's nonsense to think a £3000 CD player, like a Cyrus, will extract more 0s and 1s, or polish them, to make them sound better. Improvements in DACs and power regulation do help, but at 10 times the cost? No chance. It's delusion and fantasy and these things are overpriced, by a considerable amount. Having luxurious finishes and fancy XLR sockets, isn't making a difference.

Having read this reply again it should be easy to compare various CD players by simply connecting them, via the analogue outputs, into some sort of test / measuring device.

Are there any websites that have demonstrated such a test that anybody can provide a link to ?

 

[Dom]

I was just looking at this web site : Audio Science Review It measures and reviews Hifi.

 

[Deleted member 201267]

I was just looking at this web site : Audio Science Review It measures and reviews Hifi.

Thanks i will check it out.

 

[Al ears]

Thanks i will check it out.

Just remember just because something tests good doesn't mean it's going to sound good once placed within a system.
Testing an item itself is meaningless.

 

[Deleted member 201267]

Just remember just because something tests good doesn't mean it's going to sound good once placed within a system.
Testing an item itself is meaningless.

That's a good point but any differences heard, i guess, must have a corresponding measurement to confirm it ?

Another test would be to plug a CD player direct into some "proper" active studio monitors ?

These are designed to be as accurate as possible so any differences between CD players, real or imagined, should become obvious.

 

[Al ears]

That's a good point but any differences heard, i guess, must have a corresponding measurement to confirm it ?

Another test would be to plug a CD player direct into some "proper" active studio monitors ?

These are designed to be as accurate as possible so any differences between CD players, real or imagined, should become obvious.

and turntables?
How do you test those speakers themselves bin isolation?