an equipment poll

Cary Audio - 9
NAD - 4
B & K - 2
Anthem - 5
AudioRes - 10
Denon - 6
Parasound - 7
Innersound - 9 (Sanders Sound)
Gallo - 6
Def Techno - 8
SVS Sound - 6
Magnepan - 10
Velodyne - 7
Sunfire - 6
JL Audio - 8
RBH - 5
McIntosh - 6
Clearaudio - 8
VPI - 9
Kimber - 9
ZuAudio - 5
Homegrown - 6
Niles - 4
Klipsch - 10 (Heritage)
Klipsch - 4 (others)
Mirage - 4
OppoDigital- 8
BelCanto - 6
MHDT Labs - 8
Bryston - 10
PassLabs - 8
Spectron - 6
Sumiko - 9
Ginko - 7
RichGreyPow- 5
PS Audio - 8
Vandersteen- 9
AntqSndLab - 2
Benchmark - 6
Paradigm - 8
SonusFabre - 7
JBL - 6
Krell - 7

But how to weigh across the line becomes a question. For example entry level Vandersteen is not the same as top of the line Vandersteen. And PS Audio power conditioners are not the same as their audio components. Plus, many companies make electronic components as well as speakers; responses must be evaluated and weighted according to one's experience with a given portion of a mannufacturers's line.

Otherwise the "results" will be flawed and the thread becomes a "shouting match" (is this the intent?)

Also system and room contexts play a huge role and these parameters cannot be ignored, it's simply unfair to rate component manufacturers if we don't don't know the systems they were evaluated in; there is no control for this.

There are likely other incongruities with this approach not yet captured or mitigated.

This approach is highly flawed and will not yield meaningful data.

I agree with Stevecham

I agree that the over-simplified methodology of this survey is highly flawed, but I'll give it a shot.

Many of the following companies are long since out of existence (in a couple of cases, VERY long since), but given that Audiogon is a place for buying and selling used equipment it seems reasonable to include them:

Acoustat - 5
Antique Sound Lab - 4
Audio Research - 9
B&W - 7
Carver - 4
Classe - 8
Grace - 7
Grado - 7
Infinity - 6
Magnepan - 8
Marantz (the original company, under Saul) - 8
Mark Levinson Audio Systems (the original company, pre-Madrigal) - 8
Paxthon - 5
Pentagram - 6
Radio Engineering Laboratories - 10
Rotel - 4
SOTA - 7
Stax - 8
Tandberg (top-end cassette decks) - 9
Tandberg (other) - 5
Thiel - 5
Threshold - 6

Regards,
-- Al