A small amount of technical knowledge allows one to sort out genuine engineering from snake-oil , sadly the general population have no interest whatsoever in how things work as long as they do.
Keith
Keith
My first amp, which I built from the kit about 1959-ish. I shopped around and got the kit for $74 plus a bit more for shipping. I had it for over a dozen years with never a problem along with a companion Dynakit PAS-3 preamp.I learned that early in high school. At the time, I was an "outside salesman" for a local audio store where the owner hired local kids to wire up Dynakits and he sold the amps at lower prices than the factory-wired. However, considering the narrow range of prices (Stereo 70 was originally 89.99 as a kit and $110.95 factory-wired), he found it hard to sell his locally-wired amps at any intermediate price. However, at my suggestion, he repriced his amps at a higher price than factory-wired and they sold rapidly.
My first amp, which I built from the kit about 1959-ish. I shopped around and got the kit for $74 plus a bit more for shipping. I had it for over a dozen years with never a problem along with a companion Dynakit PAS-3 preamp.
This is the funny thing with this hobby. You can log on to pretty much any audiophile forum on the web, and you will notice that the guys with the most expensive systems are automatically seen as some sort of "experts on everything audio". Even if it's ridiculously obvious that they have no freaking clue what they are talking about. Which is usually the case.
To be honest, I'm starting to really hate this hobby. The whole thing is starting to look like one big joke.
If you live by flashing your stereo to the world every chance you get, then you want the most expensive jewelry there is. Who would admire your system if you put bunch of cheap stuff in there?The strangest thing, to me, is that some of these people actively DONT WANT to save money. "So you're saying that a DAC that costs 1/10 of the DAC I'm thinking of buying can serve me just as well? Hm... I don't like the sound of that".