Why "High end" exist?

[pderousse]

Thanks. I'm not following your remarks about 'why?' being irrelevant. It seems that question is what prompts most denizens of a university to advance knowledge (even of audio). Regardless, the OP did ask why.

 

[mhardy6647]

One wants to be fooled. They don't want science/measurements, they want magic. They don't like being told magic isn't real, but they easily believe that magic is real, and very expensive.

Magic.
Allow me to take a moment and put in a good word for magic.

Have you ever used, or even better, made a crystal radio? A small handful of parts (antenna, tuning coil and/or capacitor, detector, and earphone) and some wire (and a strong radio transmitter signal) and voila. The detector can be a storebought semiconductor (e.g., a germanium diode) or a kludge (e.g., a blued steel razor blade and a graphite pencil) - as in the "foxhole radio" of WWII.
Magic.
Price a nice crystal radio on current market outlets. Kind of pricey. But, of course, they're collectors' items (like the Bugatti).

The Enigmatic Heathkit CR-1 Crystal Radio • AmateurRadio.com

For the past several months my interest in ‘DX-crystal radio’ construction has been percolating once again. It began when I ran across an interesting description of Heathkit’s legendary CR-1, a double-tuned good performer and very much sought-after ...

www.amateurradio.com

Heathkit Model CR-1 Crystal Radio – New England Wireless & Steam Museum

The New England Wireless and Steam Museum is an electrical and mechanical engineering museum emphasizing the beginnings of radio and steam power.

newsm.org

Magic.

Watches? There's no market for fine Swiss mechanical watches any more, right? Prices have crashed on Patek watches, right? A $10 Casio from Walmart keeps better time.

Magic.

I would submit that there's magic in audio reproduction, too -- in the form (for me) of very low parts count single-ended amplification. Here's a non-at-all-random example, straight from the RCA tube manual in terms of circuit components and values: Joseph Esmilla's "Simple 45/2A3" amplifier.

JE Labs SRPP 45/2A3

jelabsarch.blogspot.com

I listen to one of these. Its measurements will be on the poor side of lackluster -- but there's magic in seeing, and hearing, that handful of parts reproduce music. Plus, it looks great in the dark (better - in the dark - than a Bugatti, I reckon!).



There's probably more of a market for magic today than there ever was -- be it technology backlash, a rise in stupidity (or, perhaps the cratering of mass education), or whatever -- folks enjoy being amazed. Empirically, I would opine that seeing the total eclipse in far northern New Hampshire on 08April was far more impressive than listening to Dolby Atmos.

DSC_0191(2) by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

 

[Vacceo]

Thanks. I'm not following your remarks about 'why?' being irrelevant. It seems that question is what prompts most denizens of a university to advance knowledge (even of audio). Regardless, the OP did ask why.

Why do people spend money in a luxury amp when there are equally functional and much cheaper options? Worse still, why would they spend money on something that performs worse? From the fields of conventional economics, we can only state how much it happens and for what kind of people. The rest is left for fields such as philosophy or social anthropology, whose methodological background is a second order form of knowledge.

To explain those "why", we use concepts such as "social class", "symbolic consumption", "subjective value" and similar notions that are not measured in a single, univocal magnitude.

 

[Jim Taylor]

We do, indeed: consumption is, among other things (utility, biological survival...), a way to mark status differences among groups of people and even individual subjects in the same group.

In that realm, consumption bypasses all the utilitarian logic and it´s value is pureley social insofar it distinguishes the consumer and at the same time, plays a continuous game of being in and out of the group.

By this logic, diferential consumption starts on the upper echelons of society that can drastically afford that diferenctiation, setting trends that permeate downwards only to cycle back in a way that the subjects of the upper echelons have to create new differences.

If utility is included along the way, well, so be it, but it´s not a necessity.


Natural sciences are great to explain the what (how do we perceive sound, how does it travel, how it is produced, how it interacts with other objects...), but the why is something that is often times irrelevant. Toole would gladly explain what are the preferences for listening, but it´s a moot point to explain why some people prefeer this or that response within the logic of his studies; he´d simply state that the preference is there.

We can, of course, hypothesize why connecting the explanation to social and personal factors, looking at tendencies we can track.

I had an acerbic friend (now dead) who was wont to use the phrase "delusional self-congratulation". He originally used it to describe the Peace Corps. However, through the years he continued to use the phrase, applying it more broadly to many human endeavors, including consumer activity (he was quite frugal).

Just before he passed, he supposedly said, "This, too." We who knew him took this to mean (perhaps incorrectly) that although he had classified human activity as delusional self-congratulation, he also classified his analysis of that activity the same way.

He had once said, "Philosophy tabulates the ills of the world without offering a cure." I think this was rather harsh, but I understood what he was trying to say.

Jim

 

[Ron Texas]

Every hobby or activity which requires gear will have offerings available at very high prices for people who want to spend the money. Buyers might be rich or just obsessed. Differences in performance are either negligible or non existent. A cheap quartz watch keeps time better than the most expensive mechanical watches. Remember, consumption, even excessive consumption, keeps the economy going.

 

[Vacceo]

I had an acerbic friend (now dead) who was wont to use the phrase "delusional self-congratulation". He originally used it to describe the Peace Corps. However, through the years he continued to use the phrase, applying it more broadly to many human endeavors, including consumer activity.

Just before he passed, he supposedly said, "This, too." We who knew him took this to mean (perhaps incorrectly) that although he had classified human activity as delusional self-congratulation, he also classified his analysis of that activity the same way.

He had once said, "Philosophy tabulates the ills of the world without offering a cure." I think this was rather harsh, but I understood what he was trying to say.

Jim

I´m not so pretentious to think that I have the solution to the massive issues of the world, I simply try to understand how we work. If you take my words, I haven´t placed any moral judgement on behaviour in this particular case.

 

[analogonly]

Why do people spend money in a luxury amp when there are equally functional and much cheaper options? Worse still, why would they spend money on something that performs worse? From the fields of conventional economics, we can only state how much it happens and for what kind of people. The rest is left for fields such as philosophy or social anthropology, whose methodological background is a second order form of knowledge.

To explain those "why", we use concepts such as "social class", "symbolic consumption", "subjective value" and similar notions that are not measured in a single, univocal magnitude.

Not all cheaper options are as functional. It has taken quite a while for Class D amps to provide the current required by some loudspeakers. There are, of course, people who describe low impedance loudspeakers as inherently bad designs.

 

[egellings]

100% vacuum tube free - that's one of the better (or at least bigger, heavier, and 'spensiver) Boulder Amplifier products.

Home - Boulder Amplifiers

The official website of Boulder Amplifiers. Manufacturing and engineering world-class audio components for the last 35 years.

boulderamp.com

"Sound that Transcends Time" -- I guess that means no jitter problems?


EDIT: I must add that I don't know if the one I posted a photo above earlier is mono or stereo (i.e., one might need two of them per Veyron in the garage).
The current flagship (3050) is a monoblock.

View attachment 366894
PS it also, apparently, operates in Class A to its "full rated output".

Nothing can stop a Boulder!

 

[egellings]

Magic.
Allow me to take a moment and put in a good word for magic.

Have you ever used, or even better, made a crystal radio? A small handful of parts (antenna, tuning coil and/or capacitor, detector, and earphone) and some wire (and a strong radio transmitter signal) and voila. The detector can be a storebought semiconductor (e.g., a germanium diode) or a kludge (e.g., a blued steel razor blade and a graphite pencil) - as in the "foxhole radio" of WWII.
Magic.
Price a nice crystal radio on current market outlets. Kind of pricey. But, of course, they're collectors' items (like the Bugatti).

View attachment 367043
View attachment 367045
View attachment 367046

The Enigmatic Heathkit CR-1 Crystal Radio • AmateurRadio.com

For the past several months my interest in ‘DX-crystal radio’ construction has been percolating once again. It began when I ran across an interesting description of Heathkit’s legendary CR-1, a double-tuned good performer and very much sought-after ...

www.amateurradio.com

Heathkit Model CR-1 Crystal Radio – New England Wireless & Steam Museum

The New England Wireless and Steam Museum is an electrical and mechanical engineering museum emphasizing the beginnings of radio and steam power.

newsm.org

Magic.

Watches? There's no market for fine Swiss mechanical watches any more, right? Prices have crashed on Patek watches, right? A $10 Casio from Walmart keeps better time.
View attachment 367047
Magic.

I would submit that there's magic in audio reproduction, too -- in the form (for me) of very low parts count single-ended amplification. Here's a non-at-all-random example, straight from the RCA tube manual in terms of circuit components and values: Joseph Esmilla's "Simple 45/2A3" amplifier.

JE Labs SRPP 45/2A3

jelabsarch.blogspot.com

View attachment 367048
View attachment 367049

I listen to one of these. Its measurements will be on the poor side of lackluster -- but there's magic in seeing, and hearing, that handful of parts reproduce music. Plus, it looks great in the dark (better - in the dark - than a Bugatti, I reckon!).



There's probably more of a market for magic today than there ever was -- be it technology backlash, a rise in stupidity (or, perhaps the cratering of mass education), or whatever -- folks enjoy being amazed. Empirically, I would opine that seeing the total eclipse in far northern New Hampshire on 08April was far more impressive than listening to Dolby Atmos.

DSC_0191(2) by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

The expensive watch is just a piece of jewelry that happens to tell time as a side hustle.

 

[kemmler3D]

It’s not that audiophiles want to be fooled or want to believe in magic. It’s because we are fooled naturally and convincingly by our casual experience with audio.

I'm really talking about those horses who have been led to water and loudly, argumentatively, refuse to drink.

I took this thread to be about the true (read: high 4, low 5 figures at minimum) high end, boutique stuff. Stuff that objectively has no good reason to exist except as an example of fine woodworking or metalworking, maybe. So that doesn't apply to most 'audiophiles'. I was talking about the people who sustain brands and products that are unjustifiable on any rational basis.

For people who have been in "the hobby" long enough, and have spent enough on stuff like that, and have been confronted with objectivist ideas, at some point you can't say they've merely been misled. At some point belief in woo becomes an active choice.

Now, I will agree that a lot of people buying into audio woo-woo are probably just not prepared to evaluate audio on a science-y objective basis. You can easily get through high school and college without being given those tools. But if "being an audiophile" is a major hobby for you over decades, with (say) $50K sunk into gear and more into attending shows and whatnot - with the stated objective of higher performance, and you never bother to figure out what actually drives performance - what gives?

 

[Anton D]

"High End" is a self congratulatory BS term invented as a form of artificial connoisseurship.

It's a despicable word pair with no actual meaning, other than for someone who needs to flex trying to set himself above other people.

Also, the proper pronunciation is "High End *sniff.*"

There should be no velvet rope vibe in our shared fantastic hobby.

 

[WillBrink]

Every hobby or activity which requires gear will have offerings available at very high prices for people who want to spend the money. Buyers might be rich or just obsessed. Differences in performance are either negligible or non existent. A cheap quartz watch keeps time better than the most expensive mechanical watches. Remember, consumption, even excessive consumption, keeps the economy going.

That's where the discussion of diminishing returns kicks in, which may be sharp and easy find (e.g., speaker wire), or more gradual like speakers. At some point you're buying 1" face plates, provenance, resale values, bragging rights, etc, which is fine too. I'll take the Rolex over the Timex any day (and I have) knowing full well the Timex actually keeps more accurate time. I'm fine will all that, just don't piss on me and tell me it's raining that the 20k CD player sounds better than the $500 CD player due to a jitter rate difference of 0.0001%, or that one power cord sounds different from another.

 

[Ron Texas]

That's where the discussion of diminishing returns kicks in, which may be sharp and easy find (e.g., speaker wire), or more gradual like speakers. At some point you're buying 1" face plates, provenance, resale values, bragging rights, etc, which is fine too. I'll take the Rolex over the Timex any day (and I have) knowing full well the Timex actually keeps more accurate time. I'm fine will all that, just don't piss on me and tell me it's raining that the 20k CD player sounds better than the $500 CD player due to a jitter rate difference of 0.0001%, or that one power cord sounds different from another.

It's raining, lol.

 

[Punter]

A dear friend of mine who has been in the PA and live music business for decades, started out as a tech repairing HiFi equipment. He said one of the funniest and most truthful things once, based on his contact with HiFi customers. His assertion is "when a man retires, if he can't afford a sportscar, he buys a HiFi"! I think he is spot on and this is how HiFi has developed into a "hobby" and the overwhelming age demographic at HiFi shows is men over the age of 40 (maybe over 50). This type of individual could be from a wide range of professional or skilled career areas but mostly, non technical when it comes to audio equipment. These individuals are the target market of the HiFi vendors and others.

I would say it was the early 80's when I became aware of the growing lunatic fringe of HiFi with one of the first examples being an article in a now defunct HiFi publication called "The Flat Response". In this article, the writer claimed that there was an audible difference between a Linn Sondeck turntable with the power LED disconnected! As a burgeoning electronics tech, this claim made me laugh out loud and the guy that showed me the article was suitably irritated that I thought it was bullshit. However, as time passed I perceived that the fringe was becoming the mainstream and that the wolves had found the sheep. I dropped out of the HiFi hobby after discovering a pair of 1M interconnects for sale at my favorite HiFi shop that were priced in hundreds of dollars. Not only was I appalled that they were priced at this level but also the salesman tried to convince me that they would offer some sort of sonic improvement over the OEM interconnects that I had in my system. I never returned to this shop and only bought pedestrian components (like a Sony CD player) from that time on.

Meanwhile, the snake oil salesmen got to work and pushed the messaging about cables so hard that it became lore and that proved to the vendors that they could push any old crap if they assembled enough pseudoscience marketing BS to go with it. The signal about the gullibility of the consumers spread all through the industry and soon there were various overengineered and overpriced products for the non-sportscar owners to blow their cash on in their quest for the "best" sound.

This quest is of course as endless as it is pointless but for the dedicated faithful it is a noble pursuit. The nobility comes from a belief in the mind of the Audiophile that they have a special relationship with music and they are honoring it by attempting to reproduce it in the most flawless way possible. Added to that is the pride of adding some pricey component or accessory to their system. Ego dictates that these added components get them just that bit closer to the perfect reproduction of the music they are the custodians of.

This is the reason that they can "hear" a fuse in the power supply of their amplifier and the "difference" is always an improvement. With the advent of the internet and the proliferation of "reviewers" there is a perfect conduit for the continuation of the lunatic fringe turned mainstream to promote manufactured devices that are complete bunkum and have no physical effect on the sound quality of the system they are added to (boxes filled with dirt for example). So the "High-End" is largely an expensive fantasy borne along on the desires of people who believe that their love of music needs to be expressed by throwing money at a sound reproduction system.

 

[Mikig]

high end….
after you read on various high-end audio manufacturer sites the words “boutique”, “premium”, “luxury”, “experience”, “uniqueness”, “elegance”, “unique finishing materials”, “iconic”, “vintage”…… it is not difficult to give an answer on what it is, and who the high end is aimed at in 2024….maybe not exactly everything….but in most cases it is clear enough….

 

[MattHooper]

My point is that in a world in which half live on less than $2 per day according to the UN, it is kind of rich for anyone in the Topping crowd to be throwing stones at the Boulder/Bugatti bunch for being irrational mystical thinkers. I'm sure the wealthy have their reasons for spending their money and characterizing them does not get you any closer to the truth. Most here come off as middle class, educated. However, I think that people living day to day would find it strange to read of people praising a $200 DAC that is ‘objectively’ superior to DACs many times that price. I'm certain someone coming from a world where that kind of outlay represents a full season of labor on a banana farm would find such thinking wasteful and irrational. Understand that I am not throwing stones at anyone here, but just suggesting some perspective and tolerance. People have their money, and they spend it. It’s theirs.

Ok, but I still didn't see anything irrational in there.

 

[pderousse]

Ok, but I still didn't see anything irrational in there.

That’s quite alright. I think I was clear on the idea that different socio-economic communities have different ideas about what is rational.

 

[MattHooper]

Not necessarily true. Generally I like to believe I’m open minded and always willing to listen to an alternate opinion.

Ok, here goes...

In the context of this thread, what is it about uber expensive audio gear that justifies the 100x, or in some cases 1000x price premium over ”normal” gear?

Well that is a very particular version of "high end" - sounds like the ultra expensive bracket that few audiophiles actually play in. And even there people of means could find rational justification in buying some super expensive gear. Like, if you can afford an MBL 101 Extreme speakers without any financial pain, then you are getting a design that is fundamentally different than most out there, very bespoke, with very high quality parts and finish, and if the sound and looks turn your crank...it's totally rational to buy such a system. In other words: you simply aren't going to find the same product cheap. Any number of super expensive speakers may fall in to that category.

Is there something about a Boulder, D’Agostino, Levinson, Pass, or similar amplifier that justifies the massive price differential over a Benchmark? Or for that matter, over one of the new Fosi amps that have recently measured among the top tier of amplifiers?

My tube preamp cost more than my Benchmark preamp, but I love the look of the preamp, the build quality...there's some pride of ownership there...and I like the sound in some ways more than the Benchmark. An expensive tube preamp would be "silly" for some audiophiles, but rational for others.

How about Oswald Mill Imperial speakers, or maybe Focal Grand Utopia’s. Beautiful, intriguing visually, but do they perform better “that” much better than any number of sub-$5k speakers that are proven performers in very sense of the word?

There's always diminishing returns. But I'm pretty sure the Grand Utopias could blow away plenty of sub 5K speakers in various aspects, likely scale of sound, dyanamics, possibly sheer realism with various types of music. I mean, a stand mounted speaker with flat frequency response only goes so far.

I own speakers that are more expensive than some great-measuring speakers reviewed here (like some actives). But I compared them to tons of different speakers (including some that an ASR member might prefer) and I simply loved how these ones sounded in particular. Plus I preferred the aesthetics FAR more than just about any of the other speakers I looked in to (and certainly far more than any active I've seen). They have a super luxurious finish and build quality, a feature I never tire of since I'm looking at them in my listening room every day. I consider my purchase entirely rational for me, even if it's not for you.

A Toyota Camary is a proven performer. It gets the groceries, hauls the kids soccer, gets mom and dad to work, and does so efficiently and incredibly reliably. Any of those tasks would sink a Bugatti Veyron, yet there’s still a market for the Veyron, as there also is for Oswald Mill, D’Agostino, Boulder, and others. We just can’t pretend that the price premium somehow makes that product better in any way.

"Better" can be situational, as well as subjective.

If someone very well off has gigantic hard to drive speakers, and he loves the cyber-punk look of Dan Dagistino's "Relentless" mono amps which will drive anything, then it's perfectly rational for that person to buy those amps. There's all sorts of pleasures that may go along with it. Even people here who buy Benchmark amps often admit they are paying for over-performance in terms of distortion specs vs what they could have gotten cheaper. But some get satisfaction from the engineering aspect as well.

 

[Purité Audio]

No issue with anyone buying anything at any price , as long as they realise that they aren’t actually buying better performance.
Keith

 

[robh36062]

No issue with anyone buying anything at any price , as long as they realise that they aren’t actually buying better performance.
Keith

That's the whole issue as I see it. 100k speaker cables, claims backed up by pseudo science. How would they know the sales pitch, like most, is not entirely truthful?

Or the pseudo science is suspect?

How would they know they are not purchasing performance with price.

There are many times when there is a legitimate increase in performance with price.

So wheat from chaff?

Rob