what brands of components do people like and dislike ?
please grade the products of companies whose products you have owned, giving the company a rating between 1 and 10, where 1 means "worst sound quality" and 10 means "best sound quality"
thus you might rate conrad jonson an "8", vandersteen a "7", etc. please rate as many brands as you wish.
i will crunch the numbers.
at the end we'll get an idea of what people like and don't like. i think it will be very interesting.
Upon further reflection, I would like to slightly upgrade a few of the ratings I posted earlier in this thread. Mr. T -- please incorporate these changes accordingly, when you do your compilation:
What strikes me is that audio seems to be the only field of human endeavor in which there is absolutely no limit to how absurd and outlandish something can be
How about Anthropogenic Global Warming nonsense espoused by many "scientists"? (Ice caps melt, global floods as sea levels rise, etc. etc. many ridiculous doomsday scenarios for which there is increasingly a total lack of evidence...even global temperatures are going down recently)
on paper a product seems absurd. however, in audio the placebo affect is alive and well. percption is reality. since there is no way to verify someone's perception, one must decide whether or not to pursue a product which seems to be ineffective or won't work.
Tice Clocks, jars of pebbles, telephone mods. magic chips' you put NEXT TO the CD to make it sound better etc. Who made ALL audiophiles look insane to all non-audiophiles, even if the particular audiophile thought the stuff was crazy!And made it much more UNLIKELY that new folks would ever get into stereo equipment
Well put, Elizabeth. What strikes me is that audio seems to be the only field of human endeavor in which there is absolutely no limit to how absurd and outlandish something can be, without someone still defending it by saying "you can't say it doesn't work, because you haven't tried it."
(PS: why do some posters prior to me list ratings with a (-) in front of ALL the theoretically positive rating?)
It was intended as a hyphen, Elizabeth, not as a minus, and I think we were all just trying to be consistent with the first responder's format. But you are right -- it was potentially misleading and we should not have done it that way.
I agree with Stevecham also but I'm bored right now so what the hell. As stated my list will only contain manufacturers whose equipment I have owned. It must also be stated that I am a bit of a cheapskate so the perceived value is also figured into my rating. That may not be the OP's intention but it is impossible for me to remove that factor from my opinion. Acoustic Energy - 7 Analysis Plus - 5 Anthem - 5 Arcam - 8 Audioquest - 9 Bel Canto - 9 Denon - 6 Eminent Technology - 3 James Loudspeakers - 8 Linn - 9 Marantz - 5 Meadowlark Audio - 9 Mirage - 5 Musical Fidelity - 4 Portal Audio - 9 Quad - 8 Paradigm - 4 PSB - 6 Resolution Audio - 10 Revel - 10 Roksan - 3 Silverline Audio - 8 Sony - 7 Totem - 8 Thiel - 8 Vandersteen - 9 OK, now I'm bored with this exercise as well. Think I'll put on some music.
I agree that the over-simplified methodology of this survey is highly flawed, but I'll give it a shot.
Many of the following companies are long since out of existence (in a couple of cases, VERY long since), but given that Audiogon is a place for buying and selling used equipment it seems reasonable to include them:
Acoustat - 5 Antique Sound Lab - 4 Audio Research - 9 B&W - 7 Carver - 4 Classe - 8 Grace - 7 Grado - 7 Infinity - 6 Magnepan - 8 Marantz (the original company, under Saul) - 8 Mark Levinson Audio Systems (the original company, pre-Madrigal) - 8 Paxthon - 5 Pentagram - 6 Radio Engineering Laboratories - 10 Rotel - 4 SOTA - 7 Stax - 8 Tandberg (top-end cassette decks) - 9 Tandberg (other) - 5 Thiel - 5 Threshold - 6
But how to weigh across the line becomes a question. For example entry level Vandersteen is not the same as top of the line Vandersteen. And PS Audio power conditioners are not the same as their audio components. Plus, many companies make electronic components as well as speakers; responses must be evaluated and weighted according to one's experience with a given portion of a mannufacturers's line.
Otherwise the "results" will be flawed and the thread becomes a "shouting match" (is this the intent?)
Also system and room contexts play a huge role and these parameters cannot be ignored, it's simply unfair to rate component manufacturers if we don't don't know the systems they were evaluated in; there is no control for this.
There are likely other incongruities with this approach not yet captured or mitigated.
This approach is highly flawed and will not yield meaningful data.
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