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?
@facten next time, read the thread before you post. Anyway, what difference does it make whether components were new or pre-owned? My point is, here is a $80K-when-new system that gets trounced by a modest $2,300-as-found system. And my question is, what does it mean for our hobby when $80,000 doesn’t even buy you a great system?
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?? @invalid ,,,dude, if you looked at my earlier comment, i said Boseintosh used to copy the old school PIONEER amps. Pioneer has been around since the 30s.....I had all of them spread wide open, taken all apart, measured a long time ago ....decades before you all started to look at a couple of the ASR charts from that IT guy and started to feel like fancy scientists or something..
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Perhaps I’m not following.
If there was an audio chain grossly sonically superior but at a low cost such as 3%, is there any meaning? Besides the 80k system is grossly overpriced? Or is there some other reason this system sounds so poor? No meaning. Maybe wondering “do they sell any?”. If someone buys then it’s “Wow, how did THAT happen, what about other choices?” Then the naughty thought,”is this guy tone deaf?” Maybe the designer built by limiting themselves to a design concept vs actual listening to the competition in their price range. Maybe their plan was to severely mark up then sell to suckers at a huge profit. Dunno, don’t care much- Not motivated much to put continuing speculation into a hypothetical, not beneficial/profitable. |
@deep_333 pioneer didn't start manufacturing audio equipment until the 1950's, they were a repair shop before that. |
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