I Just Know It's BS ... But I Have't Tried It Yet

High end audio red flag # 1 is when questioned about some "unconventional" or poorly understood product, the guy on the bandwagon takes offense or becomes a bully to defer questions. Just Bolieve!!!

Sure thing. It will be on his time and wallet I assume?

Seems to me anyone sincere in touting a product's value that really believes in it is prepared to field any question, even inconvenient ones.

ALso it irks me that we are told we should buy said product because "it sounds so damn good". News flash: this is high end audio....it is ALL suppsoed to sound really good.

THe real question is what is the unique value case by case. THis requires open discussion to determine or not. If that cannot occur then best to just move on the next great product out there.

SAbai, I am surprised that you have the opinion expressed.

I hear Machina Dynamica is having a sale. You can catch up on all those "unconventional" products that I seem to recall you have questioned in the past now.

I do see both sides of this issue. I agree that equipment design and execution is a science and engineering based discipline. I do not, generally speaking, respond well to metaphysical snake oil approaches. Yet, the human emotional element, our response to what we hear, is far from an exact, predictable science. I will take my 300B SET amps every time over my previous solid state amps, and I don't give two toots what the specs may be. I think that "If you haven't heard it, you don't have a fully informed opinion" is not a bad principle.

The real problem here, in my opinion, is the arrogant, dismissive attitudes of some posters (on any side of any issue). There are a few around here with an inexcusable lack of any semblance of social skills.

There are people on this forum, for whom I have the utmost respect, that I will occasionally disagree with. I can disagree completely with them and maintain that high level of respect. It would never occur to me to think less of my good friend Schubert because he does not share my high regard for Stravinsky and Mahler.

One could wish that a few folks would finally learn to play nice in the sand box.

"One could wish that a few folks would finally learn to play nice in the sand box."

There is a difference between innocent children playing in a sandbox and the real world, unfortunately. Its just the way it is.

SETs are not a good example of "unconventional" technology in my opinion. One may prefer SETs or not. Its a judgement call. SET technology and its advantages and disadvantages is well understood by many. One can make a well educated decision about it. As such one can argue that it is not unconventional. One merely needs to read up to understand the "conventions" that apply and how different from others.

Unconventional to me implies not well understood in general. It's semantics though. I suppose Walsh driver principles that I am a fan of would be considered unconventional in that such a small minority of products operate that way and the principles are not well understood by many. Bottom line is if a well informed decision can be made or not.

SET is the most primitive and simple design of equipment and certainly shouldn't be worth much at all.