@ orpheus10, yes there is a tendency to ubiquitously promote the idea that more expensive is necessarily better in all areas of life, not just audiophilia.
In my experience it's true but only to a point. I mean if someone can build a decent pair of speakers for $100 then what should we expect for $200, or $400, or $800 or even $1600 etc? I'd even argue that once you get past the optimum point of value you sometimes find the audio quality starting to rapidly decline as the manufacturer struggles to make their product sound unique - but usually in a worse way. I'm not sure if any loudspeaker sounds much better after about $4k, and that's buying new.
So I couldn't agree more that we should judge by the audio first and foremost, and only then decide if we wish to pay for extras such as fancy styling, product support, advertising, dealer markups etc.
Emotional satisfaction has obviously links with money, but once again, only to a point.
In my experience it's true but only to a point. I mean if someone can build a decent pair of speakers for $100 then what should we expect for $200, or $400, or $800 or even $1600 etc? I'd even argue that once you get past the optimum point of value you sometimes find the audio quality starting to rapidly decline as the manufacturer struggles to make their product sound unique - but usually in a worse way. I'm not sure if any loudspeaker sounds much better after about $4k, and that's buying new.
So I couldn't agree more that we should judge by the audio first and foremost, and only then decide if we wish to pay for extras such as fancy styling, product support, advertising, dealer markups etc.
Emotional satisfaction has obviously links with money, but once again, only to a point.