Most overrated audio manufacturers?

The manufacturing cost of a component is relatively small (including R+D) compared to what we ultimately pay for it. Included in the cost are things also such as anticipated warantee and customer service costs. Although the performance of a product is quite subjective, but poor service is reasonably easily measured. (If you search for the thread I started you will see who I am thinking of.) So I would like to add this aspect to the discusion. Any company that suposedly produces high end equipment but provides poor service would in my opinion be overated. On the flip side of the coin I have a pair of speakers whose components probably cost no more than 25% of the selling price. But the service I get from the seller is beyond the call of duty. So what is the true value of the speakers?

A point regarding Sevan's comment: "Some equipment clearly justifies it cost from an engineering standpoint, exotic materials, superb manufacturing, etc"

I'm not at all sure that "exotic" materials aren't chosen especially to hoodwink us into thinking it is somehow better than what went before and therefore worth paying much more for. If diamond tweeters were so great, why do hi end speaker manufacturers still use silk dome tweeters, compresion horns and so on? Marten speakers are lovely to behold but whenever I have heard them sounded so clean and analytical as to be boring. Here I should probably admit to being a fan of 300b SET and high efficiency speakers. Not exclusively. I don;t care how audio nirvana is produced,its just that this is what currently suits me best. The use of OHNO cast silver wire in products is another case in point. Audio improvement, or hype?

Also I don't think we should necessarily pay attention to what Audiophile or any other mag is touting as being the bee's knees. You really have to hear it yourself at home. What is not often discussed is the quality of the listening room. In this thread there a are several comments about how poor various components sound. IS it the component or the room that creates the poor impression? I can put my speakers in different positions in the room and each place sounds different. So how exactly do they sound?
And indeed you can sometimes see this in reviews. Two different reviewers say different things about a component. Actually this is what I would expect. It is when everyone say the same things that alarm bells begin to ring. (e.g. with which manufacturer do you associate the terminoligy "PRaT" more than any other?)
Subjectively it is difficult to determin what component is overated. I listend to a high value DAC in my system. sounded terrible. I listend to it at my brothers, sounded brilliant. We cant listen to everything thats available and we tend to go with those components the press say are the best. They pull our strings to a degree.
Every manufacturer is out to make as much money as possible. They decide how much the local market can take. I live in Switzerland. Being taken for a ride is a way of life here.

"Anybody who has amassed a bankroll like That is probably not on the "leading edge" of value."

I think they probably started out as perceived to be offering something which others didn't at the price. Once success takes off then of course like any company they will use the name as currency. Then it is a case of at least doing just enough and paying the advertising fees.

So I would probably have to agree.

"I do hate to slam the big name manufactures. Please some one else do it and I need a laugh."

- Yes, that's a laugh. Don't you represent them? I do love to see dealers using sites like this for their own amusement. "sounds real audio" yet they carry various speakers and amps and stuff. If you had something that sounded real you would only need one, and you would chose the cheapest that could do it. How about a more honest name: "Sounds quite good audio" (Yes, how much honesty is there in Audio?)

"How we do we truthfully determine, each for ourselves, which makers are overrated? "

- As you say Ivan_nosnibor, its all relative. What are your preferences? How big is your listening room? How does it sound compared to another? Also how much disposable income you have> If you have millions then you're not going to be hunting around in the budget end of the components market, and the cost of the component is not then that important (but I bet those people still haggle).

But as a rule I would start by "questioning the hype".

For example, on the "Sounds Real Audio" site, if you look at the bottom of the Wilson Benesch page it talks about the speed of sound in Carbon fibre and that its higher than diamond. But you don't use carbon fibre in isolation, you use it in a matrix with resin. Also you not only have speed of sound along the fibre but also across the fibre. A paper on a related subject can be read here: http://www.escm.eu.org/eccm15/data/assets/424.pdf

According to these findings speed of sound along the fibre is 10763 m/s (not 18350 as quoted on the "sounds real audio" site), and accross the fibre 3042 m/s. So if propogation of sound was the deciding factor for using carbon then Berilyum would be a better alternative at 12900 m/s as it will be the same in all directions and would be cheaper than diamond. So it looks like irrelevent information posing as something vital and necessary (and also justifies the expense, which carbon doesn't these days) and would make me suspect this manufacturer to be a candidate for being "overated".

Now it suggests later, on the same page, by the reference to converting energy to heat, that the function of the carbon is to provide damping.

Yet if you look at Vectran, surely this would be a better alternative to carbon fibre? http://www.vectranfiber.com/BrochureProductInformation/VibrationDamping.aspx

So to me what is being presented is a lot of technobable which raises doubts rather than confidence in the people publishing such hype (as well as those happily propogating it).