From your earlier post:
Philes: Audiophiles, Musicophiles, Equipophiles
Crats: Technocrats
Phools was meant to be all inclusive!No offence intented.
Which is what I meant, Phools was not my classification.
JC, a.wayne,
As I am following this thread, I am already part of the following! Hope there is no harm in a bit of self deprecating humor. I have already invested quite a bit of time and money (I don't have much anyways) into this hobby, and mostly "Loving it".
It's a dangerous hobby though... can be very addictive, especially if you love music to start off with. Maybe great sounding stuff should come with a disclaimer...
As I am following this thread, I am already part of the following!
Hope there is no harm in a bit of self deprecating humor. I have already invested quite a bit of time and money (I don't have much anyways) into this hobby, and mostly "Loving it". It's a dangerous hobby though... can be very addictive, especially if you love music to start off with. Maybe great sounding stuff should come with a disclaimer...
Zman, the problem is that people think so 'cheaply' when it comes to general audio, today.
You really can have a decent sort of sound for a few hundred dollars, and if you use E-bay, you can get a REAL bargain.
What costs money, is EXTREME quality. Yes, it is in the realm of diminishing returns for your investment, just like automobiles. Still, there is a difference. For everyone who could care less, get a 'hoopty'. '-)
You really can have a decent sort of sound for a few hundred dollars, and if you use E-bay, you can get a REAL bargain.
What costs money, is EXTREME quality. Yes, it is in the realm of diminishing returns for your investment, just like automobiles. Still, there is a difference. For everyone who could care less, get a 'hoopty'. '-)
You see Mr. Curl
The term “quality” can be as stretched and as manipulated as the term “democracy”
A well accepted definition of “quality” in engineering environment when it comes to qualification of a product, is: “conformance of a product to it’s design specifications”.
Therefore “EXTREME quality” could under good intentions be interpreted as:
“Extreme conformance of a product to extreme specifications”,
or
“ Extreme conformance of a product to specifications”,
or the least offending
“Conformance of a product to extreme specifications”.
One has then to specify these “extreme specifications”.
Then the extra $$$ can be justifiable by a potential customer.
Everything would be neat and cute.
Of course the case of “non yet measurable acoustic entities ” do pose a problem.
A manufacturer (or his marketing expert) should along his product specifications provide the claim that his product is somehow able to furnish them .
But he has to name them too.
Then the extra $$$$$$$ can be justifiable by the –still- potential customer (assuming he has a desire to justify his purchase in the first place
).George
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Gpapag, interesting interpretations. In my career, I have had to deal with all sorts of quality levels and definitions for example quality 'inspected in' at a company I worked at many years go (maybe 'catch the problems before we ship them' would be a better description). Now, 30 years later,I work in the semi industry, and my company ships 70 billion devices a year (most of them discrete btw) and our field return rate is in the low single parts per billion.
So I prefer to define quality as follows:
1. Design quality. The product is well designed. Form follows function, and in the case of luxury goods like high end audio, it has significant aesthetic appeal
2. Manufacturing quality. The product is well made and the build quality is very high
3. Service life quality. Through the correct selection of material and generous safety margins, the product can be expected to have a long service life with no failures.
Sure, there are jumbo jumbo academic definitions of quality, and they allow junk tha can be manufactured with great respectability to be classified as 'good' quality, but they miss the design and service quality aspects in my view.
So I prefer to define quality as follows:
1. Design quality. The product is well designed. Form follows function, and in the case of luxury goods like high end audio, it has significant aesthetic appeal
2. Manufacturing quality. The product is well made and the build quality is very high
3. Service life quality. Through the correct selection of material and generous safety margins, the product can be expected to have a long service life with no failures.
Sure, there are jumbo jumbo academic definitions of quality, and they allow junk tha can be manufactured with great respectability to be classified as 'good' quality, but they miss the design and service quality aspects in my view.
I was hoping for easier understanding of what I meant. My experience with 'extreme hi end', is actually fairly limited, but I know it when I see it. Also, I know what it costs us to make a hi end case for the CTC Blowtorch, and I am told that the latest cases for my future phono designs cost about 3 times as much. This is while working with the case fabricator closely.
For my part, it is trying to make the BEST audio circuitry possible. This involves, unfortunately, hard to get parts, extensive active part matching, a lot of passive parts, all to do a function that might be roughly duplicated by a single dual IC. Why then, do I do it? Because the hi end version sounds better in a direct comparison with the simpler solution. How do I know? Because I make both, and have used both in my own hi fi. For me, there is a difference, your listening experience may be different.
For my part, it is trying to make the BEST audio circuitry possible. This involves, unfortunately, hard to get parts, extensive active part matching, a lot of passive parts, all to do a function that might be roughly duplicated by a single dual IC. Why then, do I do it? Because the hi end version sounds better in a direct comparison with the simpler solution. How do I know? Because I make both, and have used both in my own hi fi. For me, there is a difference, your listening experience may be different.
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Bonsai
Please, forgive my nitpicking but all your 3 statements are circular arguments, for they utilize “quality” to define quality itself.
They are instead good examples of three activity levels, where the meaning and intent of “quality” is applied.
Nevertheless, it is obvious that, on each of them, some rationally defined objectives are set or can be set. These, we may call “specifications”.
In the engineering field (academia, education, design office or factory floor) interpretations of “quality” vary but they all treat it as a defined term. An engineer understands very well that the term hints to some pre-set targets of achievement. (*)
Where the term deliberately looses any definable meaning is in the marketing sector, where it is used to dress-up, obscure or imply everything that is intended to. Such a use is a safe bet for them, as the general public perceives “quality” as an unconditionally benign-meaning word (read it as a non-meaning word).
By the way, ”Best possible” being a vague term and at least economically suicidial, has been wisely replaced by the “Worst acceptable”, the “worst” being the given specifications or the applicable standard.
Edit: Anything over and above this "worst" is acceptable but bears an economical penalty (e.g. "over engineering") and thus has to be justified.George
(*)How these targets are finally monitored is the subject of Quality Control and is another story (Product inspection strategies or process variables monitoring and control for example)
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Well, I think you have to separate quality out into what the customer perceives it to be. As a semiconductor guy, I know that my customers want to know what my manufacturing capability is (parametric spread, batch yield, qualification tests, factory certification etc), but the end user of a piece of luxury equipment does not care. They are more interested in the things I mentioned in my first post above. These are hardly vague marketing speak terms, and eventually do have an impact on brand value as seen by the customer.
A Rolex vs a Timex
A Parasound vs LG music centre (now that's a piece of mass produced crap)
A Merc vs a Hyundai
I know which ones I prefer.
A Rolex vs a Timex
A Parasound vs LG music centre (now that's a piece of mass produced crap)
A Merc vs a Hyundai
I know which ones I prefer.
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There are a lot of similarities between the high-end audio and high-end watch industries. The key difference is those who buy luxury watches generally know they are paying for jewelry.
I'm always in favor of overkill, so I have no objection to a $25k piece of equipment if it was engineered as such. The problem is those with less noble intentions figured out their customers can't tell the difference...
I don't think the car comparisons work very well. No one has been able to swap their neighbors Ferrari for a Miata for a week without anyone noticing.
I'm always in favor of overkill, so I have no objection to a $25k piece of equipment if it was engineered as such. The problem is those with less noble intentions figured out their customers can't tell the difference...
I don't think the car comparisons work very well. No one has been able to swap their neighbors Ferrari for a Miata for a week without anyone noticing.
"There are a lot of similarities between the high-end audio and high-end watch industries. The key difference is those who buy luxury watches generally know they are paying for jewelry."
Yes, I guess you are right on this point. The problem comes in high end audio when non technical people try to explain why something sounds the way it does in pseudo technical terms. And therein lies the gap that allows the snake oil merchants to mke a living.
Yes, I guess you are right on this point. The problem comes in high end audio when non technical people try to explain why something sounds the way it does in pseudo technical terms. And therein lies the gap that allows the snake oil merchants to mke a living.
Depends on your viewpoint. A DIY version of the two BB op-amp RIAA at about $100 in parts might sound just as good as the $25,000 Solution 720 version.
Yes, the very expensive watches with lots of complications are indeed just status. Even a 3 axis tourbillon made of invar is incapable of quartz accuracies, despite costs in excess of half a million dollars US. Single axis tourbillons in pocket watches were good for the day (Breguet, circa 1801), but the quartz ended it all..
I believe high end is the attempt at betterment. But yes, much is status as well.
j
My fuzz was that quality, whenever is called up from an engineer or a product manufacturer, should be defined and not deliberately utilized as a loose term.
People preferences or how much they are willing to pay for a purchase, were and are not of my concern.
George
The key has always been in the 'tweaks' (slight changes in execution), as tied to a thorough understanding of how the ear really works. How the ear 'hears' and discerns.
And, that this given discernment changes, grows, evolves, in most people who love music and are attracted to audio equipment, as a form of delivering those emotional and chemical highs that come from listening to music, as presented in as real a form as possible.
And that is, once again, a process of evolution of the given person's wiring and discernment. the comparison to evolution of the self, in the Buddhist sense, is real and workable.
Buddhism is kind of about coming to a very simple point of understanding that can take a mere few seconds to occur. excepting..that it can and usually does take a very long, lifetime long convoluted path and journey to get to those few seconds of realization.
audio design and execution, as a complex and life wide path of cognating and learning.... is comparably the same, in it's own laterally shifted parallel path. Sorta like, 'zen and the art of audio design'.
And when you get to the end, it CAN be done for a few hundred dollars. (parts cost)*
Once you know what it is all about, what the key aspects are. Which in most cases, took a lifetime to figure out.
And these bits cannot be given to another, without the other taking the time to visit and live their own version of that complex path that takes a lifetime to transverse. For they will fail to recognize it for what it is (in their ignorance), until that correct point of an oriented and placed viewing and cognating..comes into being, for them.
Only hints can be given, simply as the data itself it not recognized... due to the viewing position being incomplete. They have to spend the time and life of humping themselves to the correct observation point. And there is no telling where that given person is, when the information is delivered. Whether they will see it...or not.
Nothing new under the sun, in these regards.
For example, that this post is not made in any form of ego, only logic and analysis. That those who live in ego might reflect it back to themselves and through themselves as having been made in ego. A problem of the self, of their filters and ideals/thinking....and not of this one's origin.
*(One wishes to finally be paid for the 10k-20k+ hours of effort that one expends into getting to that point. The invisible is also real, ie, all the toil it took to get there, so the price of the item..will be the price. end of discussion)
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sometimes....the odd Persons or groups who sell our products ask us to make them look more jewel like.
We Refuse. At our own cost.
Music..or well, what is it ....then?
My experience is that the very vast majority of the times, any attempt at 'shiny-shiny' screws the sonic qualities over in a very detrimental way.
A comment could be that: it is a sad thing.... that it is, in many cases..... the violence and ignorance in man that brings them the money and thus the capacity to purchase.
Thus mediocrity in audio is elevated to the status of being among the crowd of 'best'. When it fact, it is not. Some are wise to this..,and the ignorant are not. (ignorance is a state of mind, an unknowing. It is a state of innocence, and therefore blameless...it cannot by definition be an insult, unless it is used in a context and state of ignorance) (insults can only be taken as real to the ignorant man)
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