[taffy2207]

You really need a graph to tell you that value is in the middle of the Market? Talk about overkill.

Science isn't needed for that, common sense is.

Value is invariably in the middle bar a few exceptions (eg. Economies of Scale can make a decent Product cheap). When you buy cheap you tend to get what you pay for, cheap tat. But, as a general rule, when you buy in the middle you tend to get value for money much more often. When you buy expensive stuff you tend to get things you don't need or you're just paying for branding, Marketing, R & D costs etc. Occasionally you get a better product.

It doesn't just apply to Audio, it applies to almost everything we buy. It's basic Economics.

 

[Phronesis]

there is something very freeing about listening to music on cheap car systems,clock radios ect.I find it may be more about the music when you have no expectations for the system itself.

Agreed. Maybe this help explain why some music which sounded really good to me as a kid, with respect to both the music and the sound quality, doesn't sound as good to me these days with my better audio gear.

 

[Phronesis]

Small speakers can have decent bass response if you sacrifice some sensitivity. My main speakers are only 16 cm wide, 28 cm high and 22 cm deep (5.3"x11"x8.7") and they go down to 50 Hz by themselves, but I have passive subwoofer extending the bass one octave lower and the sensitivity is low (81 dB/W/m) which is 5-10 dB less than typical floor standing speakers. Thin TV sets of today can't even have decent speakers nor would it be economically feasible. It's like calling airplanes space rockets. They can take you above the clouds, but not to the ISS or the Moon.

Of course Caruso should not define the criteria for a sound system, but the most demanding material you listen to because you are using the system for different recordings from different eras of audio technology and fidelity. Audio technology has gone a long way and today one can have pretty good performance with an relatively inexpensive system. I like to use the S-curve method to control my spendings on audio gear. The sound quality/performance/fidelity tends to follow an S-curve (Gompertz-curve) as a function of price:



Now, try to create this curve for every audio gear you use/need. This is not exact science. It's about how you feel about it. You can start with the "most bang for the buck" point (green circle in the my picture). Near above and below that point are the price limits for rational purchase. For example I think the lower and upper limits for heaphones are about $50 and $500 and the point of most bang for the buck is around $200. Headphones cheaper than $50 are "junk" while headphones above $500 do not offer enough to justify the price. But that's me. For you the limits are perhaps different. A poor person maybe has lower limits than a millionaire, but at least everyone can figure out the limits for herself/himself to help with the purchases decisions. I think this process helps in rationalizing things to yourself and obtain "piece of mind" easier.

I put the upper limit close to $2K, but I think that headphones above a few hundred dollars are generally overpriced compared to speakers, maybe because there are lots of people crazed about listening to music using headphones and willing to spend a lot of money on headphones (more than they can really afford, in many cases). I bet the profit margins for a lot of expensive headphones are very juicy.

 

[71 dB]

not the work I'm talking about, but while trying to find it, I stumbled upon this analysis from Spotify's data.

My music listening was pretty passive in nature before high-school. Since my father is into jazz (of 50's and 60's), that's what I heard home. My influences were not Pink Lloyd or Genesis but Clifford Brown and Max Roach's awesome drum solos. My father HATES rock so I didn't learn about rock at home. Instead I learned from my father that rock is music for idiots. I was over 37 years old when I finally discovered rock music I do like: King Crimson. I have played it to my father, but he doesn't like even that kind of sophisticated rock. He is stuck with his jazz, but I have managed to make him appreciate classical music a bit: He likes J. S. Bach and also the operas of Rameau seems to entertain him. Who can blame him, Rameau was a genius and wrote insanely entertaining music.

What were my influences at age 14? Not anything really. I didn't feel there's really music out there for me. I didn't know 99.999 % of all music in the World is "hidden" and not played on radio or in other places for passive listeners. It took me much longer to realize I really need to discover with hard work my favorites such as Tangerine Dream (in Finland Tangerine Dream is almost unknown because they didn't perform in Finland until last year for the first time!). The Internet has made things 1000 times easier, but in the 1980's when I was a teenager you where in the dark. Yeah, a friend was perhaps into Genesis, but that's just one band! How about the thousands of other bands? Nobody exposes them to you. I wasn't able to see even MTV until 2001 when I moved to a house that had cable channels. I was 30 years old! I found "modern dance music when I was 17. It was 1988 and acid house was the big thing. S-Express became my first favorite "band". Then came rave, hardcore, breakbeat etc. I became The Prodigy fan. 1992 was the pinnacle of "modern dance music." After that it was downhill despite all the drum 'n' bass and trance. At the same time my friend at the university told me about classical music and how cool it can be. I got interested and started to listen to a classical radio station in the background while reading to exams. At first classical music sounded a bit weird for a guy who had a taste for "rave" music, but my ears adjusted fast and I started to really like what I hear. In December 1996 I heard Elgar's Enigma Variations on radio and my mind was totally blown away. I felt it was music that was composed for me by a divine creature. Next summer I got into J. S. Bach and these two composers are still my most favorite above the rest. The last 20 years has been discovering music I like and expanding my taste. The internet makes it possible.

It seems that many people have got a "rock education" at home, but I didn't have that I had Max Roach education. It might have been a blessing: I am not stuck on some stupid metal music like KISS or Metallica...

 

[71 dB]

I put the upper limit close to $2K, but I think that headphones above a few hundred dollars are generally overpriced compared to speakers, maybe because there are lots of people crazed about listening to music using headphones and willing to spend a lot of money on headphones (more than they can really afford, in many cases). I bet the profit margins for a lot of expensive headphones are very juicy.

So you think $2K cans give so much more fidelity compared to $500 cans as to justifying spending 4x more money? How many years back in time do we need to go to have the performance of $2K being the same as $500 cans today? 10 years? 20 years? Spending $500 on cans today gives you the performance of $2K cans 10-20 years late. Allowing the delay saves you $1.5K.

 

[KeithEmo]

That's pretty much how I look at it. I don't imagine that it is an accurate representation of reality, but I do expect it to support a sort of illusion, and it needs to do that well, and avoid anything which, to me, "jarringly breaks the illusion", or even which "distracts from the main story line".

I would even carry the analogy to an ordinary TV picture. What we see on TV probably has very little to do with reality, with virtually every scene in a movie either staged, or built outright in a computer these days. However, it's still distracting if a scene is "too dark" or "too light" or "a funny color".... and, if your TV were to develop a big blurry spot in the middle of the screen, it would be obvious that it was a technological artifact, and there would be little question that "maybe it belonged there". Likewise, there is no mistaking a dirty smear on your car windshield for part of the scene outside.

Perhaps an even better analogy would be the glass over a painting. The glass you normally see over pictures and paintings is relatively clear, but it is still subject to surface reflections, and fingerprints and dirt. You very rarely see a picture frame where you LITERALLY CANNOT TELL THERE IS GLASS BETWEEN YOU AND THE PICTURE. You may not consciously notice a color tint, and you may be standing at an angle where there aren't too many reflections, but when you look you can almost always tell that "there's glass there". You move your head a bit, and there are reflections, even though your brain may edit them out pretty effectively when you're standing still.

However, if you go to a high-end framing shop, there is an option called "museum glass". It is extremely transparent, with no noticeable color tints, no odd warps or wobbles in it, and is treated with an anti-reflective coating. If it's clean it is quite literally invisible to the human eye. You can shine a flashlight on it, and hold it up to the light at different angles, and you just plain can't see anything there. In short, it carefully avoids pretty much all of the cues that normally tell us that "there's a piece of glass there". You usually don't notice the windshield in your car, or the windows in your house, but you can usually tell relatively easily when one or the other is missing.... because the lack of all those cues you've learned to ignore is actually rather obvious. To me, that's what a good audio system should do with sound, at least to the degree that it's possible. Audible artifacts are the equivalent of "dirty fingerprints on the glass", and a good audio system should minimize them, or hopefully reduce them to the level where they really are inaudible. And, like museum glass, it should also avoid the artifacts that you normally don't notice, or have learned to ignore, but still distract from the experience at other levels. (And, even if your brain does a decent job of "editing out the extra junk", I suspect that many of us enjoy music more when our audio system avoids adding extra distractions. Perhaps we get to enjoy the real details more when our brains don't have to expend as much effort "editing around the flaws".)

I view headphones, and even speakers, as providing something like a virtual reality experience, so I focus on whether they provide a good experience, rather than 'accuracy' in some imagined or absolute sense. Things that can definitely diminish the experience include whacky tonal balance, noticeable distortion, lack of detail, and incoherent imaging. But sometimes the combo of the recording + the headphones + my ears and mood lines up really well, and makes for a sublime musical experience.

 

[Phronesis]

So you think $2K cans give so much more fidelity compared to $500 cans as to justifying spending 4x more money? How many years back in time do we need to go to have the performance of $2K being the same as $500 cans today? 10 years? 20 years? Spending $500 on cans today gives you the performance of $2K cans 10-20 years late. Allowing the delay saves you $1.5K.

I have a few headphones in the $2K range, and haven't found any in the $500 range that I consider to be quite as good. The performance/price ratio isn't anywhere near 4X, but I'm willing to pay the 4X difference anyway, because the performance difference is worth it to me relative to what I can afford. I did also try a couple headphones in the $4K range, and didn't like them quite as much as their siblings which cost less than $2K, so those were cases where the higher price resulted in a slight decrease in performance (for me).

 

[KeithEmo]

But this comes back to the whole question of budget, price point, and what something is worth to you.

I'm betting that most of us quite often spend $10 for lunch....
Even though we all know you can survive on a $2 tub of Ramen noodles....
I guess that, in that case, we all agree that "it's worth spending 5x as much".

There's also the issue that, if you take that philosophy too far, you never get to enjoy anything.
WHATEVER your phone or computer costs today, in two years, you'll be able to buy an equivalent one for less, or a better one for the same price.
I'm sure you'll also be able to get a car next year, with more features, for lower cost.

You've got to set your own individual priorities.

Spending $2000 on a pair of headphones sounds like a lot of money... for headphones.
Yet you can easily spend 5x that much for fancy chrome trim and wheel rims for your car... and they won't make it go the least bit faster or get any better mileage.
(Unless you sit on your front porch staring at your car an awful lot, you'll probably get far more enjoyment out of a $2000 pair of headphones than out of a $2000 trim package for your car.)

That same argument has been put forward to justify spending a lot of money on a really good car stereo.
If you have a relatively long commute to work, you probably spend more time listening to your car radio than to "the big expensive stereo" in your living room.
So, accepting that, is it really unreasonable to spend a bit of money to make all that time a little bit more enjoyable?

So you think $2K cans give so much more fidelity compared to $500 cans as to justifying spending 4x more money? How many years back in time do we need to go to have the performance of $2K being the same as $500 cans today? 10 years? 20 years? Spending $500 on cans today gives you the performance of $2K cans 10-20 years late. Allowing the delay saves you $1.5K.

 

[71 dB]

I have a few headphones in the $2K range, and haven't found any in the $500 range that I consider to be quite as good. The performance/price ratio isn't anywhere near 4X, but I'm willing to pay the 4X difference anyway, because the performance difference is worth it to me relative to what I can afford. I did also try a couple headphones in the $4K range, and didn't like them quite as much as their siblings which cost less than $2K, so those were cases where the higher price resulted in a slight decrease in performance (for me).

Yeah, you maybe can afford paying 4x more, but don't you anything "better" things to spend that money on? Are you missing on something else to allocate money for $2K cans? Perhaps you earn much better than minimum wage. Maybe you earn better than half of americans ($30.000 or less). That's not many $2K cans and that money pays for all living! Money is very limited unless you belong to the top 1 %. Of course if $2K cans serve you 10 years, it's "only" $200 per year, but there's so much other stuff you need to buy in 10 years period. Refrigeratiors, cars, vacuum cleaners, washing machines, tvs, phones, computers, furniture, etc. So, I don't buy even $500 cans, because $200 cans are good enough with proper crossfeed. I have better use for the "saved" $300 elsewhere. It means financial security if not anything else.

 

[bfreedma]

Value judgments and discussions of personal economics seem to be strange topics for Sound Science. Hard to see any good coming of it.

 

[Phronesis]

Yeah, you maybe can afford paying 4x more, but don't you anything "better" things to spend that money on? Are you missing on something else to allocate money for $2K cans? Perhaps you earn much better than minimum wage. Maybe you earn better than half of americans ($30.000 or less). That's not many $2K cans and that money pays for all living! Money is very limited unless you belong to the top 1 %. Of course if $2K cans serve you 10 years, it's "only" $200 per year, but there's so much other stuff you need to buy in 10 years period. Refrigeratiors, cars, vacuum cleaners, washing machines, tvs, phones, computers, furniture, etc. So, I don't buy even $500 cans, because $200 cans are good enough with proper crossfeed. I have better use for the "saved" $300 elsewhere. It means financial security if not anything else.

It all of course depends on one's financial situation. For some, $2K for headphones is pocket change, for others it's simply unaffordable. If it's closer to pocket change, people tend to buy what they want, even if the value isn't good, and there isn't really any opportunity cost involved. The big problem I see with the audio world is that there do seem to be a lot of people who really stretch financially to buy audio gear, for the sake of getting an incremental improvement in sound, and sometimes no improvement at all (beyond a placebo improvement). Audiophile myths and hearsay fuel the problem big time, as is very evident from spending time in head-fi outside the Sound Science section.

 

[Slaphead]

Yeah, you maybe can afford paying 4x more, but don't you anything "better" things to spend that money on? Are you missing on something else to allocate money for $2K cans? Perhaps you earn much better than minimum wage. Maybe you earn better than half of americans ($30.000 or less). That's not many $2K cans and that money pays for all living! Money is very limited unless you belong to the top 1 %. Of course if $2K cans serve you 10 years, it's "only" $200 per year, but there's so much other stuff you need to buy in 10 years period. Refrigeratiors, cars, vacuum cleaners, washing machines, tvs, phones, computers, furniture, etc. So, I don't buy even $500 cans, because $200 cans are good enough with proper crossfeed. I have better use for the "saved" $300 elsewhere. It means financial security if not anything else.

I've often said that in this hobby you need to keep it real, and it's refreshing to see somebody (you) doing just that. As @Phronesis said there are too many people killing themselves financially to try and keep up with high end, when a carefully chosen headphone and dac/amp for under $1000, maybe under $500, will deliver up to 90% of what high end has to offer.

IMO if you spend more than 15-20% of your monthly income on a "component", and that's also including saving, then you're overdoing it.

 

[bigshot]

I stumbled upon this analysis from Spotify's data.

OK, I am definitely an exception. That chart drops to nothing at 30. That was when I was just getting started. I've had three decades to grow since then! I didn't really take music seriously until I was in college.

So you think $2K cans give so much more fidelity compared to $500 cans as to justifying spending 4x more money?

I have $1200 headphones and I figure they're worth 3X my old $400 Sennheisers. I've spent a lot on speakers. Transducers are the part of the system where you can actually hear improvements. Less so when it comes to players and amps. I don't see any value to spending a lot there except for features. That might actually be true for my headphones too. I could make my old Senns as balanced as my Oppos but it would require me lugging around an equalizer. I suppose that qualifies as a feature.

 

[Phronesis]

I've often said that in this hobby you need to keep it real, and it's refreshing to see somebody (you) doing just that. As @Phronesis said there are too many people killing themselves financially to try and keep up with high end, when a carefully chosen headphone and dac/amp for under $1000, maybe under $500, will deliver up to 90% of what high end has to offer.

IMO if you spend more than 15-20% of your monthly income on a "component", and that's also including saving, then you're overdoing it.

Part of the problem is the "hobby" aspect, which results in churning through gear and adds to the cost.

 

[bigshot]

I've never churned through gear. I buy the right tool for the job and use it until it wears out or becomes obsolete. Churning is OCD. It means shopping for stuff is more important to you than the stuff itself.