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(S888Wheel)

Tom said

The "high-end" has never made an 'advancement' in sound quality. They
merely
package current technology in different ways (sometimes grossly incompetent
ways) or simply make merchandising/marketing claims for it.

I said

I think that one can find plenty of advancement in sound quality from the
likes
of Martin Logan, Vandersteen, Rockport, VPI, Forsell, Clearaudio, Koetsu,
SME,
Oracle,Sound Lab, Reference Recordings, Shefield Labs, Waterlily, Wilson
Audio
and many other high end companies regardless of your beliefs on the
audibilities of amplifiers and cables.

Tom said

I'd love to argue this but NONE of the companies you list make amplifiers nor
have conntributed materially to improvements in amp-sound (mostly because
there
haven't been any

I thought you said "The 'high-end' has never made an 'advancement' in sound
quality. They merely package current technology in different ways (sometimes
grossly incompetent ways) or simply make merchandising/marketing claims for
it.
" The companies I listed are, to my knowledge, all considered to be "high
end"
companies that you claim none of which have made an advancement in sound
quality.

None of those companies have made major contributions to improved sound
quality. Some of them are still trying to perfect a basically flawed medium
that has long been obsolete.

One of them has made some reasonably decent loudspeakers using a technology
that was found to be 2nd best in the 20s when the moving coil loudspeaker was
also invented. They have also found a way to make one of the most expensive and
arguably worst sounding center channel speakers ever made.

One makes terrifically expensive 'full range' loudspeakers that have no output
below 40 Hz, just like most other tower speakers. Rather pedestrian IMO.

But none of these companies has implemented advanced technologies or special
improvements in sound quality that weren't invented or implemented elsewhere
first.

There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but the fact remains that all of
audio, especially high-end, simply uses tricle-down technology from the
communications industry.

For example, the first time Americans used digital audio was in 1962 when
Illinois Bell installed the initial digital carrier systems in the Bell System
networks. The reason we don't all use electrostatic speakers is because Western
Electric figured out they weren't the best way to do it in the 30s.