Reliability of Cary Audio Products

Some years back, my local Cary dealer (Upscale Audio) acknowledged reliability issues with some of the Cary CD and/or SACD players. I don't recall him ever mentioning any issues with their electronics. I've had 300B monos for almost a decade and 805 monos for a few years less than that and neither has ever so much as burped. Just very reliable IME.

One design issue might concern you, though. Those elegant toggle switches that Cary uses are somewhat fragile and putting them on the lower back panel (RCA vs XLR switching, IIRC) of the 9 billion pound 805 amp wasn't the wisest choice. Very easy to snap 'em right off when uncrating.

Marty

So out of 39 responses, 15 report no issues. 38% reliability based on this very unscientific pole. This is how Consumer Reports does reliability reports on Automobiles. They base their data on reader poles. This is useless data. The only valid data is generally collected by the manufacturers themselves or through some larger, high volume dealers. They are not likely to share their data unless it is really good news. My opinion is: people that have had issues tend to be more vocal. High end audiophile components tend to be low volume, some manual fabrication and manual assembly. That leads to poorer reliability as compared to high volume, automated assembly processes. How many 'goners here have had to send their expensive Swiss watches in for repair one or more times, for example? Product performance and a friendly, responsive Service department are the key factors to consider when buying. We don't like to think our $$$ stuff has built-in flaws, but that is the reality sometimes. Going after top end performance requires some patience at times.

Tonywinsc, point taken re expectations from expensive equipment. However, as you said, the response of the service department is crucial. My monoblocs have been sitting at the dealer's workshop since the second week of November 2010 because parts have not been received from Cary. It takes 4 days to receive stuff from the US sent to my country by FedEx/DHL. Cary knows I have been having problems with these amps. They could have used the courier services mentioned, rather than cumbersome US mail. Commitment to customer satisfaction, cliched though the phrase might be, distinguishes a reliable company from one that is not.

"This is useless data. The only valid data is generally collected by the manufacturers themselves or through some larger, high volume dealers."

Data generally speak for themselves. The sample may be problematic, but unless the respondents are lying, the data (plural, by the way) contain some information. For instance, if 24 respondents report reliability problems, then we are pretty sure that there were at least 24 defective units in the field. The problem comes when we try to extrapolate things like percentages to the population of units in the field. In the case at hand (BTW, the word you are searching for is "poll", which itself does not exactly apply in this case), the sample is biased to unknown extent, so that we can't place much confidence in statistics (like percentages) based on them. We have pretty high confidence that there are at least 24 defective units, and 15 working ones, but there is an awful lot of territory in between those two figures.

I like reading the reviews on Amazon. It is very interesting the varying opinions of a product. I have yet to see any product with a reasonable number of reviews have a perfect, 5 star rating. Some evaluations have to be discounted completely, of course, and I have warily purchased items with only a 3 star average rating but also with only a handful of reviews. I found the products to be just fine. People's idea of quality varies. Some people see quality as a product that works as advertised with solid dependability. Others perceive quality to be how an item looks, feels and performs. One person is happy with his $15k car because it starts everyday and gets them to work year in and year out. Another person is happy with their $65k car because it looks and feels good and the dealer treats them like a king every time they have to take it in for repairs. Go figure.