Schroder sq and the new talea

If someone develops a cure for testicular cancer and the solution took 5 years of development, involving 50,000 person hours, millions of dollars, and it requires $2,000.00 in materials to implement per patient, what is its worth to the cancer patient?

Of course in hi-fi, none of us has a gun pointed to our head, with our life on the line. We're debating angels on the head of a pin over luxury / aspirational items.

In all of these conversations, I grow just a wee bit weary of the naysayers who look at an elegant solution and try to ascribe a value based on not having been in the trenches, and not understanding how much effort was involved in arriving at the solution.

I have yet to find an elegant solution in hi-fi that doesn't involve simplicity, and the quote on the Galibier home page is my guiding principle:

"You know you've achieved perfection in design, not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away."

... Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The simple, takes time, blood, sweat, and tears to arrive at and reminds me of a comment by Mark Twain:

"I would have written you a shorter letter, but I didn't have the time."

... Mark Twain

The proof is in the pudding ...

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier

Well said, Thom. Your sense of perspective and practicality are impressive. I hope I get a chance to meet you at RMAF 2011.

We certainly will find enough phrases and epigraphs in the long heritage of literature to fortify todays audio design's fruits and let them enter the scene surrounded by golden shims of light.
Honestly, as mentioned by me and a few others before in other threads: designing a tonearm and searching for a cure for cancer has nothing - NOTHING - in common. And if a tonearm asks for 1000s of hours of R&D and enormous sums of money and labor, then its "father" is in the utterly wrong profession.
Mark Twain, as well as the tragic french pilot who has given us the "Little Prince", would at best raise one eyebrow in amusement about the fuzz we are making about our little toys.
I think many of us just take this nice, but utterly unimportant passion (and don't get me wrong: high-end audio has nothing to do with love for music !) far too important and thus want to see the enthusiastic audio amateurs, who eventually turn into audio designers (but only in High-End of course), right up there on Mount Olympus Artias next to the great scientists and artists of history.
This is neither high technology we are talking about nor the pinnacle of science or art. These are simple tools. Either they are made to meet their blue book design goals or not. That blue book was complete or not. The designer had recognized all issues or not. The finished product solves all those issues or not.
You - or me - like it or not.
As all simple things, it comes down to simple terms.
That these toys do ask and fetch the prizes they do, says nothing about their quality, but a lot about us - the all-praised and all-cherished customer.

Cure for cancer and new tonearm comparison?

That's a hoot.

"You can't be serious"
-John McEnroe

Get real.

Thom,
With all due respect.SAY WHAT ???