P.S. I forgot my friend's Mark Levinson, he would never forgive me for not mentioning his amp.
What Does 80 Grand Get You Nowadays?
A system was playing in a shop. I sat down and pretty soon I thought gosh, I’m glad my system sounds better than this.
That system - just preamp, amp, and speakers - cost about $80,000 new.
I didn’t make the speakers at first, because Sabrinas look far better than the usual Wilson house look. They were driven by one of those new high-end Marantz amps, and I don’t think that was a match made in heaven. The Marantz was driven by a Dan D’Agostino pre that looked like a Minion had been crushed in a hydraulic press. Audiophile music was streaming, but I did not catch whence issued those dulcet ones and zeroes.
I suppose that system constitutes high-end for some. Now, it certainly sounded competent, but it also sounded boring. I thought, this is the Audi SUV of audio: competent and boring.
Conversely, I was impressed and pleased to no end that the end sound of my modest system from the last century could play in the same league as an almost-six figure modern system, and do so in a more engaging and fun fashion - to my ears, at least.
I’m biased, of course; and I am certain many high-priced systems out there leave mine in the dust. Still, I would have thought $80,000 guaranteed a better baseline sound.
How about you, have you heard a lot of gear whose sound was way out of whack with its price?
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$15K for Yamaha NS-5000's (with powerful class D amps) is all you need to spend. I attend quite a few live music venues in Las Vegas so I do not try to equate my home system with what I hear in shows. It's not going to happen unless you own a 500 seat hall with line arrays and cash flow to book good artists. Recall I write "all you need to spend." You can do it for less. Price is like the number of flips a gymnast can do, degree of difficulty. $80K for a system is not that difficult, compared to $5K. The Yamaha model I cite was done by a team of young engineers in the world's largest musical instrument company leveraging tech synchronies from their other divisions. No "high end" brand has these resources. |
@devinplombier why don't you tell us where this listening session took place? |
Given the disparaging comments made about the shop, I am not going to name it. If you’re local, you already know this is a beloved and highly regarded shop, something with which I trust respected local audiophiles who are active on this forum concur; and if you live in some other region, knowing its name won’t do you any good anyway. Personally, I love the shop and I don’t want bad vibes going its way. It’s not like there is a surfeit of good hifi shops left around, here or elsewhere.
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