So after about 3 yrs of dormant interest, i took a general look around the hifi scene today and the affordablity and the quality of the gears have shovked me!
Rega, emotiva, even that little class D thing from NAD, at an unthinkable price and build material.
Made me wonder if its even worth DIY-ing anymore cuz especially emotiva's little $300 amp... i couldnt build something like that even with the same cost in budget.
But ranting aside, and the fact that diy is not only about the money, why has hifi become so cheap?
Outsourcing to china/needing to reach to wider audience to survive the market?
Rega, emotiva, even that little class D thing from NAD, at an unthinkable price and build material.
Made me wonder if its even worth DIY-ing anymore cuz especially emotiva's little $300 amp... i couldnt build something like that even with the same cost in budget.
But ranting aside, and the fact that diy is not only about the money, why has hifi become so cheap?
Outsourcing to china/needing to reach to wider audience to survive the market?
Actually the more pertinent question is what do you believe is hifi? In the 70's you needed to spend some coin and have it fill a rack to get away from lower end gear with obvious defects in range and response. Nowadays that quality of sound is trivial. Hifi has become about nostalgia, but few hobbyists admit that.
Im not much into semantics. I just mean audiophile market.
Of course sound is subjective and with diy u can tune it to perfection to your liking but i doubt the cheap stuff i saw today are any lacking when it comes to distortion measurements and they sounded impressive enough.
Im mostly curious about the shift of market in the last 3yrs.
That is if there is a shift and how/why or if im imagining things.
Of course sound is subjective and with diy u can tune it to perfection to your liking but i doubt the cheap stuff i saw today are any lacking when it comes to distortion measurements and they sounded impressive enough.
Im mostly curious about the shift of market in the last 3yrs.
That is if there is a shift and how/why or if im imagining things.
I don't think those small cheap devices are real hifi to the old standards. It's that the standards for gear to be called hifi went down. If you compare those amps to a medicore 70's amp, they are worse. If you compare those cheap DAC's to high end DAC's of the 90's or 00's, they are not better (while they should with 20 years of technical advancement). And most speakers that are sold today as hifi don't do it for me, especially if you put them to the old legends. It's just that their marketing campanges are getting better...
Hmm maybe i should take my pass amp for a comparison next time.
Used to be that boutique companies could break into the business with handmade stuff and their novelty alone, at a competition with lower end name brands but... with the lower end name brand stuff at a price that's half of what it was years ago, i don't see how the market CANNOT be dominated by their stuff.
Little disheartening, actually.
Used to be that boutique companies could break into the business with handmade stuff and their novelty alone, at a competition with lower end name brands but... with the lower end name brand stuff at a price that's half of what it was years ago, i don't see how the market CANNOT be dominated by their stuff.
Little disheartening, actually.
A quick flick through my recent Hi-Fi News magazines reveals that Hi-Fi components priced around the £1,500 mark are regarded as 'Budget Esoterica'.
At this 'budget' level, a typical Hi-Fi system consisting of CD player, streamer, turntable, amplifier and speakers would set you back £7,500.
Given my humble circumstances, I don't regard that as cheap!
And when we look at 'Audiophile' Hi-Fi, the prices are astronomical and obviously aimed at the super rich!
Assuming we act within reason, we can actually save money, sometimes less, sometimes a lot more.
Since there was a mention of Emotiva's smallest amp, I guess A-150(2x75W/8r), can anyone estimate transformer VA rating for it sure looks like a smaller one, measuring about 115 mm in diameter, height unknown to me.
Completely agree. Audiophile stuff is only getting more expensive even after inflation adjustment.
I see adverts for the flagship equipment from Naim, Kef etc in the "lifestyle" magazines for the super rich next to complex watches and Bugattis
Hmmm, I don't really agree with the above. I think a better comparison would be a watch. In the "old old days" a watch should be crafted in Switzerland to be accurate. Today we can buy a Timex or Casio watch for $10 that is just as accurate and lasts a long time. At the same time, you can still buy a Rolex or whatever esoteric watch with ruby bearings, etc. for thousands of dollars. But why?
Apart from class-D amps, which are for the most part designed to be cheap and lightweight, many modestly priced amplifiers exist that are at least as good as 70s era stuff. Not as good as the best of the best of the 70s, but that would be comparing apples to oranges. We are talking about midrange consumer gear only.
Also, with a DAC, it's not really a fair comparison between todays' cheap junk with the best of the 1990s. It's not so much that technology has not advanced the product, but more that the entire process is now about size, cost, and integration, not quality, for lower level consumer level gear. Most people will not notice or care, so why not make it cheap? For those who do pay attention to sound quality, there are modestly priced DACs that perform quite well.
I would not get too nostalgic when making these comparisons...
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It's not being nostalgic, and i do rate some modern modest priced amps also. I have a Marantz PM5004 (class AB) amp that is a great little amp for a little price. And Yamaha also makes those.
I'm more talking about the stuff like the electronics of Project and similar companies. They make medicore devices and try to sell them as better than those brands like Yamaha and or Marantz or so while they are far from better. Or things like Sonos and the Apple music devices that are sold for higher end prices while they are crap. Idem ditto with speakers and a lot of other devices.
But it's true that quality can be bought for cheaper prices than before, wich is a good case. And it's also true that not everybody is as picky on sound like me and many others on this forum.
And i still waiting for the real advancements in sound quality, wich did not happen since years. Some say Ncore was a big one (and Ncore is good), but it's not a big step up nor very innovative. It's more a perfect execution of a decades old technology than a innovation.
I'm more talking about the stuff like the electronics of Project and similar companies. They make medicore devices and try to sell them as better than those brands like Yamaha and or Marantz or so while they are far from better. Or things like Sonos and the Apple music devices that are sold for higher end prices while they are crap. Idem ditto with speakers and a lot of other devices.
But it's true that quality can be bought for cheaper prices than before, wich is a good case. And it's also true that not everybody is as picky on sound like me and many others on this forum.
And i still waiting for the real advancements in sound quality, wich did not happen since years. Some say Ncore was a big one (and Ncore is good), but it's not a big step up nor very innovative. It's more a perfect execution of a decades old technology than a innovation.
A lot of so called audiophiles aren't informed about the room interaction and they either overlook or don't believe it even when they are told about it. Instead, they pour money on DACs, cables, amps, contact enhancer...etc.
I’m not one of them, i know my room is far from perfect, but a fully treated room is hard to get for an average listener. But i come from the pro-audio world where we take that in account. So i know what acoustics does. But that does not mean you can’t be a critical listener to amps and speakers and so...
And my cables are selbuild OFC with decent connectors or reasonable priced QED profile interconnects. My power conditioner is an online ups like used in the ict world and i’m allergic to snake oil...
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