Buying Equipment Based on Philosophy???

My philosophy is if it sounds good in my system and it passes muster in my listening room, then it’s all good.

Yep I am Plato.

@erik_squires 

+1

This is marketing.....I'm not talking about marketing.....which is mostly Snake Oil.....I'm talking about a designer/owner who says...."Hey, I can do it better and here is how I do it"....

That's exactly what marketing looks like my friend. Doesn't mean it's insincere, but it is absolutely marketing and messaging.

Sure design philosophy matters I like triode wired Class A tube amps, and wide baffled speakers. A few other likes point me towards specific manufacturers. Then comes trial and error!

Vendors all want you to feel a certain connection to the brand. 

This is marketing.....I'm not talking about marketing.....which is mostly Snake Oil.....I'm talking about a designer/owner who says...."Hey, I can do it better and here is how I do it"......In the case of John Curl at Parasound, he is just a hired gun who is really into capacitors....Or Nelson Pass who is into Class A and distortion.....or Jason at Schiit who is into anything no one else is doing!....And then we have the whole cottage industry built up around Class D techno9logy and they all have a different way of dealing with 1 and 0.......They have a philosophy.....A deep rooted reason why they do something......No marketing.....

@erik_squires 

Vendors all want you to feel a certain connection to the brand.  I mean, that's the entire purpose of branding.  To sell you an idea on a name or symbol which you want to associate yourself with due to ..... whatever.

It is akin to being part of a community or tribe.

Yes, this is all well known marketing strategy. Brand loyalty is such a big thing that many companies seek to tie you in with them for life.

Despite the availability of potentially better options just look at how many people routinely stick with the likes of Amazon, Apple, eBay, Microsoft and Google?

The latter is becoming particularly difficult to escape from these days.

Attributes such as luxury, reliability, technical superiority can go a long way to satisfying a customer's sense of status and self image.

Companies such as Apple, Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Coke,  Gucci, Prada all have a certain cache and reputation that they carefully maintain with as little risk as possible.

Money in the bank, easy peasy.

Of course marketing disasters do still happen from time to time as the the likes of Disney and Balenciaga have demonstrated.

With audio it's difficult for a brand to stick out too far from the competition without also alienating other potential customers.

Reputations though must still count for something even when the current company bears little resemblance to an earlier incarnation.

Today's Quad, Tannoy, Wharfedale, Mission etc are a far cry from their predecessors.

In any case, just how does a company establish a distinct philosophy?

Folks like Harbeth, Spendor, McIntosh, Grado, Rega, Technics, B&W etc continue to do what they've always done but it's difficult to think of many new arrivals who bravely decided go against the grain.

The 2 obvious iconoclastic loudspeaker candidates would be Zu and Tekton. Whatever you may think of them there's no denying that they both offer something that the competition doesn't. 

At the very least they've carved up a nice niche for themselves with their unique brand philosophy. Quite a remarkable achievement these days.

Good luck with that.

You can still build a great sounding system whatever the approach. Better listen first and then decide to accept or reject anything with a term "philosophy" following it. Nowadays it is widely sold. On the other hand some excellent components are created when deviating somehow from their house sound, most designers and brands are not always on roll. 

If a Schiit or Pass labs item I own didn’t sound great I wouldn’t own them. I’ve "un-owned" some gear from some seemingly very hip designers, so really...come on man...

If I had the money I would buy the Ongaku amp without actually hearing it, and then build a system around it. That is philosophy.

Although I appreciate a brand's philosophy...what it stands for, the truth is in the performance. People can say all they want but the 'proof is in the pudding' for me. Such is nature...a successful design survives.

I would hope that everyone would be influenced by design approach of the company in combination with their approach for marketing.

Some companies simply don’t present their products in a way that makes a compelling case to consider their products absent any other information.

I’m a member of several other audiophile groups and I’ve run across several people that are spending thousands of dollars on equipment without having even a rudimentary working knowledge of the product.  What pains me the most is when they try to assess why it does something or sounds a certain way because it breeds recommendations that are completely off base.  Things like evaluating the potential benefit of moving to a balanced connection by using an RCA to XLR adapter. 
 

I probably should have stopped before the rant escaped…

Yep. Philosophy of demonstrated excellent high voltage, low capacitance topology, point to point wiring, pi (choke) filtered power supply, handmade equipment built with the finest components; in other words, the finest possible.

The technical design philosophy has absolutely nothing to do with my purchase decisions. Great way to make poor choices. To me, except in the lowest level equipment. Now, the design philosophy of Audio Research and Conrad Johnson is not technically oriented, but of the sound quality characteristics they want to achieve. But if that philosophy took them somewhere other than where I wanted to go it also would be of no value… I wouldn’t give a hoot about what they said.

Choosing based on specific designs or philosophy is a great way to get a ok sounding system, at best.

I agree to a small extent, but when all is said and done, it’s my ears and bank account that determine what I buy. 

Well, this certainly is intentional. Vendors all want you to feel a certain connection to the brand.  I mean, that's the entire purpose of branding.  To sell you an idea on a name or symbol which you want to associate yourself with due to ..... whatever.

This is missing the point. I'm not buying from a person or company because they are nice people....This ain't about lollypops and roses.....I'm buying because their design "philosophy" has merit on an engineering level. 

To some degree - In evaluating turntables, I listened to low mass, high mass and suspension tables. 

It influences my decisions regarding DACs. I favor non-oversampling designs.

I realized that I buy most of my HiFi equipment based on the designers/ manufacturers philosophy.....Example: Nelson Pass,Pass Labs "First Watt"....Jason at Schiit,......David Haffler with Dynaco......Richard Schram/John Curl, Parasound...Etc... These designers/owners/manufacturers have a deep philosophy about the direction of their designs and their products

Well, this certainly is intentional. Vendors all want you to feel a certain connection to the brand.  I mean, that's the entire purpose of branding.  To sell you an idea on a name or symbol which you want to associate yourself with due to ..... whatever.

It is akin to being part of a community or tribe.  Not quite a family.  That feeling you get when you show up to an antique store and there's 8 other cars just like yours outside.  Your tribe awaits you.

Nothing wrong with it, per se.  I get the need to believe in a brand or designer. 

The only thing I trust is my ears !!!

I pay respect to the design approach.   I like simple , point to point designs and wanted something DHT that only had one tube per channel , a true SET

This was never more true than when I commissioned an amp to be built.   After some phone discussions and texts I knew we were on the same page.   

It was scary buying something sight unseen  but he hit it out of the park and is building me a DHT preamp.   

I'm going to build an Amp Camp Amp solely because it comes from the mind of Nelson Pass.....

I certainly fell for the magazine fuelled Linn/Naim bullshit back in the 1980s.

This, despite my reservations of one certain Ivor Tiefenbrun (Linn) he always sounded like a shifty individual.

Julian Vereker (Naim) on the other hand seemed rather more candid and straightforward, as did Roy Gandy (Rega). Julian even once said he'd have a Quad system if he couldn't have one of his own amps.

Eventually I woke up to the realisation there was more to audio playback than mere PRAT (pace, rhythm and timing). In fact, there’s an awful lot more, including tone, texture, imagery etc.

The problem with most of these ’philosophies’ is that they tend to only promote their own strengths and remain very quiet about the weaknesses.

So therefore perhaps they shouldn’t really be called philosophies, perhaps sales pitch would be a better description?

I like buying recordings based on the engineer.

I understand the word "philosophy" used in this context to indicate a complex notion, namely, design-used-for-intended-acoustics-complementary-of-music.

In other words, there's a sound the designer has in mind -- a flavor profile, if you will -- and this is chosen based on what the designer thinks the music needs. It is philosophical because it is the application of general ideas regarding musical aesthetics to the best engineering designs to accomplish that -- and to a price point. This, I think, is what is making Schiit so successful.

I wouldn't call it philosophy.  Nietzsche is philosophy.  I'd call what you describe "design approach".  

I do indeed choose my equipment based on design approach.  For example, I will not bother to audition a tube amp based on PC boards.  I want a simple signal path...I think passive components can only degrade sound, never add anything.  etc  (don't argue with these, these are just examples and I know there are people who disagree but that would derail the thread)

I think people who are more technical in nature are more likely to form such opinions.

Jerry

Reputations are earned 

I do like to gain insight into the designers of the components that I purchase, and how they approach their designs, even if some of the details are technically over my head. I have also made a couple of major acquisitions without the benefit of an audition (no nearby dealer; both worked out well), and would not have done so without the high level of comfort gained through earlier, direct communication with the designers.

I own/have owned products by the companies you mention, but all have also made products I didn't like...Schram sold Parasound last month...also many stories over the years about Parasound using lower quality parts than Curl designated...

Nope only go on what it sounds like. Although all mentioned designers are 1st rate but have heard/owned a Parasound JC3 and 3+ and not for me.