Are audiophile products designed to initially impress then fatigue to make you upgrade?


If not why are many hardly using the systems they assembled, why are so many upgrading fairly new gear that’s fully working? Seems to me many are designed to impress reviewers, show-goers, short-term listeners, and on the sales floor but once in a home system, in the long run, they fatigue users fail to engage and make you feel something is missing so back you go with piles of cash.

128x128johnk

The notion that manufacturers secretly deliberately design their products to degrade, but only just enough to not cross a very fine threshold of degradation to avoid becoming obvious poor quality - is simply not realistic.

Often the question of whether one’s system ‘sounds best’ comes down to what might not exist within the soundstage.

In other words, when there is nothing obvious that offends the ear, the question becomes whether the speakers or a given piece of equipment might not be transmitting some or all of the source material as completely as can be done.

The question of what might not be there is nowhere near as straightforward as a poor soundstage no matter what you do, or a hum that shouldn’t be there.

For instance, my amplifier sounds really fine, but I have come to wonder if there exists more clarity and openness in the high range, so I’ll eventually try another.

And specifically, I wonder this because I’ve run different speakers on this system and studied their sound, I’ve got my set-up correct including cables, source devices are excellent, and I’ve done a lot of reading that suggests to me that there is better sound to be had.

Logically, it could be the preamp or the amp, but the amp is older, so I’ll start there.

If people listened to acoustic music, especially vocal music (I don’t mean Diana Krall either) in demonstrations and it sounded good and natural, few things could go wrong afterwards. But no, they listens to the “impressive thunder” in Brothers in Arms.

It sounds like the OP has foreseen the inevitability of their own audio journey. Pity really….l

@ditusa

Great speakers and yes, the wave guide that trickled down from the JBL M-2 has the most stable center image imaginable. I own the JBL Studio 2 series which was the first consumer speaker that used that trickle down tech from the M-2. On the desktop the 230 monitors are incredible, the way they lock the center image in is amazing. I now have them setup in the man cave as a 5.1.4 atmos setup. With the matching center channel it just gives you more of that great imaging but yes, they sound fantastic in stereo, agreed.