Reviews of $10k plus ics, speaker wires, and pcs

"These days many shops are only interested in making the most money. The quality is less important."

All one has to do is look around to see this more and more and audio is no exception.

Luckily there are still many exceptions, but its getting harder and harder for the typical consumer to cut through all the noise thrown out there on purpose by those with agendas other than providing good quality and good value in order to cloud the issues.

I have said it many times here on Audiogon audio needs to be more transparent. It needs to change to get a better quality to consumers in general.

I know a few writers in audio. They got a lot of stuff for free. So these articles are worth nothing. It is not objective anymore.

There are still good cables on the markt ( also in the expensive price ranges) but there are a lot more average or worse. This is the thing I hate most in the 16 years of time I am in this business.

It got my attention when I visited different people with highend sets. I was really surprised about the low level in the endresult of sound many had. There are many things what goes wrong. It is caused by 2 important reasons. Many people who have audio as a hobby want to do things by themselves. They don't know often the different properties of the stuff they own. On the other hand I see a lot of mismatch in components and cables. This is also caused by the low level in knowledge of the people who work in this business.

Bo1972, the internet has made the world a lot smaller and basically killed off most dealers. When I was just having some money to spend on audio and living in Tallahassee, Florida which was not a big city, we have three audio dealers and all had some top lines. Once in a while I was in Chicago and knew a dealer in the loop. And I had lived in the LA area for one semester. So I had some ability to hear demonstrations. I have not had a dealer within a hundred and fifty miles in probably 15 to 20 years. What few who are left struggle to survive as many distributors and manufacturers sell direct over the internet.

I don't think there is any prospect for better quality consumers and frankly I don't think there are good prospects for dealer remaining.

But there are now groups spread around the country and even abroad that give heads up for new things. There still are many who "show" their audio systems as expressions of their success.

Internet has changed it a lot, but not in a better endresult for the consumers. People do not have there favorite shop anymore. They go to different places as well. And they buy things on the internet as well.

The level of mismatch is getting bigger. I can see it on the websites were people show there sets. Often I have to laugh and see that people don't know what they are doing.

They will constandly change there set and keep on tweaking. Often they are not satisfied at the end.

And this has a reason......

Bo1972, since there is no agreement on what is good, I don't understand how you make the judgment that many don't know what they are doing.