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On 23 Nov 2004 15:01:08 -0800, (Cal Cerise)
wrote:
So Arny is simply wrong, certainly, when he says the tube thing is
"tiny". It's small potatoes compared to Wal-Mart and Best Buy type
stuff, but compared to expensive pro recording equipment sales and
high end home equipment sales in each category it's a significant
chunk. When you buy a Manley mic pre, you're competing with GML, but
not Peavey: similarly a Audio Research or c-j tube amp competes with
Rowland or Levinson, not whatever Circuit City is peddling.
And there's no evidence it's shrinking. It appears to be growing.
The two latter groups don't interact with High End dealers much or at
all so dealers are unable to comment thereon.
You miss Arny's point, I think. So-called 'high-end' dealers supply
only a tiny fraction of the audiophile market, as they pander to large
chequebooks and larger egos. You most certainly do *not* need
so-called 'high-end' amplifiers or CD players to get top-class
results, Arcam, NAD, Rotel or even Yamaha can provide sound quality
every bit as good as Mark Levinson or Krell. As far as tube amps go,
they are either very expensive, e.g. C-J Premier Eight and ARC VT-150,
or they audibly colour the sound (or both, for the dreaded SET!), so
they are very much a matter of taste rather than genuinely high-end in
the fidelity sense. A tubed CD player is of course a wonderful
exercise in futility! Hence, the only time a serious audiophile need
visit a 'high-end' store is to buy speakers or a vinyl gear.
It may well be true that 'high-end' stores do indeed sell a goodly
proportion of tubed gear, but this has nothing to do with mainstream
audio, as high-end salons are by their nature just a tiny niche in
themselves.
--
Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering
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