TO Onhwy 61 They are Acoustic Zen Adagios
To Rrog: You are an excitable boy!! Relax. I can't afford even used ARC, Rowlands, PASS. And based on people who have owned a few of Krell's integrateds they provide outstanding sound. But, I appreciate your input.
How the three super major brands mentioned above determine their retail pricing is a mystery to me. Personally, I can't see how they can justify it. What the use of NASA or military grade parts or is it years of R&D?? Levinson can be also added to the bunch. Too often audiofiles refuse to consider that a particular product is overpriced.
Let me digress a minute about my visit to a super high end shop here in Honolulu. Both dealer and brand will remain anonymous. Suffice to say, I listened to an $18,000 floorstander that was a two way system driven by top of line BAT amp and pre-amp. Yes, the sound was marvelous( at least what I heard which was a vinyl recording of a female jazz vocalist and guitar acoustic accompaniment. The sound was compelling, engaging, spellbinding, riveting, startling, or any other freakin adjectives so often used by high end guru reviewers.
However, as "satisfying" the sound was to me and its richness and the increditable wall of sound it created, I said to myself (not to my dealer friend) that this speaker is grossly overpriced. What should it cost, I don't know or care, but I was NOT going to run to the bank and buy them even at $10,000. At times, they sounded peaky and leanED toward a bright sound.
About, ten years ago, I got into a real pissing contest with Allen Perkins when he was the Audio Physic rep as to why AP's speakers seemed above the price range of other high-end speakers. He responded with some "happy horseshit" about that like the Volvo he drove, value could only be appreciated by the how much pleasure a product the owner recevied from it. Nice theory but.... I have owned several speakers, none over $5000, and I usually brought used except when I myself worked as an audiosales person for 15 years, and got "comp" discount up to 50% percept offered by manufacturers to long term employees. I have to say when I made the jump from KEF 104ab and Apt Holman electronics to the B&W Matrix 3 MKII driven by Aragon 4004 MK2 amp and Conrad Johnson PV-8, the jump in sound quality brought tears to my eyes. I was so stunned by the sound across the board. Could I have afforded an $8500 rig without the salesman's comps,.... probably not. Though, I could have easily financed part of it, if I was jonesing for it.
In 1988 when I made this leap of faith, the Aragon amp sold for $1800; and, the CJ PV-8 also $1800. There was a TT and CD player in the mix and Monster Reference Garden hose speaker cable and reference ICs Did I think the retail price excessive or grossly inflated, not really. Expensive,yes, but not unreachable. A $10,000 PASS integrated, or Rowlands, or ARC or Boulder is for me, a retired cogger with maybe a decade before turning in my timecard and lunch bucket, excessive, and greedy on the part of the manfacturers who get away with inflated retails.
