My problem with people giving help on equipment is that most are simply regurgitating what they have heard others say, very few comments are based on any real empirical evidence. When I was at UIUC, I worked in an Audio store that sold real high end components. Our line up consisted of Krell, Levinson, Cello, Jadis, Magnepan, Apogee, Linn, Sumo, Belles et al. Monday evenings seemed to be the night that the So called Audiophiles would pounce on our store to banter at each otherabout the pros and cons of Audio. Now most of them had really nice gear. Gear that they were intimatley familiar with. Again most would denounce the abilities of one brand versus another with out having lived with the equipment. How can you derive a cogent argument with out knowing the unit as well as you know your own? You listen to what others say, you read what so and so wrote in TAS or some other rag. Soon you have a huge pile of vomitus garbage. Most people tha would argue against Krell, have never owned it! Look at the who RU thread. That was genius. It is suprisingly fresh. Most of the people that responded have very modest systems, yet I recognise some of the tags as being very boisterous about certain products that according to their own admissions, are out of their range. I'm not Clueless ( I did laugh at the movie) and I'm not a trouble maker. Unless you consider some one who is honest enough to say make the decision yourself when it comes to equipment. The person giving the advice might have spent the better part of their youth standing in front of the mains and banging their head. Or they might judge their equipment by having a string quartet play in their great room( I know some one that does this). One final point, this cottage industry is doing itself a great deal of harm by being so damned critical. The minutia out weighs the gross. This is driving the price of good equipment sky high. Can you truly justify spending Fifty thousand dollars on a pair of reference amps. I can hear the difference, I simply cannot justify it. I believe that gear does make the difference, but where does it stop and on who's authority
