I think I agree that Wilson is a candidate. That company hasn't really seemed to make any sort of attempt at innovation since they began and look to me like they intend to get by on pretty much pedigree alone. Maybe the worst actor to me is PS Audio. They've always strived to be a second-rate company. They spend all their efforts looking at what the competition is currently up to and then try to design an everything-including-the-kitchen-sink model or version that they think will trump everything in the market. But, what usually happens is that somebody else somewhere brings to market shortly afterward a new twist, improvement or innovation to it that Macgowan's ee's didn't foresee. Then they have to start over with an all new version that surely this time can't be beat. But, it's the other companies they seem to be stealing ideas from that apparently drive PS Audio forward. Their Perfect Wave DAC and transport were well enough received for a while, but in the digital arena no foothold lasts for long it seems. About the only other thing they did that audiophiles took to were the Power Plants...very good for their day (apart from the wattage limitations), but other companies have since outdone those designs as well. But (and I'm venting here), the really distasteful part for my money was seeing the focus of PSA newsletters slowly change, first, from informative updates on products, then to trips overseas to foreign production facility tours and finally to an absolutely insane level of Paul's and his family's indulgences on such extended vacations. One month it's wine-making in France, the next climbing peaks in Tibet or hunting tigers in India...or something equally ridiculous. I mean, I remember back in the day when he didn't seem like he could afford a life like that. So, how are we to assume he has since come across that kind of capital?? I've had to work pretty dang hard for my audio dollars. Are those activities the kinds of things I'm being asked fund?? But, if anything, he seems, via the newsletters, to be marketing all that back to us. "Hey, don't you want to buy your gear from somebody as successful as this guy? If you do, then you can feel like somebody, too!" Really, seriously?? I think I'll pass... Anybody who has amassed a bankroll like That is probably not on the "leading edge" of value. I know that'll probably offend somebody somewhere, but I'm just calling it like I see it.
So, because his company is successful, the products must be a poor value? I learn something new here every day.
I think that is not the point. I think he is saying that PS is resting on their laurels. Terms like "prefectwave" are disingenuous because there is nothing perfect, ever.
I have no problem with people making money, but crazy claims and unbelievable profit margins exist in this arena, and it is not good for anyone except the people making the money.
I have no problem with people making money, but crazy claims and unbelievable profit margins exist in this arena
"Unbelievable profit margins" does not make me think of the audio industry. Land development, automotive manufacturing, filmmaking, computer software or site development, defense manufacturing, energy exploration and transport (oil and gas), are some industries where "unbelievable profit margins" are possible but, for the most part, not audio. "Crazy claims" you can find pretty much anywhere.
The "crazy profit margins" are still very much relative within the audio industry. Some companies continue to offer top-drawer products and services at realistic prices and some are preoccupied with the stratosphere. And you could lay as much blame at the feet of those enthusiasts who want to be elitists, buy into the whole "excess" thing and pretty much brag about how much money they've spent as much as you could blame the companies who have found a way to cater to them. But, this is still the land of the free and that's really ok to me in that as long as there are those companies indulging in excess (in terms of both image AND profits), then I'm betting that will continue to create plenty of room for the companies that can competently cater to the rest of us...for just as long as we ourselves continue to buy.
I'm not against people making money, but what I dislike are crazy claims, high prices and no engineering justification for it. I'm reminded of the ML HQD as a prime example of this. A $28000 speaker system in 1984 that measured poorly and sounded even worse according to Stereophile. However the designer made big claims and apparently tried to mislead the reviewer and was caught. Unfortunately this type of stuff goes on in the age where it is even easier to verify things. Some equipment clearly justifies it cost from an engineering standpoint, exotic materials, superb manufacturing, etc. Of course all that money being spent doesn't necessarily mean you have a better product, it just meant you bought a more expensive product. I could sell you a Camry for $25000 or I could put another label on it, coat it in gold, sell it for $100k and say it is a better car, but is it?
"I could sell you a Camry for $25000 or I could put another label on it, coat it in gold, sell it for $100k and say it is a better car, but is it?"
I hate to say it, but this is irrelevant. What defines "better"? If someone is willing to pay the price - then it's worth it to that person. Period.
Does a Patek Philip tell better time than a Casio? Is it a "better" watch? I'm willing to bet that 99.99999% of all people on the planet will say no, especially when you tell them what they sell for.
I have no problem with people selling their products for whatever they can get out of it. Lying and misleading people is a different thing altogether - but if you listen to the HDQ (in your example) and still plunked down the $28k - then how can you possibly complain about it's performance?
12-26-14: Gpgr4blu Tie Bose in the low-mid market and Magico at the high end.
And your viewpoint wouldn't be influenced in ANY way by the fact you have a long history of preaching the virtues of Wilson speakers on here, would it? Lol!
I suppose my previous message was primarily focused on Mark Levinson the man. He is the most overrated thing in audio and probably did a huge disservice to the hi-end community. He may have single handedly created the voodoo market. His ridiculously priced 4 quad speaker system, amps that were interesting (not always in a good way), but got much better once Harman bought the brand. Then came Cello. And finally his masterpiece Red Rose which was relabeled Chinese hi-fi for multiples times the price. He felt his name was worth money and not the product. He has lived his whole life that way. However, he may be ashamed of it because there is no mention of any audio related stuff on his wikipedia page which I'm sure he has edited to make sure people forget his past.
Do you really think Oppo is overrated? It does get a lot of great press, but dollar for dollar it is probably the best deal in audio. My Oppo relegated my Esoteric DV to spare bedroom status.
Scvan. I think Oppo makes a good unit, but when people start comparing them to a Krell, or Esoteric then I think they are overrated. Same thing with Emotiva good for the money, but by far the best
"07-05-14: Judyazblues 1. Atma-sphere Amps that are suitable with 5% of all speaker systems." This is unfair! This thread is about overrated products, not how wide a range of components they can be used with. Also, I have the MA-1 monoblocs, that can probably drive 30-40 percent of speakers out there fairly well (the big MA-2s perhaps 70 percent). Basically I think Atma-sphere is underrated, for example in Stereophile. At least, for me, with well matched speakers (Audiokinesis), this is the sound I love, every day.
I've disagreed with Atma-sphere on here about some things, but even his low power amp can easily drive way more than 5% of speakers. Probably well more than 95%. Go to Japan and see how everyone loves SET amps, and they are using them on similar speakers as here. Most people don't listen to music at peak SPL of 100+db. Try 85-90 at most. The wattage race of the 70's was overrated in the amps and it still is.
Anyone want to admit the regularly use 200 watts of power? If so how huge is your room 400m^2 or bigger?
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.
Hi Chriswil, you make some excellent points. How we do we truthfully determine, each for ourselves, which makers are overrated?...when the truth of the matter is that because of what you say (rightfully) about manufacturing, material and development costs making up such a small portion of the final cost to customer, that the answer to that question, all things considered, might well be "just about any of them" - and as you consider that to be the lay of the land to begin with, then "just about none of them" might serve just as well...it all tends to end up pretty relative, since for any one maker you could think of as being overrated, by the same yardstick, you could probably name another and yet another, ad infinitum...until the original distinction becomes lost.
I don't know about Atma-Sphere amps only being suitable for 5% of speakers. The odds were not on my side when I bought my Raidho C1.1 speakers. But my Atma-Sphere S-30 drives my Raidho speakers to perfection -- with the Paul Speltz auto-transformers added. I have at least 50 db. headroom on most recordings with my PS Audio DirectStream DAC that has a gain of at least 10 db. If you add the Paul Speltz auto-transformers to your system the Atma-Sphere amp should have enough power to drive most mid to low sensitivity speakers, IMHO. There are 3 settings on the auto-transformer and I use the lowest setting.
But I do agree with you about Synergistic Research cables. IMO, they should limit themselves to the tweak business, which looks like the direction they are heading.
I would add a number of other cables makers to Synergistic Research in the the BIG CABLE YAWN category: ASI Liveline, Cardas, Gabriel Gold, Grover Huffman, HiDiamond, Kimber, Mogami and Pangea -- among others.
Any company that supposedly produces high end equipment but provides poor service would in my opinion be overated.
+1 The whole "overrated" thing is in the ear of the beholder, as indicated in the "high value DAC" example by Chriswil. However, his "poor service" definition of overrated makes the most sense of anything I have so far read in this thread.
"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).
Sabai - I agree with most of what you say, but I would not put my Kimber KCAG cables in the "yawn" category, they are more in the "have served me well over the years" category. Mogami - well perhaps, but then again, they are cheap and dont claim to be miracles. I run two Synergistic research Master Coupler power cords to my MA-1 mono blocs, one with active shielding, one without, and have noticed, the one with active shielding does indeed sound a bit better. So perhaps you are referring mainly to some "yawn" models of these brands.
HiDiamond Cables are definitely NOT in the "yawn category". I have tried several power cords and the P3 is clearly one of the best values in all of HEA. Other then a dedicated line this is the best $750(2/used P3's)I have spent. The time is now for all audiophiles to consider cables as a component NOT an accessory!
As far as being overrated, only Bose comes to mind, as far as what the general public thinks.
But I can't really come up with anything else. As to overpriced, well, that's a different story.
I have no doubt that Goldmund products are well-engineered, well built, and using those big slabs of aluminum are expensive. But the prices? I just don't see it.
Same with Audio Note (Japan)...I don't doubt they are extremely fine products, all that silver, but they MUST be overpriced.
"Statement" (top-of-the line) cables...thousands of dollars, jeez louise.
Cannot agree with Lamm being mentioned here. I can see how someone might think of them as overpriced, but not overrated. IMO their high value comes from the sound quality of their gear, which is outstanding, and the length of time their models stay current and competitive with the best designs available. Their resale value is also solid across their lineup. From that perspective, one could argue they are not even overpriced.
Listen, the whole high end audio thing is out of control. Whats happens when somebody comes up with a implant device that streams 20hz to 20khz. directly into the part of the brain that "hears" music ? This kind of tech. is just around the bend my boys.
"I have no problem with people making money, but crazy claims and unbelievable profit margins exist in this arena "
It's not like a lot of other industries, who pile on extra charges for things that you aren't really receiving.
Yes, some items in the audio business have good profit margins, when I was in the business most speakers had "50 points" in them. But that's a "brick and mortar" shop, which has display and stocking requirements from all their manufacturers, must have a repair shop, etc. Electronics didn't have a large margin in them.
I just spoke to Carl yesterday there at Apex Audio in Denver, Colorado, Carl is the owner of the shop and also the winner of best sound at show, the Rocky Mountain audio festival for the past 5 year's, I asked him if he carried high fidelity cable's, his answer was he gets more trade in's of high fidelity cable's towards the brand's he carries than any other cable, I asked Carl what cable's he used to win such a prestigious audio show? , his answer was Taralab's complete loom of the Evolution zero cable's, so my vote would be high fidelity cable's.
I will add the two companies that I was underwhelmed by their gear.
BAT. I have VK 3i and a vK-33. Both were exceedingly bright and sounded like mid fi.
AYRE. great company and they get quite a bit of positive buzz but i had 2 different C-5 players and one of their amps and felt they were okay but did not understand all the buzz they got!
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