Same thing goes for a rush of Pass gear listed within the last 24 hours. People are either moving onto other / newer gear or hurting for cash. Sean
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People have evil twins... |
People realize there is better sounding equipment out there! |
With respect to Taters there may be better sounding equipment out there but at its price point I haven't found any. I have a Jeff Rowland Model 10 amplifier and it is one of the best pieces I have ever heard. Jeff Rowland is a very popular brand with excellent sales so it is not unusal to have used items for sale. Also they just introduced a new amplifier and some may be upgrading and selling their old equipment. |
I think many people are probably upgrading as Rec said, also, even at used prices Rowland gear is expensive and in today's economy higher priced items move more slowly in general. |
I think there are a lot of people out of work, and good amp makes house payment for a few months, thats what I think.
The news says the average un-employed is out of work for better than 6 months. If it's your amp or you house, it's a no brainer!!!
jeff |
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Rowland & Pass are both coming out with new amplifiers. So I'm sure at least some sellers of both are moving to the new pieces. With respect to Tater's comment, come on, mention one name brand you think sounds better. This is a chat room! At least we can debate if you will declare your preference!
Debate Good! Put downs Bad! |
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I second Danielk141's comments regarding Tater's remark! |
Taters, were is your respones??? The Jeff Rowland and Pass Amp's are both Excllent amp's Respectiale. I also think it has to do with the Economy and Amp upgrades. |
I am glad you all like your Roland gear.
I will admit it is the prettiest stuff on the planet.
I am just wondering If it did not look so beautiful
would you still be buying It!
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Taters, so what stuff do you think is better than Roland in the same price area, that doesn't look as good but sounds way better? The Roland stuff is not followed closely by Stereophile (they rarely review it and thus don't put in the recommended components) but many rather qualified people feel it is some of the best equipment out there |
GamuT D200 or Herron 150 monoblock both for around $5K IMHO is better than any Rowland amps. |
I admit it, I'm a JRDG fan. I've owned the Coherence II preamp (the early 90s version), a Model 1 power amp, a Concentra integrated and a Model 112 power amp. All were purchased used or demo. Besides the great looks and build quality, Rowland has a wonderful sonic presentation. It always favors the musical performance over the hi-fi details. At some of the prices listed they're a bargain. Is there better sounding equipment out there? Of course, but there's always a faster gun (so to speak). |
People are selling because of the economy. Just wish I have a lot of $$$ to pick up some of the good deals here.
As for Taters' comments, this is an mature oriented forum. When you make such statements of Rowland products, or any products in general, you should state facts supporting your point of view. Some or most may disagree with your personal taste, but at least they will still respect your opinion. Stating claims about a product being bad without supporting evidents is just not classy. |
3chihuahuas, all the Roland guys and gals are lucky thats all he said. If the post would have been Krell (which I own) people would be crawling out of the woodwork to tell us how brite our amps sound. Heck, this mite even do it. I wish I had a dollar every time someone told a Krell owner how brite and dry his amps must sound. I have even read stories were people had to run out of the showroom it was so bad. Well I just thought I would bring this up so the Roland people would feel a little better, gotta get back to my brite system. |
Sogood51, I too wish I had $1 everytime some one makes that comment as well; I am positive I can save enough money to buy a Krell within a year.
I personally have never own Krell amps, but I do hear many people made comments about the product being bright in this forum. (Actually, I heard a lot of bad and good things about products here and would probably never have a clue without this site.) In any event, I even had a guy offering to trade my his Krell amp for my CLass-200 for that reason. I personally think any equipment can perform subpar if not matched well with other equipments or speakers. When I first purchase my Classe, I could not listen to more than 20 minutes due to listening fatigue from the harsh brightness. My amp sings now when I switched my B&W speakers for Dynaudio. My point here, let's give the each product a benefit of the doubt before jumping into conclusions. For those making good and bad comments about product should provide support facts. I am just affraid that if we all hear that Krell amps are bright, then we may fall into the self fulfilling prophecy by believing before we he listen to it. Just my opinions. |
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I know of one person that had Rowlands and got rid of them after auditioning Parasounds new JC-1. |
I 3rd Danielk141's comment regarding Taters' comments. I also suspect he is correct with regard to many Rowland owners upgrading to the new Rowland amps. |
I just sold a Concentra to buy a Concentra 2 so I'm one of the people selling Rowland.
In my experience on Audiogon there are favorite brands that carry the day for a time and Pass is enjoying that now. Krell seems to have fallen from favor in the past few years. As neither appealed to me in the first place, this is a non-issue.
Rowland and Goldmund operate so far above the Agon noisemakers that they receive little notice but they are perhaps the two most innovative companies offering solid state today.
Yes, they are expensive, and as such invite your "just as good as" comments but the fact is that if you live with their products for a protracted period and you can appreciate subtlety, then there is nothing better in solid state. |
tungwww:Have you heard ALL the Rowland amps? If so, in your own system with nothing else changing during the comparison? |
Hopefully, everyone knows the difference between Rowland and Roland equipment. I have not heard any Rowland gear, but my son's Roland V-drum kit sounds mighty good! :-) |
many audiophiles are purging their two channel systems for multichannel,or going for tube gear. when times are tough the only brand that continues to appreciate at all is mac....lovem or hatem,thats a fact....its like a harley....look at all the top of the line motorcycles that can't be sold ...no one buys a rowland to keep and enjoy...its just a stop on the way somewhere else. |
4.4 trillion projected deficit + cost of Iraq "war" and occupation + Japanese impending bank implosion + $40+/barrel sweet crude + housing bubble + predominant tax breaks for top 5% + highest unemployment rate since last Bush recession + a thousand points of Perle's imperialist light + a yellow ribbon around your neck = tick, tick, tick...
Hey, but that metal box sure does sound great!
Sell the Rowlands, consolidate, baton down the hatches, play scrabble while the storm passes over. |
I would like to comment on two of the above posts. I purchased my Rowland amplifier to keep and enjoy. If it's just a stop on the way, it would be to upgrade to another Rowland amplifier. Again, to my ears it's the best solid state amplifier I have heard at its price point. I started with tube kits in the 60's and over the years have owned and heard many great amplifiers both tube and solid state and Jeff Rowland is one of them. The other post listed Gamut and Herron as better sounding amplifiers. I haven't heard any Gamut products but I did have the chance to listen to the Herron ss monoblocks in my system and while it was a pleasant sounding amplifier it didn't have the bass control, extended midrange and top end as the Rowland. Again, that is in my system, my room, my source components so your experience may be different. To answer another post, yes I would still buy it if it didn't look as good as it does. |
Asa (three points), if world events are giving your shorts such a squeeze (25 points), perhaps a few hands of Bezique (27 points) are in order when you've had your fill of Scrabble. Me, I am less pessimistic, the taste in my mouth being less like verjuice (20 points). ;-) |
Oh, I know, 4yanjx, just stirring the pot-o-bit, don't you know; someone told me once it was the essence of democracy. (Things ahave been a bit calm around audiogon lately).
Not squeezing me, though, but sure is some people down the road (look out your car as you pass...). On second thought, if one does, in fact, identify with other people, then might just be squeezing that person too, ie empathic identification is a little more than just "world events", although that abstraction does have an intriguing distancing quality about it. On pessimism: who was it that said, "Wish for things exactly as they happen"? Anyway, yes, leave unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, metaphorically his lack of empathy for the other, but that doesn't mean deny that what he is doesn't exist. Can you say, embedded aristocratic corporate oligarchy with their own 'lil army? Hmmm...Yes, economically speaking, the empire will do just fine after it swallows this next thing, and, as such, we all as citizens of the realm will reap the profits at some point. But, will we also reap the wind, reap what has been sown?
I like the point thing though. Problem is that I don't know what Bezique is (!) or what verjuice means (!), so you would have to educate me there. But I still get what you were trying to say, I hope.
Oh BTW, I'm not really playing scrabble and hiding in a bunker; I'm hear talking to you...
Oh yea, I like Rowland just fine. |
Asa, perhaps only a face-to-face would have revealed the tongue supplanted firmly in my cheek as I eschewed the bitter nectar of fruit on which I snacked (verjuice) and bemoaning the bad luck of the draw while engaged in a spirited round of Bezique (a pinochle-like card game). :-)
No trying to slip in that extra "j" (8 points) in 4yanx, either. ;-0 |
jrd,
I have no idea if Mac sells well through all kinds of weather but I think using Harley as an analogy is prescient in that neither particularly excels at anything but both have captured the imagination of those who have little other
cerebral enterprise. For those who can never quite connect the dots, Harley, Mac and, indeed, the Grateful Dead are prima facie icons.
What in hell does Harley Davidson have to do with freedom or Confederate flags? And what, pray tell, does MacIntrash have to do with high end audio? Those who still wave the Mac flag are unaware of the progress designers such as Jeff Rowland
offer and will always remain so. Quality is not for everyone. If it was, MacDonalds would not have sold any hamburgers. |
The Harley-Davidson thing is so much more complex than any branding that occurs in the audiophile world. Either you understand The Motor Company or you don't.
Hey Macrojack, it spelled M-c-D-O-N-A-L-D's. As the largest merchant of prepared food in the known universe McDonald's serves reasonable quality food at reasonable prices in a convenient manner. If you want the greatest hamburger in the world, I've heard of a restaurant in NYC that serves a pound of ground sirloin on a fresh baked onion roll for $50 a serving. It must be so easy to look down upon those who only have $2 or $3 to spend on a meal.
Back to motorcycles - real men walk with a limp. I bet you don't understand that either. |
Hello All,
Very interesting thread.
I have the Concentra 2 with Proac 2.5's and an Arcam FMJCD23. The sound (actually the music) is incredible. I have worked my way up to this rig and could not be happier. I listen to many types of music for extended periods of time and the lifelike presentation is amazing.
I also drive a Harley (FatBoy) and after driving many other types of bikes I can tell you the experience is second to none! Like the Rowland? Who knows? ---- I can only tell you that I enjoy both. Very special products indeed!!! |
4yanx, I knew it was tongue in cheek from you. I thought it was funny, actually. I need to use smiley faces more I think. Also, still stirring, can't help myself. My apologies for using you as a foil, but if I admitted the foil part then we couldn't get these guys out of the woodwork. Thanks again for the chuckle. Your responses are very interesting, at least to me, and they make me think.
MacIntrash, love it! Now that's FUNNY!
Ohn: "reasonable quality food." My my...matter processed for the masses with chemicals added to stay here longer. Are they food companies or chemical companies that process processed food? Regardless of context, ie price, doesn't something drop below the radar of quality, any "reasonable" utility, at some point? If they put a two stroke lawn mower engine on a Harley, what would be the point, regardless if someone who was poor could afford it? As you said, either you know or you don't...I sympathize with your compassion for the meek, financially speaking in the context of the "american project", but maybe start with the horse before the cart: maybe, just maybe, the problem is in an acceptance of the means, especially when it means eating a horse, analogically speaking. We have enough food now to feed everyone all over the world and not kill another mind; its just a distribution problem, and one of greater empathy than just for the $2 dollar guy, problems that multinational food processing companies would like to catalyze, not cure. Of course, just my opinion... |
Asa, we live in a world where many problems (healthcare, clean water, nuclear proliferation, environmental degradation, etc.) are all technically solvable, but the political economic system does not encourage their implementation of these solutions. To say that it's a distribution problem really means that it's a political problem.
McDonald's has been a a successful company because of its ability to attract paying customers. You don't sell a billion meals without making someone somewhere happy. When you criticize McDonald's, or to bring it into the audio world, Bose, you are implicitly criticizing the decision-making ability of its customers. "50 Million Elvis Fans Can't Be Wrong", but apparently a billion McDonald's customers can. |
I have owned a 1987 Harley Davidson Lowrider and a 1940
Indian Chief. No comparison. I have heard the Rowland 302
amplifier with the Meitner preamp and the Avalon Eidolon,
with both the Spectral frontend and the Ayre frontend.
It was an excellent sounding setup, whether the Rowland
made it better I could not say, but the owner likes it
better than the Rowland 10 or 12 which were in the system
previously. |
One thing that I have learned over the years dovetails with the lyrics of Jim Croce (how often can you trot out that reference?). :-) You don't tug on Superman's cape, you don't spit into the wind, you don't pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger, and you don't mess around with Harley riders (the "pin setters" of the AMF days excluded, of course). |
Ohn: "distribution" conotes distribut-ing, which is an action. All human actions originate from the mind. Similarly, a political hierarchy, in our case, democratic-capitalism, is an abstraction that hides its deeper, truer meaning. To illustrate, I can not walk out my front door and point to "democracy" or "capitalism" because they are words that denote a collective state of mind; in our case, conformism by a group of minds we call "America" who conform to certain ideas. Again, you are still brought back to the origin; that the mind decides. There is no structure apart from the minds which envision it, and that abstraction only becomes a "thing" when those minds assume that it is the only truth, or the only possibility for the collective. Economies of scale - that alot of minds eat processed food, so, therefore, the truth is defined by their actions - confises what I was taliking about, namely, that it not a political issue, but an evolutionary one. If you say, "Well, everyone else is doing it so it must be right" then you conform to others mind's rules. This conformism keeps you from seeing that the empathy I mentioned is not perceived by "happiness", or the desire to stimulate instinctual pleasure centers of the mind, but is found through transcending that desire for materialism, ie empathy is attained through perception of meaning, not simply pleasure.
Oh BTW, Harleys seem cool to me...(as a machine and apart from their internal combustion heritage) |
Asa- an Indian (pre1953) are way cooler than a new Harley;
a mint 1940 Indian Four will set you back $60,000. A mint
1940 Indian Chief, side valve, suicide shifter, and all
will set you back $30-40,000. A modern Harley or Indian, I do not think I would own one now. |
I've been riding for a little over twenty years, but I've never owned an H-D. In fact, I don't have any desire to own one either. That said I have respect for H-Ds and for those who ride them. The fact that Harley doesn't make a motorcycle that suits my specific needs, or at least my perception of my needs, doesn't put me in any position to judge their suitability for other riders. An element of empathy involves putting aside one's own bias and respecting the decisions of others.
If a Harley were an audio product it would be big tubed power amp. Maybe a McIntosh, or more likely a Manley. |
Lets get on track here, what in the world has Harley Davidson have to do with Rowland gear in general and high end audio in particular? |
Nothing..but it makes as much sense as trying to determine why there are a number of Rowland pieces currently for sale. That said, I apologize to LbSilver for contributing to the hijacking of his/her thread. |
On Rowland: if you look at many "hi end" markets, not just audio, you can see this initial erosion in consumer confidence and buying power. For instance, last month wine auctions at ChristiesNY were off considerably on Bordeaux even though bottles submitted for auction were also up precipitously. Certainly, the richest will keep buying the Screaming Eagle Cabernets, but Rowland is not a Japanese AudioNote Kondo SE amp, and the wealthiest discriminate against the difference in terms of cache (which, without commenting on the relative merits of a Kondo vs. a Tenor, can be translated as, what will produce another of my socio-economic stata to covet what I have). Rowland falls in the demographic of upper middle class to upper-upper middle class, as far as price goes. It is this strata that is just beginning to feel the erosion that is moving up from the bottom stratas - even as the upper middle class deny it in default to the droning light ray connected from FOX News to their foreheads.
I can not say for certain that the Rowland situation here is necessarily following this trend, but many other such products are following similar arcs and market weakeness trends on ebay.
If there are any collectors out there with other hobbies, I would like to hear their comments on this.
Ohn: you are a paragon of restraint :0) |
Can't speak of other markets but audio has been experiencing attrition for 10 years or more. Some of us have died and others have lost jobs, lost interest or succumbed to divorce, computer or home theater distractions or insufficient funds to continue reinvesting endlessly. When high-end audio was growing the "carrot" proffered by TAS might have cost $20K, more than most of us could afford but within dreaming range. When that "carrot" moved to a point well beyond our mortgages, many of us despaired of ever being able to so much as dream of reaching for it. Some lost interest at that point. Who wants to participate in a game from which they are clearly disqualified.
Since Bush (not Osama) pulled the rug from under Clinton's economy, there are a tremendous number of white collar casualties who have to decide between their kid's tuition and their prized sound system. Or maybe it's health care or mortgage payments that force that decision.
In any case, we are losing brethren by the score and their detritus is beginning to clutter Audiogon with many a glorious piece at ever descending prices. Rowland is only one of many. |
Incidentally, I think it unlikely that any of you little boys would want a Harley if it didn't make noise. If not for U.S. government intervention, market forces would have eliminated HD years ago. They can't compete fairly with the Japanese as their products are dollar for dollar vastly inferior. All they are is noise and myth. That said, I will repeat that McIntrash is the perfect corollary in the audio world. Perhaps Crown is the Indian.
No complaints about my reference to the Dead being like Mac and HD? |
mac,the dead,harley...all are recession proof enigmas...they all have an intangible that many others don't....rowland is great stuff but at the end of the day its still just another high priced amp without the mythology when it comes time to move on....all myths contain at least a little truth... |
jrd -- I agree completely that all myths contain a kernel of truth. In the case of the Dead, Harley and McIntosh those kernels are old and dried up. Rowland is still vital and emerging where the sun has set on the others and only nostalgia or ignorance sustains their vestiges. |
Macrojack: you said it all. Pretty soon, me too, I'll just be listening to the music on a nice small system and fade off into the distance...It does make me sad though, to see people like yourself who love music forced from that retreat. I have said this before: the audio hiend is in trouble - and you are right, the attrition has been occuring, at a deeper level, for ten or so years now. This is happening because, underlying even that, is a decline in our society's valuing of things vs. meaning; we accumulate things in the hopes of finding meaning. This happens in most empires eventually. Pull up a seat, you have a front row view...Rowland being dumped is only a very minor surface eddy. There will be other oscillations...
I tip my hat to the brethren and say, this too shall pass. |
Obviously when you all go off the subject at hand talking
about Harley Davidson and Mcdonalds It just shows that
Roland gear is not exciting enough to stay on the topic.
Like I had said in my previous thread there is better
sounding gear out there.If Roland gear was so entharling
you would not be bringing Mcintosh,Mcdonalds,and Harley
Davidson into this thread! |
Hey, leave the Grateful Dead out of this! |
