James Randi Comments on StereoPhile (1 Viewer)

[RobertR]

I've thought that for a long time. The High End is very skilled at playing on the neurotic fears of people that their equipment isn't tweaked in every conceivable way for maximum performance. It results in a never ending cycle of "but what if I change this?"

 

[MikeTz]

Was it P. T. Barnum that said, "It is impossible to underestimate the intelligence of the public", "there's a sucker born every minute", "it's a sin to let a fool keep his money", and many more?

Seems like many modern marketing strategies are based on these very tenets.

A knowledgeable, dispassionate, parctical buyer is the nightmare of many a salesman.

MT

 

[Bryan_G]

This is a pretty hot topic, but I was thinking about a comment someone else made in another thread about buying a luxury car while their co-worker bought a high end stereo system. Then reading this thread prompted me to ask this question.

How much should an item like the B&W snells cost? And why? Unlike cable companies B&W isn't making claims that are absurd(at least that I have heard), they are just charging prices that are. I feel that a sane person could purchase an item like this, yet I don't know at what price these speakers would be considered reasonable.


I know from personal experience that making speakers can be quite expensive. I built a modest pair of mini-towers, 2 7" vifa woofers plus vifa xt25 tweeter. All reasonably priced components ~$50 each. In the end I had almost $600 invested and enough man-hours to effectively double the cost. They sound great, but I know to sell them with a comfortable profit I would have to charge an absurd amount.

I know that speaker companies realize their profit by mass production, or at least semi mass production, but how much should some of the higher priced items cost? Or is there no need for them to exist at all?

I personally feel that most "tweaks" should be at the dollar store, but think there are some nice items out there that ALMOST justify their extremely high cost.

-Bryan

 

[Jack Briggs]

Bryan, we're talking about companies that charge stratospheric, Lear-jet prices. Audio Research Corporation had reached the point, by the late 1980s, of including vacuum-tube stages for sheer political reasons (the SP-11 preamp didn't really need vacuum tubes).

Audio Research's 300-watt monoblock tube amp, which went out the door at something like $5,500 a pop, experienced a 100-percent failure rate in the field back in 1987 (duly noted by Peter Aczel in his The Audio Critic, yet blithely ignored by TAS and Stereophile).

I wrote about these concerns at my old gig with the late, great Los Angeles Reader. Toward the end of the story, I advised newcomers interested in serious, hobbyist-level audio to seek advice from Audio and The Audio Critic magazines, while suggesting that The Absolute Sound is terrific for entertainment value (the letters column and the music reviews).

Yet I took Harry Pearson to task for his daring to suggest that the Audio Research SP-11's "resolution" was so clear that one could discern the differences in concert-hall construction materials when well-recorded vinyl discs were heard through that overpriced, unreliable preamp.

"Give me a break," I wrote.

Shortly after my story ran, I received a postcard from Harry Pearson. He "thanked" me for my comments about his magazine. But, in noting my "approval" of "Peter Aczel's magazine," he added, "I really have to wonder how much you know about audio."

This, from Harry Pearson, who wrote often of the "yin/yang" of audio.

 

[Angelo.M]

Bryan, I have absolutely no problem with Company A charging whatever it wants for its products. If the position is that the market will bear it, then so be it.

I do have a problem with the exaggerated, unfounded, unspported claims that are made of gear at the ultra-high-end, claims which smack of charlatainism. I've owned a pre-amp/amp combo costing more than many small automobiles, and, of course, I couldn't tell the type of wood in the chair rails at Lincoln Center nor could I discern how many holes it would take to fill the Albert Hall. Looking back on that purchase from the perspective of about 15 years, I can see that it was motivated by precisely the type of psychology that RobertR wrote about in his post earlier on this page.

 

[Lee Distad]

Personally, I prefer dispassionate, practical buyers because:

a) they ask better questions, make better decisions, spend more money, and their deals stay sold.

b) when they've bought, they've bought, and they don't drive me insane for months on end with niggling techie questions.

Years ago (too many years ago I think), when I was a buff young idiot working in ski shops in the winter and bike shops in the summer, I encountered the same thing. A certain type of customer would agonize over this GS-race ski or that all-mountain ski. "Oh, but what about moguls?" they would pester me "Will this ski handle the bumps?" Some would even blather at you over the phone, with the fall Ski Review issues of Powder, Ski Canada, Skier, etc open on the living room floor in front of them, and would gladly waste hours of your time soliciting your opinion of the new K2 Slalom Race vs. the Rossignol XK7 or somesuch.

Needless to say, none of them could ski worth a damn.

Human nature, I suppose.

 

[RobertR]

In examples like this, it's clear that High End pricing has little to do with the actual cost of the materials or labor that goes into the construction of such items. Cheney has also written that some of the drivers in Wilson speakers are surprisingly inexpensive. It's clear that people are paying for "other things". So the answer to the question "how much should it cost" is "whatever one can convince people to pay, based on one's ability to convince them what to pay for". Of course, some of us have learned that there's no rational basis for what some people pay for, but that's a whole other discussion.

 

[Jack Briggs]

A good example of the contrast between cost-of-materials versus actual value would be McIntosh versus, say, Audio Research. Look inside an ARC piece. Where are the military-spec electronics and examples of state-of-the-art workmanship and parts? They're not there. The build quality "feels" average at best.

Then look at anything from McIntosh. The retro-look, green/blue backlit, black-glass faceplates and the top-of-the-shelf parts quality. And the build quality! The old company's offerings may be overkill, but they do not appear overpriced. They're simply unaffordable -- and that's a big difference (because you can see where the money went).

Those high-end uber speaker systems, though, are in murky territory. Remember the Infinity Reference Standard tower system? First introduced in 1980 at the then unheard-of price of $20,000, it somehow managed to become more expensive over the next fifteen years. When it finally was withdrawn from the market after Arnie Nudell went on to create Genesis, the IRS was going for more than $100,000 -- a 500-percent price increase.

Inflation, with the high-end cult, apparently is a status issue.

 

[Lee Distad]

I can't tell you how many guys I know who work as consultants, whether computer, accounting, or HR training found that they got way more contracts from the business world by doubling or even tripling their hourly fees.

"Oh, well if he wants $300 an hour, he must be good!"

 

[Chu Gai]

Strange, but true.

 

[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

Perhaps a bit off-topic, but from the article Chu posted:
I get the impression they are never satisfied for long. They are always buying and selling their gear, cables etc. Yes, as Lee noted, many of them could use some therapy!

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

 

[Jack Briggs]

Well, remember, Wayne, that these are people who had long advocated the use of silver or gold speaker cables, claiming those $200-$500-per-foot connections "improve" the sound -- as though electrons remember what kind of metal they just flowed through.

 

[RobertR]

Also, Wayne, you can never satisfy opponents of double blind audio testing, just as you can never satisfy believers in UFOs, ESP, astrology, divining rods, ionized bracelets, ad naseum. They will always find some nit to pick about the procedure, no matter how silly or unrelated or tenuous the objection is. They will say that "science doesn't know everything", or the rigorousness of the scientific procedure is "too stressful", etc. etc. All because it debunks their precious a priori beliefs.

 

[Angelo.M]

It's like "breaking in" a digital amplifier: those 1's and 0's need to learn how to behave.

 

[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

Well, I do recall from my high-school daze that silver actually is the best electrical conductor, but as to whether or not that translates to anything sonically – who knows?

Robert,
Well put! The ironic thing is that most of these people are highly educated! They have to be, to afford that stuff! I’m sure they wouldn’t debunk scientific methodology in any other arena, but when it comes to audio they sound like some hillbilly lounging around on the porch in the hills of Tennessee. (I guess now I owe an apology for insulting all the hillbillies in Tennessee, don’t I? )

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

 

[Yogi]

Not that I am a cable believer or a tice clock believer but I just noticed Chu spelt Stereophool wrong



I am sure its the same educated people that bought Priceline stock in its prime when it was trading at over 2000 times PER inspite of all scientific analysis pointing otherwise. I think this phenomenon is much more widely prevalent than one would like to think and education has nothing to do with it (or shall I say education gets thrown out the window more often than not). IOW hillbilies abound this planet in all areas of human endevours, not just audio and astrology.

OK, I'll leave you guys to your monthly hillbilly bashing ritual.

Cheers.

 

[Angelo.M]

When I retire, I think I'll head a course in "Audio and Astrology." I'll recruit my teaching assistants from HTF of course; feel free to submit CVs now.

Hillbillies welcome, of course.

 

[Chu Gai]

From this week's update at http://www.randi.org/jr/080504string.html we have the following progression of events.

 

[Jack Briggs]

The gauntlet has been thrown!

Let's just guess what kind of religiously indignant responses James Randi receives -- in the pages of those targeted magazines.

Meanwhile, a slight error in Mr. Randi's letter: One recipient is Bascom King at Audio. Well, the oldest hobbyist-audio publication of them all folded two or three years ago.

 

[John Kotches]

Fi: folded a few years back as well. A number of the Fi: staff now reside at TAS.

I'm just glad Randi hasn't targeted me

Cheers,