How Much Do Aesthetics Factor Into Your Decisions?


Right or wrong, I have always taken what a component looks like into consideration when making a purchase. I like my components to look good.

Much like when I buy clothes. Fit, comfort and construction are important, but clothing also has to make you feel good when you wear it.

How do you feel about it.

Do you want everything to have a certain synergy of appearance, or are you okay wearing brown shoes with a tuxedo? So to speak.

128x128tony1954

I won't buy 'pretty' if it doesn't sound good. I won't by 'ugly' if it sounds great. A credo that applies to most things in my life. Looks great/sounds good, sounds great/looks good works quite well though.

Aesthetics of a Chord DAC. I’ve never heard any but I could see their appearance growing on an individual.

Great question, no right or wrong answer here, this is purely a personal choice. In my case, the aesthetics of a HiFi system in my living room are important, I don’t want to look at an ugly collection of boxes whilst listening to music. Case in point, this is one very aesthetically appealing (to me at least) systems I have ever assembled:

https://www.audiogon.com/systems/7324

And it sounds magnificent IMHO.

The latest MoFi SourcePoint 10 speaker has the top veneer installed cockeyed, 90 deg. to the horizontal veneer up the side. I have never heard the speaker and would never buy it because of that. Call me anal but esthetics does factor in a bit and I never though I would say that.

There are some pretty butt ugly speakers out there but overall, if they sound good I could live with it (except the SourcePoint 10)

There is a hierarchy that assists in distilling my product choices.

Intuitively, first and foremost…it’s best-of-breed class audio performance in each their budget strata respective equipment class, ... Full stop. Build quality and audio performance matters ..,, it’s the big first one that selects the contenders from all the pretenders .

BUT …..and it’s a big “BUT”. it’s also their appearance & impressions with an “EZ on the eyes “ additional further decision factor among the distilled contenders above , thst cannot be simply ignored either . For example. Classy polished wood high-end speaker cabinets build , instead of defaulting to cheap cost cutters with vinyl over MDF.