Made in USA

Here's some nice thoughts from the manufacturers point of view by Roger Skoff.

 

 

Mcintosh MC30 pair USA

Mcintosh MC 240 USA

PS Audio Power Plant 12 USA

PS Audio BHK Tube Pre USA

Pass Labs XP 15 phono USA

First Watt F8 USA

Klipsch Forte USA

Small Green Computer Transport USA

Optical Rendu USA

Rega P10  UK

Linn LP 12 UK

Clear Audio Concept Germany

Leben 300xs Japan

Hegel H590 Norway

Sonus Faber Electa Amator Italy

Holo May KTE Dac China

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

UL certification is NOT a US legal obligation, only a request/recommendation.

So blame the US Government not the Chinese et al.

CE IS a European legal obligation.

Hong Kong, England, Japan, Sweden, Scotland, South Korea, Poland, Serbia, Portugal, Norway, Denmark, Canada, Germany, Singapore

and USA

I think you will find a lot of high end American audio products also lack any safety testing like UL or equivalent.

I stopped buying Chinese, when I was over my friend's home one day and was looking at his system and noticed he didn't have a UL listing on the back of his power amp, well the following week I stopped by his home only to find out the side of his home was burned down, and he was staying at his mother in-laws. it so happened he left the amp on while out with his wife and kids and when they got back the fire department was putting out the fire. inferior products will kill you.  

Stored System: Speakers UK, Amp USA, Preamp USA, CD Player Japan and TT Japan. The rack and wires USA.  Mountain System:  Integrated amp China, Phono Preamp China, DAC Japan,  Mac Mini China and Speakers USA.

Ah…no I don’t but the reviews seem quite positive … more importantly, several of their dealers do a fine job of curating what they sell. Be well.

@ghasley Margules?

@bjesien I am good and hope you are as well….do I have one of these?

@ghasley thanks for that site reference- Neuro-Acoustic Alignment technology (ANA®) prioritizing harmonic structure over tone. Do you have one of these? Hope you are well my friend.

 

From Ebay, I do see you can buy Cardas cables for under 50 dollars from China.

And McIntosh cables, too.

@stebut  +1

In the audiophile world, is there really anything made that is pure junk?Sure some things are better than others, however, pretty much everything is of decent quality.  Myself, I tend to look for items that seem to take things up a notch with craftmanshp and quality. 

Let the China bashing continue. Who knew that there’d come a day that China would produce very good audio equipment. That day has arrived. Overseen by western or European standards, yet built in China. 
 

Ever heard of the great Willsenton R8 tube integrated? You missed out. 

@cleeds is 300% correct

@grislybutter + 1

I care more about USA output Iron transformers. I just prefer the sound. 

I just stopped by to say that too many people get wrapped up in the details when talking "Made in USA" but damn, that was a real understatement. The conversation seems to have turned to all kinds of crazy. Buy things made in your country or close to you and that supports local, which is the strongest thing you can do for your community and country. It's not a blanket statement saying that anything is the best because it comes from somewhere, and you'd be insane not to realize that we live in a global economy with a global supply chain that affects every electronics manufacturer no matter how much their marketing department says their components are made in house. Buy what you feel is the best regardless of source, but support the most local that makes sense.

Marantz USA 

Empire USA

HK USA 

Pilot USA

Pioneer Japan 

Schit Dac USA

Klipsch USA

Boston Acoustics USA 

Advent USA 

Focal's France

 

 

ghasley

thanks, I checked out Margules web site.

Nice to know about them, several unique ideas.

BAT CDP w/Siemens valves

VPI TT

Soundsmith/Dynavector carts

Magnepan arm

Synergistic and Kimber cabling

Tact RSC 2.2X pre

Cary main amps w/Sylvania, Tung-Sol and Russian Gold Lion valves

Hafler/Strickland bass amp

Emerald Physics main speakers

my own TL subs w/Seas L26RO4Y D1004

(all POOGEd with parts made in USA, Japan or Germany, wherever applicable)

                       MADE in china?

                        STAY in china!

sorry, that is why I mentioned the phonograph in there

I liked this place better when it was an audio group.

No major commentary here. Just want to note that have visited Edison vacation home in Sarasota, FL. Interesting about Ford because I recall they were good friends and would vacation together. Edison was a serious researcher and did have a large lab next to the vacation home. He was trying to develop rubber substitutes (plant-based, I think) for the war. He did not succeed, think vulcanization was the major advance. He and his team are responsible for many of the devices we have today: electric fans, electric irons, etc. 

Read a university account of his relationship with Tesla. Started overseas and then Tesla moved here, I think working in NY for Edison. Edison was impressed by him. He did get some ideas from Edison which caused conflict when he left. If I recall, he was working at Edison on alternating current generators. Edison was fixated on direct current, so Tesla left. Westinghouse picked up, financing the Tesla ideas. Direct current lost, too difficult with large batteries. Alternating current occurs with by rotating wire thru a magnetic field or vice-versa, generated by hydropower or steam turbines. The phonograph was invented by Edison. Current turntables also have the iron or magnet moving, generating the current, similar to electric generator. He did not invent movie projection but got into it. Was out rather quickly as people soon got bored with just being startled by the illusion of approaching locomotives and wanted stories. He also, if I recall, sold off the light bulb business when he saw alternating current had won. Got into mining and developed major machines there.

While it took around 1000 tries to get to the tungsten filament, he actual was repeatedly success with other materials. He just kept improving it.

@fleschler 

you were able to contradict yourself in one paragraph. Not that any of it made ANY sense

I am left handed

@dodgealum Thank you! Creates intellectual inquiry, much like Talmud study. Great. I took 4 AP courses, 2 in history in early 1970s.

@curtdr I also read the Marx-Engles Reader and only excerpt of Das Kapital. On target.

@elliottbnewcombjr Phew on you. Uncle Tom was a hero. He wouldn’t rat out the women and saved their lives.  There is a new opera, OMAR, which was written by Black Americans.   In 1807, a 37-year-old scholar living in West Africa was captured and forced aboard a ship bound for Charleston, South Carolina. Omar Ibn Said's life and Muslim faith are remembered and retold in this inspirational West Coast premiere inspired by his remarkable 1831 autobiography (the only known surviving American slavery narrative written in Arabic).  Shows the African slave trade by Africans, both evil and benevolent slave owners, the latter teaching slaves to read and be elevated in pre Civil War America.   

About 600,000 slaves were transported to the United States, or 5% of the twelve million slaves taken from Africa. About 310,000 of these persons were imported into the Thirteen Colonies before 1776: 40% directly and the rest from the Caribbean.

You should go live in a nice socialist or communist country. You blame billionaires on right wing elites. Ha Ha! It’s the Democrat/socialist billionaires that are the elitists putting down everyone else (Gates, Bezos, Soros, et.al.) not Musk or Warren. Billionaires create jobs and innovation, not poor people. Technology comes from the top. Edison was not a nice man but promoted new technology which benefited everyone (stole many ideas). Ford revolutionized manufacturing while providing superior working conditions for employees. Your one sided look at America is just like Zinn. Leftist!

I believe my Pack (sucking this last year) is employee-owned.

Just small stake for investors, though.

Just reading up, but think is covered already. The 46k is for individual income. True, households with both working would be halved. As one person noted, often mean (arithmetic average) and median are close.  Just that mean, the average, is impacted by large outliers.

@ghasley "its never been in fashion for educators to present opposite sides of a given topic"

hmm... guess it depends on the quality of the teachers you have.  I haven't had the displeasure to struggle w one-sided profs or teachers; generally they did present various perspectives, though with some unfortunate exceptions. 

I started learning about Darwin in junior high school, when it was still called junior high school instead of "middle school,"  ... in Oklahoma.  My schooling in evolution continued throughout high school in Minnesota, as did my introduction to Kent State (where I ended up attending as one of my graduate schools) and intro to Marx.  Maybe I've been lucky... but I've been to a lot of schools in multiple locations both in this country and abroad.  It's been the rare teacher who was adamantly one-sided. 

 "never" is a big word, as is "fashion"... 

true, a friend of mine who immigrated to U.S. from China was required to take multiple courses in "Maoist Principles" ... I wasn't there, but my guess is that your statement would apply, since my friend has since had to learn about American alternatives

@ghasley None taken. I took a quick look at mean, median and mode to refresh my memory and still misunderstood some of it with the examples given (there were no large outliers in the comparison) and the results were all close to each other. 

All the best,
Nonoise

@grislybutter it's a good point... workers as owners

In capitalistic corporate America, and indeed any capitalistic or semi-capitalistic country that allows private ownership shares, the workers can be owners... it's called stock.  

Gradually one can "change the family tree" by gradually becoming owner.  One can be part owner of thousands of companies domestic and international, via mutual funds like a total stock market index fund, and can be lender to many companies and governments as well, via bond-market mutual funds.  Capital doesn't have to be large; it can come in the form of small steady persistent streams invested over a long period of time.... instead of sipping on cups of Starbucks, how about dripping that money into ownership of Starbucks instead?

The opportunity for ownership is there... but action to meet the opportunity depends on the individual.  So, I own a bit of Sound United itself, for example, in addition to my Marantz amps.  

good discussion overall and topic with a legitimate question to ponder!  thanks to OP

Agree. That may be true about the median to the 'average guy', but the average can be skewed by large or small incomes. The median is just the halfway point.

Sorry, just looked. 80k is 75 percentile. 132k is 90 percentile.

median usually tries to present the way the "average guy" lives (the one halfway up the ladder). It is totally deceptive to clueless people

@nonoise

Let’s say there are 10 guys in a bar and the "average" income of them is $40K/yr. Then someone like Bill Gates walks into the bar and has a drink with them. The average pay of those guys would be in the multiples of millions no matter if you use mean, median or mode.

No offense intended but in your example, you are only correct that the mean(average) would skew radically higher because of the presence of Bill Gates in the sample data set. The median, however, is the middlemost number so for the pre-Gates data set that that would have been the #5 placeholder. The mode(the most frequently occurring number in the data set) would remain unchanged.

Deceptive to use average pay. Median is 46K.

It’s not at all deceptive to use average as a result. It’s just another way of looking at it depending on point of view. Median only gives the middle point of the range which can be horribly skewed due to outliers.

Let’s say there are 10 guys in a bar and the "average" income of them is $40K/yr. Then someone like Bill Gates walks into the bar and has a drink with them. The average pay of those guys would be in the multiples of millions no matter if you use mean, median or mode.

And when they say household income, don’t forget that in most cases in America, both spouses are working, which would halve the value.

All the best,
Nonoise

dude, you missed your meds?

Oh brother....