Most Pretentious High-End Audio Component Names

[MakeMineVinyl]

What are the most preposterously pretentious high end audio component or speaker names you have ever heard?

 

[Helicopter]

Martin Logan Masterpiece

Definitive Technology - a brand name not a product

Focal Utopia

 

[Matias]

Crystal Cable - Ultimate Dream is a pretty over the top name hehe.

https://www.thecableco.com/cables/interconnects/ultimate-dream-interconnect.html

 

[NTomokawa]

Almost everything called "reference", really.

 

[Matias]

But Reference is like 90% of the names in high end audio!

 

[Feelas]

almost anything from hiend, honestly. Apart from that, how can you nonironically name something "Audirvana"

 

[Dialectic]

Wilson Audio WAMM Master Chronosonic.

If only one could be delivered to Amir for measurement so that we can see What A Massive Mess it is.

https://www.wilsonaudio.com/products/wamm/wamm-master-chronosonic

Not to digress, but please note the quote at the link from Jacob Heilbrunn, who edits the formerly august journal The National Interest.

Why are so many social science/politics/national security types drawn to audiophile silliness? Off the top of my head, I can think of Allan Bloom, Anthony Cordesman, Francis Fukuyama, Heilbrunn, Fred Kaplan, and Pierre Sprey.

By some accounts, Bloom's personal debts, which in part stemmed from purchases of high-end audio video equipment including a Linn turntable, led to his writing The Closing of the American Mind.

Cordesman has written for Stereophile and The Absolute Sound. He is a Washington think tanker who has written a number of books about American policy in the Middle East.

Fukuyama, who needs no introduction, has referred to his audio habit in public. (To his credit, he once made a comment suggesting that he is a cable skeptic.)

Kaplan is a journalist who covers American foreign policy. He formerly moonlighted by writing about jazz and stereo equipment for Stereophile.

Sprey is the most interesting of the bunch. Having a background in mathematics, he worked in the Pentagon, where he was involved in delivering the specifications for the A-10 and the F-16. Now he sells audiophile tweaks and produces jazz records and trashes the F-35 for anyone who will listen.

 

[Deleted member 19195]

Paradigm 'Prestige' series

 

[Feelas]

Why are so many social science/politics/national security types drawn to audiophile silliness? Off the top of my head, I can think of Allan Bloom, Anthony Cordesman, Francis Fukuyama, Heilbrunn, Fred Kaplan, and Pierre Sprey. (By some accounts, Bloom's personal debts, which in part stemmed from purchases of high-end audio video equipment including a Linn turntable, led to his writing The Closing of the American Mind.)

I believe it just means that they know, that the general public sees audiophila hobby as a prestigious one and merely tapping into it to leverage it further. Many would if the money wasn't the problem. And hey, they don't really hurt anyone this way, right? It's not wrong until you buy a monoblock and then your family doesn't get to eat for a month.

Yet it's kind of psychopatic, but - talking fiction - I'd rather respect someone pulling chops and getting their family hungry, rather than joking around about wife acceptance factor I guess the madman factor is more appealing.

 

[gene_stl]

Audio Nirvana or Audirvana either one

Edit: Someone below mentions Schiit products. I would not have such a named thing in my house and consequently never ever read reviews of them.

 

[daftcombo]

Donald Dac ?

 

[Dialectic]

I believe it just means that they know, that the general public sees audiophila hobby as a prestigious one

I don't know anyone in the States who is impressed by audiophile stuff or the audio hobby more generally--except for other audio enthusiasts, of course.

 

[Helicopter]

I don't know anyone in the States who is impressed by audiophile stuff or the audio hobby more generally--except for other audio enthusiasts, of course.

I think that might just be a combination of the Puritain/Protestant aspects of the culture and the abundance here. There are few things you can buy, at least under a million dollars or so, that will impress me unless you demonstrate discernment and taste. Lavishness and extravagance usually won't do it on their own either, so lots of things over a million dollars also wont impress me, but some stuff does still manage to impress. I dont think I am unusual in this regard, but in some cultures, it would be.

 

[Χ Ξ Σ]

The entire Schiit product line with their Norse mythical names.
The entire Nordost product line with their Norse mythical names.

 

[mhardy6647]

Almost everything called "reference", really.

or "monitor", for that matter.
... to say nothing of "reference monitor"

The entire Schiit product line with their Norse mythical names.
...

Yeah, like Fulla.
Schiit was on the top of my list vis-a-vis this thread, by the way. Their frat-boy humor and approach don't work for me at all.

 

[MakeMineVinyl]

Shindo Haut-Brion amplifier
https://www.stereophile.com/content/listening-110-page-2

 

[thewas]

Don't know if I find it more pretentious or just stupid when audio companies name their products like famous musicians, having not understood the difference of art (the recorded and mixed event) and just a technical reproduction or intentionally mix them up for the audiophool target buyers who think they are similarly creative like maestros by "matching their cables, amps and speakers", here is just one of the many companies who do so http://www.vienna-acoustics.com/
This shows the degeneration of the audio market, imagine LG calling a TV model "Stanley Kubrick" and Eizo a monitor "Claude Monet".

 

[anmpr1]

Anything with the name 'zen' in it is totally off my radar. Anyone who names their device 'zen' should be beaten mercilessly by blind Shaolin kung fu Master Po.

Pretentious names are one thing, but another thing I don't understand are names consisting of a mumbo jumbo of letters and numbers that point to no easily recognizable thing in the universe. For instance, pro oriented Westlake loudspeakers, with names such as the BBSM-15vnf Series 2, or their LC3W12vf. I mean, those names sure roll off the tongue.

 

[Chrispy]

Classe always seemed the most pretentious to me. Then there are whole companies that are pretentious like Audioquest.

 

[phoenixdogfan]

Tardis Time Lords.