an equipment poll


what brands of components do people like and dislike ?

please grade the products of companies whose products you have owned, giving the company a rating between 1 and 10, where 1 means "worst sound quality" and 10 means "best sound quality"

thus you might rate conrad jonson an "8", vandersteen a "7", etc. please rate as many brands as you wish.

i will crunch the numbers.

at the end we'll get an idea of what people like and don't like. i think it will be very interesting.

thanks for your participation.
mrtennis
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 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
I agree with Stevecham also but I'm bored right now so what the hell.
As stated my list will only contain manufacturers whose equipment I have owned. It must also be stated that I am a bit of a cheapskate so the perceived value is also figured into my rating. That may not be the OP's intention but it is impossible for me to remove that factor from my opinion.
Acoustic Energy - 7
Analysis Plus - 5
Anthem - 5
Arcam - 8
Audioquest - 9
Bel Canto - 9
Denon - 6
Eminent Technology - 3
James Loudspeakers - 8
Linn - 9
Marantz - 5
Meadowlark Audio - 9
Mirage - 5
Musical Fidelity - 4
Portal Audio - 9
Quad - 8
Paradigm - 4
PSB - 6
Resolution Audio - 10
Revel - 10
Roksan - 3
Silverline Audio - 8
Sony - 7
Totem - 8
Thiel - 8
Vandersteen - 9
OK, now I'm bored with this exercise as well. Think I'll put on some music.
a few additions:

Quad - 9
Sony - 5
James Audio - 7
Pro-ject - 7
Marantz - 5
Musical Fidelity - 5
Linn - 10
Revel - 8

I'm bored too...