What is the most overlooked consideration?


What is the most overlooked consideration when buying a piece of audio gear? We all buy gear and we all have to make choices as to what component to get, what brand, etc. What is at the top of your criteria for choosing a piece and why? Synergy? reputation of brand ?hype your heard? it’s the best compliment to my system? warranty and service? I just wanted to try a cable? I only buy brands from the UK? Etc 

So you can tell what’s at the top of your list but mostly I want you to share what you think is a much overlooked consideration and why?
 

For myself I often think customer service gets overlooked as being very important.

2psyop

Showing 3 responses by freediver

One consideration NEVER looked @ IMO is the FOR SALE market...Too little attention is paid when choosing a component to how many units are active on the for sale market & how many have been sold in the past few months..
 Look at mass produced speakers like KEF,HIGHLY touted by Pro reviewers and the forums BUT if you look at the current market & past 3 months you will see they are the #1 most flipped speaker available today..Some will argue that’s because they are also #1 purchased but that just makes my point..There is a reason they are flipped more than any other speaker..
 When I choose a component,I want to know people that have bought that component before me are holding on to them..Look at speakers like Reference 3A,Harbeth & Spendor..For every 1 for sale now or sold in the last 3 months there are dozens of KEF,Monitor Audio,Klipsch,JBL & on & on...

Not to hijack since it was mentioned twice I would pose this to the repliers commenting on the "musicality"of a component..How the H do you judge a components musicality if you are considering it for purchase & don’t yet own it?
ONLY the "usual"audiophile criteria can be used at this point of the process!