[...]
I am not asking to be snarky or rude or mean... I honestly hope someone has a direction they'd like to see things go... I agree with both sides and a disagree with both sides.... and though I affirm the principles behind the objective camp I want to know what the point is..... I get the idea, I agree.... Now what?
Interesting thoughts. Here's my take:
Some time ago I found a post buried in a thread about why headphones will never be speakers and started a thread on it. The topic is certainly interesting from a number of view points, but what really hit home for me was a followup from the guy who wrote the post himself about how people attempt, basically, to reproduce the effect of going to a concert hall in their homes. As I'd never wanted to attempt that myself, since I listen at quiet to moderate levels, it suddenly struck me why high-end audio can be a big deal to people. Let me explain.
Another member made an interesting comment that he chose equipment to audition or buy by reading the comments about it from people who listened to the same types of music as he did. At the very least, we know with headphones that the frequency response and its relationship to the frequencies that are prominent or not in the music is important. People who listen to classical will find issue with the response at 2-4 kHz as that is where quite a few classical instruments have prominence. Bass response is important with a number of modern genres and so on.
However, what is also important is how loud people listen. While I listen at moderate levels that may not find issue with many pairs of headphones, someone who listens significantly louder than I do may with harshness in the treble or boomy bass as a result of reflections in the design, to give a couple of common examples. Likewise, this is why room treatments are such a big deal in high-end audio, as similar issues exist with those people trying to immerse themselves in a large orchestral performance.
For the electronics, the issues when trying to reproduce complex works with a high dynamic range is that the electronics have to perform in a linear way regardless of the frequency, volume or load they are connected to, so that the people who want to pick out the exact number of a particular instrument playing can do so, even when the music gets highly complex. I wish I could find it, but in one of the LCD-2 threads a member compared the experience listening with HD-800s to the LCD-2s on his system, and stated that with the former he could hear 5 of a particular instrument, matching the information about the performance, but only 4 with the LCD-2s.
What we observed, after months of listening, was that, while they do have excellent measurements, the LCD-2s can, with complex music (and possibly depending on the amp used) be very slightly blurry when the music becomes complex (relative to other high-end headphones, note!), despite their very fast attack, which gives an impression of great speed.
Similarly, I have a range of electronics here from a variety of manufacturers, including the cheapest and most expensive products from one. I observed that the cheapest component, while it sounds great to the point that, listening to the well-recorded but relatively simple jazz as I often do, I could almost fool myself into thinking I was listening to a component that costs considerably more. However, if I break out something considerably more complex, such as a big, dramatic orchestral work or fast club music, the differences between the two components become apparent, as the low-end one starts to blur in complex passages and the high-end gear doesn't. Hence the comment:
What is the difference between "high end" DAC and "low end" DAC now?
Everything that's not the DAC chip.
Similarly, much of the music I own and have liked for many years, such as Van Halen, isn't recorded very well. That stuff I find pointless to switch on my power-sucking main rig just to listen to and have relegated it to being listened to while I'm driving. Similarly, I recall a comment from a member attending a meet who listened to someone's high-end rig and was disappointed that the music the owner was listening to was lousy -- much like that previous comment about the guy who spent big dollars on an audio rig and bought awful Christmas music, not realising that enjoyment comes from listening to music you like, something which is obvious to all of us, I'd think.
Yes, that's my point. Most of the R
Your view is too myopic. You would be surprised how much the individual parts for say even a simple design such as the Pimeta would cost. Find a bill of materials, don't forget a custom metal chassis, front plate, back plate, and the "little" stuff such as fuses, jacks, wire, washers, screws, switches, lights, heatsinks, etc. (some customers like this stuff) and then come back. Heck some quality jacks or big caps cost more than DAC chips.
You are correct that it's not competitive, but no one is forcing you to buy any of these things. Heck, my wife's hair dryer is less competitive than a WiFi chip. Personally, I would never want to be in the chip or high-tech manufacturing business, it's a little bit too competitive - the word cutthroat comes to mind. (My dad, now retired, was in the electronics manufacturing business in the Bay Area.)
It's not just the parts, but the investment required to create a product. Saying "they only cost a few cents or dollars each" doesn't include that they have to buy up thousands of each of those parts, especially the transistors, as they go out of stock or are discontinued regularly. If you're a small, boutique manufacturer, you have to spend a huge number of hours building, testing, re-designing, building and testing a product, then spend a huge number of hours building each one by hand (or paying someone competent to do so for you). Then you have to spend hours dealing with customers and wearing the costs if any you made are faulty. If you become popular, you have to consider having your products built by a company. You risk your IP being ripped off, the company being dodgy and making low-quality products and a host of other major issues. Often the parts have to come from multiple sources, so if one of your sources has production problems, your entire production grinds to a hault. One well-known company here has 5 suppliers that makes the parts for a single amp. Because the case supplier wasn't making cases to the quality he required, he had to go out and find an entirely new one, from scratch, to make the case. The amp was delayed 6-12 months (I forgot exactly how long) because of this. During this time, he makes NOTHING -- in fact losing a lot of money while he waits for a single company to get its act together. It was only because he had other successful products without supply issues that he could do this.
Another well-known designer spent $100,000 of his own money to design a unique product because he wasn't happy with the designs being built for it by other people. That is $100,000 that he may not get back, or not get back on the product for months or years or never if it is not successful.
This is the very reason Apple bought an entire aluminium mine in Australia. They wanted to be absolutely sure they'd never run out of aluminium for their products.
So the idea that audio electronics consists of cheap parts just thrown in a box is very considerably far from the truth.
One of my points is that the idea of "better" seems to have been lost or at least blurred. At one point, hi-fi meant high fidelity, right? But that's a very old debate too. Of course, I'll grant that different people have different preferences, and what really counts is for people to have what sounds better to them. But there's a strong resistance to evaluating "better" in ways like audio measurements and controlled listening tests, which of course benefits the audio industry [edit: and reviewers, and sites like this one], enabling the current market.
By "exotic toplogies", I mean things like Audio-gd's ACSS, though I admit that I have no idea what is involved with that. Is it something very common masquerading as some unique marketing bullet point? Maybe I'm overstepping myself here. I would consider most topologies developed for valve amps, like circlotrons, exotic and antiquated these days. Antiquated and exotic are not necessarily bad, by any stretch of the imagination. You're definitely right that most amp topologies are quite old, with Class D variants and the like as exceptions. Most of the research in amplifiers (audio or not...mostly I mean not audio) these days is for low-power applications, as far as I can tell.
I think that the fact that there's a debate about feedback in audio, makes many turn their noses at the entire field. That's not to say that every design need necessarily use feedback somewhere, but to market not having any feedback as an advantage would strike many as odd.
FYI, ACSS is a current gain stage, rather than a voltage gain stage, which is most common. It is supposed to reduce distortion.
I'd say now that "high fidelity" equates to "high linearity" in performance. However, going back to my comment on music above, whether or not high-end, highly linear designs are worth investing in I'd say is very much connected with the goals of the listener. If someone wants to attempt to duplicate the effect of going to a concert in their livingroom, that is far different to someone who wants to casually listen to modern, compressed pop music. Then there are layers in between.
So, I think, ultimately, the disconnect has been where people have not considered someone's individual goals, starting with what music they listen to and how loud. I know in my case that higher fidelity equipment has resulted in a change in the types of music I like. When I started, I didn't listen to jazz at all, for example, but a lot of pop and rock. Like I said above, I feel that what I own now would be wasted on that music. On the other hand, the increase of high quality recordings in a variety of genres available has made listening with my (I don't want to think how) expensive rig extremely enjoyable, and I have some technical understanding of why that is so, to go along with it.
