Peformance at price point for speakers manufactured in China?

For sure you are right...

I lived through the same experience with cheap chinese products 10 years ago and also with the product of  a new american player in town at the times  ...

The new american amp well reviewed was so bad i sold it the next day...

The chinese audio toys were not much better at the times ...

Things had changed, this new american company produce better design and improved now... Some chinese companies at lower cost produce as good as this new american company nowadays ...

The problem is identifying the good design ...

I used statistical analysis of all reviews...

i then bought for peanuts a Fosi SK01 S.S. preamplifier and a Douk P2 tubes preamplifier, for 50 bucks each ...😊

The Douk tube amplifier is better now than a european-american one i bought 7 years ago for six time the price of the DOUK...I sold it after one year because the sound quality was too artificial ...

Some chinese low cost products now , without being high end one for sure, answer the huge audiophile demand of the oriental market... Chalk board sounding preamplifier even at low price cannot survive long and sell big ...

Chinese engineers improve design and cost...

Chinese is no more a third developing country...North america are declining countries as the British empire was ... But you know already all this .. 😊

@mahgister , not all inexpensive preamps sound good. As an example, in the mid 90s I was listening to my system with a B&K HT digital preamp. I felt my system could sound more "musical" and I felt the the preamp might be what I should be considering. As it happened, Audio Advisor was selling an extremely afforadable Vac pre (I found out later that Vac had a couple of different priced product lines at the time) and the brand name vac and the fact that it had a couple of 12AX7s in the circuit appealed to me. I truly WANTED to like it. That preamp sounded like nails on a chalkboard.

 

BTW, what is your picture of? For some reason, it always makes me think of the cover to the Lou Reed "Rock And Roll Animal" CD.

I just bought a preamplifier... for peanuts...

And trust me it is not junk , soundwise at least ...

For sure if i was the owner a 50,000 bucks system i would not have bought it , i would have bought the ZOTL preamplifier of Berning ...😁 ( i returned one few months ago because it was not a good match for my AKG K340 i lost money and regret to have not kept it for my modified low cost active speakers because of my wife grin reading the cost😁) .

My total system cost is near 1000 bucks  ( half the price of the ZOTL preamplifier) but i paid it way less with my usual luck ...

But many popular american products in the same price window (50 bucks) if it exist at all if they compete dont do more than these two preamplifier ...

China can create junk and did it in huge quatities yes, and also just created a 1,000 km per hour train ...They go to the moon also ... And they are able in some case to create a low cost surprising pre-amplifier for peanuts ... I know because i own a tube one for my active speakers and the other S.S. for my movie headphone... the two for near 100 US bucks and impossible to beat save to pay thousand of dollars not a bit more sorry ...😁

Someone owning a multi thousand dollars preamplifier can laugh at me , but i learned enough in audio in the last 10 years to differentiate those who know and those who did not know ...

I known enough to be satisfied with any basic good product because i know how to optimize them or modifying them ...Acoustics rules not price tag...

Making the more with the less is creativity...