And B&O never took part in any 'tech-spec-race'.

They choose what is needed for how they want the products to perform.

MM

I was always told never bad mouth the competition, your product should stand up on its own merits ..... looks like AVi's boss is disgruntled with sales numbers...

Millemissen wrote:

And B&O never took part in any 'tech-spec-race'.

They choose what is needed for how they want the products to perform.

MM

As evidenced by the fact that B&O has almost never advertised in the "hifi" magazines but in design and decorating magazines, like Dwell and Architectural Digest. It's a different philosophy that's for sure, and one that I've come to appreciate more and more over the years. I've seen, in my audio sales days, people pore over and obsess over specifications that have absolutely no relationship to sound quality, and in some cases are antithetical to it.

As to the subject of ripoffs, a few years ago there was a huge kerfluffle when it was found that a $2000 Lexicon BluRay/DVD player was a rebadged $500 Oppo with only the case changed and a couple of components altered. Watching Lexicon/Harman try and rationalize that was amusing. $1500 for a couple of capacitors.

Jeff wrote:

As to the subject of ripoffs, a few years ago there was a huge kerfluffle when it was found that a $2000 Lexicon BluRay/DVD player was a rebadged $500 Oppo with only the case changed and a couple of components altered. Watching Lexicon/Harman try and rationalize that was amusing. $1500 for a couple of capacitors.

Or some years ago the UK Manufacturer whose  amplifiers sent to magazines for review contained expensive components.

Having obtained rave reviews, the units on sale were  subsequently found to contain cheap components.

And what about the trend some years ago for audio cables costing per metre several thousand Pounds Sterling  which received rave reviews from the magazines.

Fascinating, I'd not heard of that component swap thing but sadly it doesn't surprise me.

I do remember a case where the insidious effect of the audio press actually lowered the quality of a product. A high end makers preamp used a wonderful design using high grade op amps for the output stage, wide band, low distortion, just a superior design. The "high end" magazines made snitty comments about it not being a discrete component design, so the follow up version had discrete circuitry that was inferior in performance to the op amp design, but got better reviews because of it.

The whole high end market is an amazing collection of prejudices, disinformation, and smoke and mirrors, with real design accomplishments scattered like nuggets in a stream. Takes a lot of panning to find them.

In other news,

Getting back into the hifi world as of late after many years I am amazed by the nonsense. Of course my favourite are cables costing thousands of dollars, and reviewers speaking about great sound improvements by using a $500 USB cable. And just a few days ago I was looking for some floor stands for an amp, and discovered the $2000 stand - with claims of great improvements around vibration and harmonic distortion, sound stage, etc. A few weeks ago I tried a $1800 headphone and my 10 year old Sennheiser costing $400 sounded much better.

Jeff wrote:

Fascinating, I'd not heard of that component swap thing but sadly it doesn't surprise me.

I do remember a case where the insidious effect of the audio press actually lowered the quality of a product. A high end makers preamp used a wonderful design using high grade op amps for the output stage, wide band, low distortion, just a superior design. The "high end" magazines made snitty comments about it not being a discrete component design, so the follow up version had discrete circuitry that was inferior in performance to the op amp design, but got better reviews because of it.

The whole high end market is an amazing collection of prejudices, disinformation, and smoke and mirrors, with real design accomplishments scattered like nuggets in a stream. Takes a lot of panning to find them.

I still remember some years ago at a London Hi-Fi Show listening to an all American system in which the highly praised speakers alone were over £100,000.

I was sitting off centre  at the back of the room  and was unable to hear a stereo image.

After the demo the Importer confirmed that in order to hear a stereo image one had to sit dead centre in the front two rows.