Snake oil exists in both camps.
The big difference is that pro equipment must work day in day out reliably and consistently for many years. Pro often sells by word of mouth. Pros often take demos into the work place to try out before making a commitment. Pros don’t care that much about aesthetics. Performance and neutrality to provide consistent reproduction is more important. Pro gear for professional facilities use tends to be much more expensive than consumer gear or pro gear destined for private home use.
Often consumer audio is cosmetically stunning but does not really need to be reliable or provide consistent performance with any standard. Aesthetics are more important in consumer audio than performance. Flavour to suit a variety of tastes and provide coloured but exciting presentations is more important than consistency. Some luxury consumer gear can be astronomically expensive compared to pro gear (often because of aesthetics and “luxury” branding of high end models)
Both camps have fantastic gear and awful gear. There is no monopoly on good or bad sounding gear.
In general pro gear will be expected to perform more accurately over a much greater dynamic range (low to very loud volumes) and pro gear in professional facilities is often directly compared to real live music. Consumer gear is rarely compared to live music and tends to be judged emotionally on things like “musicality”.
The big difference is that pro equipment must work day in day out reliably and consistently for many years. Pro often sells by word of mouth. Pros often take demos into the work place to try out before making a commitment. Pros don’t care that much about aesthetics. Performance and neutrality to provide consistent reproduction is more important. Pro gear for professional facilities use tends to be much more expensive than consumer gear or pro gear destined for private home use.
Often consumer audio is cosmetically stunning but does not really need to be reliable or provide consistent performance with any standard. Aesthetics are more important in consumer audio than performance. Flavour to suit a variety of tastes and provide coloured but exciting presentations is more important than consistency. Some luxury consumer gear can be astronomically expensive compared to pro gear (often because of aesthetics and “luxury” branding of high end models)
Both camps have fantastic gear and awful gear. There is no monopoly on good or bad sounding gear.
In general pro gear will be expected to perform more accurately over a much greater dynamic range (low to very loud volumes) and pro gear in professional facilities is often directly compared to real live music. Consumer gear is rarely compared to live music and tends to be judged emotionally on things like “musicality”.