The High End and Glubglub

Making a good argument, like virtue, is its own reward. If your goal is to *convert* someone to your way of thinking (or hearing) and you find yourself frustrated and angry when your subject fails to transform -- that's pretty good evidence that your goal has degraded your enterprise.
By all means, be opinionated and entertaining, be passionate, but in the end -- it's only music. A little perspective is in order. At the end of the day, each of us is entitled to like what we like, hear what we hear, to worship at the alter of whichever audio god we choose. After all, we are all bound by a common love -- of music.

Johnnantais, you raise some good points and I think it's great that we have this forum to kick around such ideas.

Basically consumers have no rights as to the type of products the corporate bureaucracy will produce for any particular demographic area. As you know, the corporate machine is driven by greed, not altruism.

Heck, we had the technology years ago to develop a "perfect" recording format and medium. All that's prevented that from happening is these corporate giants trying to protect their piece of the pie, as well as the greed of the recording industry trying to ensure that no one can own music from their artists without them getting their judicious cut. It's really quite a laughable mess when you think about it. Unfortunately it is the consumer who is once again getting short-changed.

Yeah, I was reading another thread today and thinking, well, if I go for SACD there are a handful of SACD releases that I'd like to purchase. And if I go for DVD-A, there's another handful, and wow, a very small percentage of this pool might even be recorded near the resolution level of the respective formats. Whoopie!!!!

Sorry for my rant. I realize that you are generally talking about high-end specialty companies, rather than the corporate behemoths. A lot of the smaller niche companies start out with the best of intentions and put their customers first. Some of them even stay that way. Unfortunately, others do not.

As to the low-powered, high-efficiency debate, I don't really want to get into that one. All I will say is that there are pro's and con's to every scenario and a person has to decide which set of compromises he can best live with. But from an ecological perspective, the low-power, high-efficiency route makes a lot of sense.

It certainly is a laughable mess, Plato, and add to that the new "Copy Protected" CDs, which sound absolutely horrible in my system. Rsbeck, I'm not sure precisely what you're saying, but just in case, I am not pushing single-ended amps, which I do not own, but which, however, I have heard and liked. We are bound by love of music, I submit that if the internet is to have any role/meaning in the present or future, it's in its potential for grass-roots movements, to give the consumer a chance to be heard and answered. If a consumer isn't aware of possibilities due to prejudice dressed up as science - as the above cute quote demonstrates - then the music isn't being served, and THAT is important. This hobby/consumer niche is fun because it has so many aspects: science, engineering, music, philosophy, beliefs...that's why it gets such a hold on us: we can apply concepts to the physical world and hear the results, which sometimes end up in magic: and it's those moments we chase and try to understand. Good old philosophy, an important aspect of a human life. I would like to see this "magic" identified - if it can be -and incorporated into a new understanding/knowledge of component design. As for passion, interesting ideas/results come from changing the angle of our thought, and this requires some shaking up: like a chemistry experiment, where you throw in a new ingredient and stand back to see what happens. That's the purpose of a forum, isn't it? You never know when a future or present designer is listening and getting new ideas. Mitch Cotter's invention of the 3-point suspension belt-drive was the result of such thinking, as well as the Quad 57s, Class-A amps, MC cartridges, and so on. Perspective, maybe, but this is still serious stuff: as they say, "If something's worth doing, it's worth doing it right." But mainly, I just liked that passage, and want to see where it leads.

Methinks the "skeptic" is in a financial conundrum. Plato sez: "Basically consumers have no rights as to the type of products the corporate bureaucracy will produce for any particular demographic area"... - Hmmm, if we're talking mass-market, consumers may not have a *right* but they have power -- the power NOT to buy. In fact, some corps try to use CRM & focus groups to determine what product consumers might want. Which doesn't necessarily mean a good, bad, or useful product; just one that people would buy.
I don't think this applies to our niche hobby, though... it's low volume products & expensive manufacturing & marketing.

Plato, IMO, explains why:
"the corporate machine is driven by greed, not altruism" Even if I substitute the word "profit" for "greed" (to put it in softer terms), single-ended tubes are not really a mass market item that can be easily automated. Moreover, corporations usually tout INNOVATION & tech advances, etc. People often seem to buy into "innovative" -- how innovative LOOKING/SOUNDING is a tube amp, for example, compared to sacd? Remember the stir CD created & the GREAT business opportunities for h/ware & software Cos alike.

Efficiency: remember the 81db (in)efficient speakers that required huge amplification to reach whispering spl's? Those speaker required that we buy huge amps -- another good market opportunity. Nowadays that speakers are more efficient, many of us still buy hi-powered amps -- multi-channel or two-channel, for sonic purposes (headroom, etc). So, there's still a market.

So the skeptic says, "let me try to fulfill my desires, directly" -- and behold, diy, horn-loaded speakers and the like. What corporation would bother?? If we take Tannoy (one corp that bothers) the high price of its Prestige range is quite revealing.

Efficiency revisited: there is legislation in the EU whereby, by 2008, devices will HAVE to be energy "efficient" to conform to EU specs. So where does that leave class A? Probably pay an extra "inefficiency" (deterrant) tax or have circuitry to "circumvent" this legislation?

Sorry for rambling