I happened to be in the neighborhood with a few minutes to kill and next thing I know I'm wandering around in "Video Only" looking at new receivers and speakers. I gave a pretty thorough listen to their top shelf offerings from Infinity, Polk and Klipsch and all of them sounded pretty much cheap and lifeless. Is it that I've grown spoiled or is it that even $400 (each) speakers sold in the big box stores are pretty much garbage or is it something else I'm missing?

There isn't much inexpensive new audio gear that is good compared to even relatively inexpensive vintage gear. Now expensive new gear is a different matter. There is a lot of superb expensive audio gear being manufactured today.

There's some good stuff out there, like Monitor Audio small bookshelves, Cambridge Audio 640c CD players, technics SL-1200 turntables, and a few more nice goodies.


However there's also a lot of dreck out there. Items that rest on the laurels of thier names, purchased long after the original company died away. Dreck sold with the smoke and mirrors of "heritage" with little thought of real high end, but plenty of effort in bells, whistles and slick design.

Youse guys are all over it.
Had the realization the other day that pop equals crap.
Generally, popular culture and massmarket are junk.
AND, the more of us, and I use the term loosely, there are, the crappier
the products. My miniepiphany came while listening to "My Lollipop"
in "Stand By Me". A wonderful little ditty in that context, but nothing
you ever needed to hear, much less twice an hour on early 60s AM radio.
About 95 percent of pop music is garbage. 5 percent of massmarket merchandise is worth buying. Walmart--home of instant obsolescence.
was in a high end audio shop a few months ago.
In retrospect, I'm suspecting he was selling the sizzle.
And that was high end.
The reality of the situation: I picked up an Optonica amp for $10
at a yard sale a coupla years ago. They could barely afford to manufacture
a tank like that these days, much less ship and market it.

There's a lot of interesting audio stuff nowadays at decent price tags. Stuff like Pro-Ject or Rega turntables, Oppo dvd/blue-ray, Rotel, Nad and Cambridge cdp's, a few great Dac's like the Dacmagic,Zhaolu or Benchmark , digital amps with very good sound from Nuforce, Onkyo or Denon, bookshelf speakers like Paradigm, Epcos or B&W...just to name a few items and of course a lot of Chineese audio gear with awesome quality.
Most of these gear costs a lot of money if they were manufactured twenty years ago. IMO, nowadays you can have more and with better quality than a few years ago, of course we can "blame" the Chineese 'cos of that.

dr bongo has it correct- the mass-market stores prefer to sell the "sizzle" to the "steak".

As for wallmart- don't get me started...

All hat and no cattle!

I've listened to the new Klipsch and Polks and was thoroughly underwhelmed. Most are aimed at the HT market so there is plenty of the dreaded presence to complement "Iron Man" or "Transformers".

I'm going to need some time to remember the last time I was in a store listening to anything new. Back in '88 or so I did help a friend buy a new set up (wanted something he could put on the card). After that, it's all a blur.

The sizzle/steak comment reminds me of something the head of Rat Shack said, that if you wanted to attract mice, you should offer them something that smelled like cheese. No real cheese, I assume.

nope, they sure don't...

A small example of today's hi-end:

From Germany, ASR Emitter II amplifier







Dream on....

That's pretty!

Jim

Looks even better naked.


Now, how often can you say that?

It's even more prettier with psu with more than 70.000uF of filtering caps.

I always tell people to give whatever they buy the "weight test," the better amplifiers tend to weight a ton.. dont they? Same with speakers, things like stiff speaker baskets and internal reinforcements sure add to the weight! ;-)

A lot of the newer stuff is cheap. A quick look at Bose shows the trend for small, compact speakers and systems that fail in the performance catagory. Not everyone will agree with me, but thats a typical generalization that I've found true. Not always, but often enough.

I just purchased a new camera lens for my SLR camera and my co-worker was telling me the same rings true for the lenses. The camera came with 2 lenses that were made in china and are decent, but light-weight and use plastic lenses. The lens I bought today cost 400 dollars, made in japan and has glass lenses.

buyer beware is the bottom line though.


funny, im the type of guy who always takes apart my gear. there isnt an amp, preamp, or speaker that i havent peered inside to see what makes it tick! a lot of the newer speakers cant be serviced or opened (at least not easily) and are just disposable garbage if you ask me.