[Pirakaphile]

  Steve Gutenberg of CNET, 
 
The famous Audio Reviewer asks, presumedly with a straight face, "Why do people hate HighEnd Audio"?  He goes on to say that a very nice, Basic HighEnd System (including a record player ) can cost as little as $5,000. 
 
Is he pulling my leg here? or our legs?  Where has he been?, 
 
My Customer Base stopped buying Analog Gear in 1985.  
 
Computer Audio & DVD 5.1 started taking over about that time. CDs came on strong, very strong, far stronger than LP ever was, by a far and wide margin.  
 
I think people still love great sound quality, now more than ever, to the tune of multi Billions of dollars, even in their Cars, just not the "Value for  Money" stuff we Sold in the 1970s & 1980s which rapidly transitioned into Halco type Mega cost, well outa-reach, Glossy front Page Gear the reviewers would die to own, god bless em.  From 1990 on, we got better and better stuff being reviewed, phew, it hasn't stopped yet.  If what the reviewers keep saying is true, the Attendee's at RMAF would all look like they just talked with god, faces glowing, taking days to recover from what they "experienced" up in those magical Rooms far above the rif-raf of CanJam ( where all the action was ).  
 
I don't quite understand what Steve G. is hoping to provoke with his enquiry.   Maybe he's just doing his little part to help prop-up the long dead Vinyl LP and it's recent batch of profitable Pressings.
 
 My take is that Vinyl folks have Coalesced into a minor Cult, attempts are being made to form a Religious Organization of sorts,  M.Femer seems the likely High Priest for lack of anyone of Harry Pierson's caliber (still breathing).
 
 John Marks just left Stereophile, who's next to abandon the Sinking Ship?, maybe me!
 
Tony in Michigan

For $5000 you could land the Magnepan 1.7 ($1250), Emotiva XPA-2 ($900), Schiit Yggdrasil ($2300) and then some passive preamp in there somewhere for about $500 and get a pretty damn good system. Substitute the Magnepans for something else like Zu's, get a lower power amp for a bit more (something Pass Labs or First Watt), and switch out the Yggy for a Gumby. Going all American is pretty darn easy now, even on a budget. $5000 will get you up into the 90% of what audio has in store for us I bet, especially now with Schiit in the DAC game. Go the headphone route and your price falls even quicker while still getting fantastic cans. 

 

[jrflanne]

The Magni/Modi works great in my office system.

 

[Sal1950]

   
Nice post, with some very good thoughts. I like the honesty of Schiit and I guess we won't be seeing comments like this from the CEOs of Apple, BMW or so.
 
After buying and selling quite some gear over the last two years and working my way up to high end, I have come to the point where I can only hear very slight differences (if I hear differences at all). And, to me, most of the gear at this level is not better or worse than other high end gear. It just sounds a bit different.
 
Is there "better" gear in the market? Sure. Will I hear a difference? Maybe. Will the difference be worth spending 2, 4 or 10 times the money? Probably not.
 
So, after remembering that this hobby is not only about the gear but also about the music, I decided to not spend the next thousand bucks or so in gear but in actual music. I've bought and sold more headphones during the last 12 months than CDs.
 
So answering Jasons question for myself:
 
When.

Somewhere the cost/performance graphs flat-lines on the performance side. No matter what the "Golden Ear Reviewers" say the latest uber costly component that just came out at a 50% cost increase over its predecessor doesn't sound one bit better. Just the extra Zero on it's price tag makes the audio nervosa sufferer feel all warm and fuzzy inside. It's does help allow for ever increasing advertising costs.
WHEN about 10 years back. Normally gear I buy now comes off the Audio Cheapskate list.

 

[tonykaz]

Schiit makes the List.
 
Stereophile's John Iverson has the $349 Bifrost in the "B" Class, comparing it with the Benchmark and Dragonfly.
 
Their "A" list is a range of Turntables from $200,000.
 
The Bifrost is the only Schiit to make the 500 Recommended List!
 
I wonder if all it takes, to make their list, is a Stereophile Advertising Budget or simply be an Analog/Vinyl device or be a member ( in good standing ) to their Analog/Vinyl Cult Religion. 
 
Then again, perhaps these Stereophile folks simply woke-up, got outa bed, had a slice of toast, sat down in their Lazy-boy, and fell back to sleep.  Sure seems like it.
 
Tony in Michigan

 

[yage]

I have one word for the Stereophile Recommended Components List:
 
meh.

 

[monkuboy]

Stereophile is just nothing but a collection of pompous windbag bloatbytes (at its best). 

 

[Jason Stoddard]

Let's be fair. Stereophile requested to review Bifrost--and put it in their Recommended Components list--without us ever advertising in their magazine. These are not the actions of a closed, classist organization.
 
Like I have to say, again and again, there is no conspiracy. 
 
It is impossible for Stereophile to cover every piece of gear, and it is impossible for them to cover every piece of gear with 100% congruence to our own preferences. Refer to "this is only my opinion, I am biased like everyone else, and I have not heard everything on the planet." This applies to both us and reviewers.
 
Now, do I think there should be more coverage of non-Audio-1% gear? Sure. Am I disappointed by the continued sniffiness regarding direct-sale audio? Of course. (Though to be fair, that may be fading.) But I don't run the magazine. I don't make the inevitable compromises they have to make, nor do I know all the details behind them. 
 
In any case, we have now grown to the point where Stereophile's readers should know about our multibit DACs, so we are beginning an advertising presence there, beginning with the CES issue. It'll be interesting to see how the readers react, when we start lobbing ideas like, "DACs designed for the music you have, rather than the music they want you to re-buy" at them.

 

[45longcolt]

 
Like I have to say, again and again, there is no conspiracy. 

 
Oh, sure, that's what you want us to believe.
 
Don't you realize that lack of evidence of a conspiracy is actually indisputable evidence of a successful conspiracy?

 

[jfoxvol]

The truth is out there.

 

[bretemm]

Could Schiit make a amplifier for wired speakers? (I know Schiit has commented on not making speakers,so) could there be a modular/block Schiit setup of Amps with speaker ports that could be connected that could be build up to a 2.1-5.1-7.1 setup?
(I might upgrade my new Bifrost in the future or might use it with a marantz)

Let's be fair. Stereophile requested to review Bifrost--and put it in their Recommended Components list--without us ever advertising in their magazine. These are not the actions of a closed, classist organization.

Like I have to say, again and again, there is no conspiracy. 

It is impossible for Stereophile to cover every piece of gear, and it is impossible for them to cover every piece of gear with 100% congruence to our own preferences. Refer to "this is only my opinion, I am biased like everyone else, and I have not heard everything on the planet." This applies to both us and reviewers.

Now, do I think there should be more coverage of non-Audio-1% gear? Sure. Am I disappointed by the continued sniffiness regarding direct-sale audio? Of course. (Though to be fair, that may be fading.) But I don't run the magazine. I don't make the inevitable compromises they have to make, nor do I know all the details behind them. 

In any case, we have now grown to the point where Stereophile's readers should know about our multibit DACs, so we are beginning an advertising presence there, beginning with the CES issue. It'll be interesting to see how the readers react, when we start lobbing ideas like, "DACs designed for the music you have, rather than the music they want you to re-buy" at them.

 

[KLJTech]

Schiit makes the Ragnarok, it's a speaker amp and a very powerful headphone amp. 

 

[bretemm]

Ok, I know, but tho ingeneral it's too much for me, so it would be nice if Schiit made a more affordable one that possibly could be then connected to more amplifiers to made a larger channel setup

Schiit makes the Ragnarok, it's a speaker amp and a very powerful headphone amp. 

 

[ScottFree]

Ok, I know, but tho ingeneral it's too much for me, so it would be nice if Schiit made a more affordable one that possibly could be then connected to more amplifiers to made a larger channel setup

Schiit makes the Ragnarok, it's a speaker amp and a very powerful headphone amp. 

15W into 32 ohms and 100w into 4 ohms


Sent from my iPod touch using Tapatalk

 

[theblueprint]

Ok, I know, but tho ingeneral it's too much for me, so it would be nice if Schiit made a more affordable one that possibly could be then connected to more amplifiers to made a larger channel setup

Look into Emotiva. Affordable speaker amps at multiple price tiers.

 

[Jason Stoddard]

Look into Emotiva. Affordable speaker amps at multiple price tiers.

Seconded.