A fair point @Marian_Trandafir however the rhetorical question was not posed. Selecting a portion of the statement made is overlooking the example offered i.e. “…(Decent room treatment alone can easily run into the thousands).”
By implication SQ can be changed (read “improved”) by user intervention which involves a cost, there’s the context.
Anyway, it’s been a long day, I’m off, good luck with the discussion & sleep well 
Middle ground is flexible. What may seem reasonable to one person may well look outrageous to somebody else. But this doesn’t mean that the very notion of a middle ground is useless.
And yes, I believe that like with everything else in life good hifi equipment won’t come cheap. Why do I believe that? I’ve been around for a while and I’ve never ever had a good experience with cheap stuff. It won’t look good and it usually dies on you quite rapidly. Re hifi, I have my ears, and some differences are so obvious that you might as well ask for facts to back up my claim that I prefer Mozart to ABBA.
Depends on what you mean by “quality”, I think. Luxury goods, like audiophile equipment, are different from non-luxury goods. With most non-luxury goods, quality is judged by functionality, by utility. With luxury goods, however, “quality” is almost uncoupled from functionality. Instead, it signifies status, and is almost directly proportional to price and rarity.
What has changed is where the luxury/non-luxury line is drawn. 75 years ago, things like air-conditioning, televisions, and the like were luxury goods. 55 years ago, stereo systems were. 40 years ago, CD players. 30 years ago, cellular phones.
In addition, the use of computer technology for both analysis and design has radically changed engineering and manufacturing over the last 40 years. You no longer need a scarce and expensive golden-ears electronics wizard to make a great audio circuit. Instead, you can buy them ready-built and blister-packaged over the Internet, designed to near-perfection by off-the-shelf design programs.
The end result is that the inexpensive equipment which falls into the non-luxury category is now better than you could get for massive amounts of money 40 years ago. Sure, the luxury stuff is still around, but it’s not appreciably more functional than the non-luxury gear. And it doesn’t have to be, because that’s not what “quality” means in that market segment.
I agree. There’s always going to be a luxury audio market, and that’s totally fine with me. But what ticks me off is that they have to make it about sound quality, so they talk about hi-res and stairsteps and timing and RFI and EMI and that digital is still analog etc. Just say “it looks awesome” and leave it at that.
Actually, I think there are two categories: the real luxury goods, and the wannabe luxury goods. The luxury brands just say, “It’s a McIntosh” and leave it at that. The wannabes talk about the faux technical stuff, using keywords borrowed from actual technical literature and spectres of obsolete technology shibboleths, because their brand isn’t strong enough to just say, “It’s a <whatever>”, and still get away with the prices they want to charge.
I think that the myth of “golden-ears” engineers is, well, a myth. The irony is that many well-respected engineers are well into the autumn of their lives. They are, undoubtedly, subject to the same biological inevitability of hearing loss as the rest of us, and, yet, they’re trusted to design and voice equipment costing as much as a decent car. I don’t doubt their ability to design great products, I just think that the claims of their superior hearing ability are mostly exaggerated.
That is true. It’s the same with cars, computers, television sets, even coffee machines.
I have two questions.
My challenge to objectivists (I don’t know whether you fall into this category) is this: put together a system that you believe, based solely on measurements, to be the best possible one. That should be easy, as objectivists won’t consider subjective factors such as looks and, given that this is about sound, will deem objective factors such as craftsmanship and materials used for the casing irrelevant. (By system I mean: ONE source (DAC, streamer, Cd transport, …), preamp/ amp, speakers, cables and interconnects.)
I’d love to see the very best system by objectivist criteria. (To be very clear: by best I really mean best, it can’t get any better. I want this to be system based, that’s why I’ve left out the room and room treatment.)
Again, “better” (a) means something different in luxury goods, and (b) is a scalar measurement in a vector space. So, hard to say. What we can say is that many inexpensive non-luxury products seem to work perfectly along the dimensions of reproduction fidelity and transparency. It’s hard to improve along those axes once you’ve gotten to perfection. So you then have to look at other axes, like industrial design, that you care about.
As pleasant? Define the dimensions of pleasure. But even an entry-level Volkswagen is an amazingly functional and trouble-free automobile, compared to some of the old diesel S-class sedans from the 1970’s.
Hmmm, will objectivists play? Once you’ve maxed out the dimensions you care about, why waste time considering other options?
It’s definitely true that, whereas originally designing a circuit with SPICE was a precursor to building a prototype, today if it works in SPICE it’s usually good to go with at least a first run of boards, eliminating the expense of prototyping. But I think good audio equipment is auditioned first.
It’s also true that high end audio equipment is subject to the economics of luxury goods, meaning to a certain extent raising the price increases demand. I think it’s a hoot when a reviewer hails a $20,000 power amp as a “high end bargain”. Reviewers certainly do their part in creating demand. While it’s true that fancy, attractive metal work raises the cost of production, it’s hard to see how the cost of production of any amplifier justifies a 5 or 6 figure price tag. Even if they hand selected every component at a rejection ratio of 99/100.
But I don’t discount the value of aesthetics as pure conspicuous consumption. Beautiful objects (which I acknowledge is highly subjective) are a joy to live with, regardless of whether anyone else perceives them as valuable.
Perhaps all respondents should take the Values and Lifestyles Survey at SBI.
The purpose of the US VALS™ survey is to identify the VALS type of the person taking the survey. That’s it. To find out about a person’s product ownership, media preferences, hobbies, additional demographics, or attitudes (for example, about global warming), the questions in the VALS survey integrate into larger questionnaires that ask about these topics. For example, the VALS questions integrate into GfK MRI’s nationally syndicated Survey of the American Consumer, which enables us to see the media preferences of each of the eight VALS types. The VALS questions also integrate into our own Consumer Financial Decisions’ MacroMonitor survey, giving us in-depth information about how each VALS type uses, invests, and saves money.
Yes, of course, “better” is difficult to define. While I agree that many entry-level cars work well, the driving experience compared to that of a much more expensive car is not the same. And that’s not just a question of design. When you push 200 km/h on an Autobahn, believe me you’d rather be in a Mercedes than a VW Polo. For everyday use, the Polo will do fine, but here we’re talking about “better”, as we do with regard to expensive audiophile equipment. Good enough is not the best.
Hence my challenge. The very best by purely objectivist standards. No bells and whistles. No bling bling and commercial waffle. Just the pure honest sound.
So far there aren’t any takers!
So my “objectivist” car purchase for local one-man journeys led to me owning one of these, bought 2nd hand for £50.
Believe me, once I was going 90 km/h I’d have gladly taken the Mercedes at 200 km/h, or considerably faster. After three years I gave the car away feeling I now knew what high-speed running felt like in all but the required effort. Finding the “point of diminishing returns” and value is the trick.
Reminds me of the very first car I owned, courtesy of my brother: a clapped-out orange Beetle – don’t think I ever drove it faster than 90 km/h. It produced interesting sounds, though, especially where you wouldn’t expect them.
Absolutely.
There are some interesting problems with this “challenge”. Speakers couple a room to the stereo system, so what would be “best” is quite contextual. But if we leave the speakers out of the equation, Archimago’s system isn’t terrible, I’d think: Roon driving a Topping DAC (a D90, I think, which measures as perfect reproduction) driving an amp which is essentially a Hypex nCore NC252MP board.
Of course, that still puts the onus on the user of selecting something to play. A luxury system would include a full-time live-in DJ familiar enough with the owner’s moods to play the right thing at the right time. Having to choose your own music is just pseudo-luxury, like owning a yacht without a live-aboard crew.
I want both the DJ system and the yacht w/crew.
So to be clear on this: according to you, this is the best possible system (bar the speakers)?
I am disappointed that apart from you nobody has responded to the challenge.
I’ll look at this slightly differently if that’s OK and go for my “if money were no object” objectivist’s system. I’m not entirely comfortable with the “objectivist” label, I do believe in listening to gear 
but I’ll admit I wouldn’t bother listening to something that measured badly (that’s nuanced, it depends on the measurement).
I’d keep the parts down to a minimum and go with a Chord Hugo TT2 with a decent RPi Optical TOSLINK HAT. I’m a believer in letting the speaker designer match the drivers to amplification and I’d go with something active from ATC. If I was still in a standard family house these SCM40As would do the job quite nicely. I’m also happy to leave the power supplies to ATC as well. Nothing fancy with interconnects needed, a decent optical cable that can manage 192 reliably can be had at reasonable prices and decent quality balanced cables are the same, just avoid cheap rubbish. For comparison, I’d give the Dutch & Dutch 8Cs a listen as well, similarly priced and only ethernet cables required.
I would wire an iPod (ssd) up to ATC 150 actives and put it on shuffle.
Now for vinyl an SME 30/12 and EAR phono…
Again, best possible is a meaningless term without more specific identification of the dimensions we’re optimizing over. I think there are dozens of systems that are equivalent to this one.
I was thinking of an average room of between 15 and 30 square meters (160 to 320 square feet), ceiling height 2,50 m. Enormous power won’t be needed.
