When someone tells you it's a $40,000 amp, does it sound better?

I went to RMAF a few years back and brought my wife. She has a healthy amount of skepticism and calls it the way it is. She heads into a room with some vinyl she just purchased in the marketplace and the host throws it on. There was about 500k worth of equipment playing her disc and I knew we just approached the crossroads with the needle drop. It was unlistenable and after two tracks the album was politely returned to her. I found myself making excuses for a half million dollars worth of equipment. The room was crap, the vinyl was poorly recorded, high end systems reveal more of the truth, crap in crap out etc. Her take was she loved the artist and wanted to enjoy the record….. was tired of three days of well recorded jazz. 

Yup a 40k amp should sound better than a 10k amp but often doesn’t. If I bought it I would have auditioned it in my room to see if it met our very subjective definition of better. If I bought it without auditioning there is a good chance I would be cornered into making excuses. Been there done that. 

We wholeheartedly agree with jumia. We also believe the same for the digital components in high end audio systems.

Check out our Tech Blog on the topic:  How can Something that Costs so Little Sound so Great? 

Deer Creek Audio is an authorized miniDSP dealer.

@mahlman   you had me at "precious pebbles".   Indeed Audiogon gold. 

Deer creek audio and dsp is great for two channel listening.  But they really don't have a workable solution for home theater DSP.  
 

A good DSP arrangement solves a lot of room problems and equipment problems and is underrated and not fully appreciated.  Probably because the interfaces and the product are so difficult to work with. It's a real pain in the ass to deal with DSP the way it's set up and really shouldn't be.  Mcintosh has a room treatment box that provides no graph before after and no way to make changes and requires microphone for sampling just like everybody else. It may sound very nice and very good but I wanna see something and I wanna be able to change something.

Deer creek audio is very convoluted when it comes to home theater listening. They say you can use it for this but it's really not workable.

I believe a couple of things are contributing to the perception of higher priced components sounding better.  The first is anticipation bias.  If someone says "listen to this amazing $40,000 amplifier I just bought" there might be the expectation that such an expensive piece of gear has to sound better because it's so expensive.  This might be more so if you can't afford to buy one yourself.  If you can afford it and bite the bullet, far be it from you to question that your investment didn't make a profound improvement in your system. The second thing has to do with appearances.  1/2" thick double anodized front panels with fancy engraving and machining and fluted knobs, edge lit glass inserts, exotic looking feet, etc. all give the appearance of something special.  This has to sound better; just look at how beautiful this thing is.  Electrons could care less what front panels and knobs look like.  But we can't see electrons or how ripple-free the DC voltage coming out of the power supply is.  How the gear looks though is something one can sink their teeth into.  Appearances seem to make a lot of difference to many and the trend of audiophiles placing their beautiful looking gear between their speakers for the world to see supports that theory.  Years ago, I remember speaker systems hidden behind an open weave curtain.  The electronics were off to the side or behind the listener and there was nothing to distract you from the music which just seemed to come from the performers.