Does anyone have any direct experience with either of the mentioned Yamaha
or Pioneer products, or any other similar products?

"randyb" wrote in message
...
Bruce Abrams wrote in message
news:9Ov7b.297825$cF.92706@rwcrnsc53...
I've often thought that if we eliminated (primarily because they've
become
too predictable and boring) the discussions that invariably devolve into
DBT
debates, ie. cables, equipment "burn-in", amplifiers, green pens, etc.,
there would be precious few threads worth following. According to the
regular DBT proponents, most (if not all) CD players, cables (of all
kind)
and amplifiers are indistinguishable one from another, so if you heard a
difference and want to discuss it, you first have to validate your
observation via some form of DBT. This yields two possible responses to
a
new equipment related thread. One is that since very few (if any)
posters
bother to set up a DBT for product evaluation, there is no point of
discussion, since your new "x" defacto, sounds the same as your old "x"
because you can't prove otherwise. The second possible response is that
based on the DBTs that have been done, your old "x" must sound the same
as
your new one because it's been established that all "x's" are
indistinguishable. The third possibility which used to occupy most of
this
group was the discussion about what the equipment itself sounded like,
but
those conversations rarely happen anymore, either because such
differences
no longer exist, or because the DBT camp redirects them as DBT
discussions
(perhaps because those differences no longer exist.) Either way,
meaningful discussion over audio equipment is becoming increasingly
rare.

My initial thinking (and boredom) was that since current generation CD
players sound virtually identical, "properly engineered" amplifiers and
pre-amplifiers sound virtually identical, and cables make no difference;
this NG, indeed all audio discussions should be limited to speaker
discussions. After all, they're all different sounding and no one pair
is
perfect and while some may argue, we really have progressed to the point
where we've achieved near perfection upstream. So the discussions that
used
to be very important back when amplification wasn't quite as mature of a
technology as it is today, have simply lost their relevance.

So that leaves us with a quandry. What do we who love music and the
science/art of musical reproduction have to talk about? Surely there
must
be more than just speakers.

Acoustic treatment, room setup and recordings anyone? I'd be very
interested to hear thoughts from the group as to other possibilities, as
it's clear that we're close to exhausting other equipment's potential
for
discussion.


I would think there is a lot to talk about. Let's start with the
renaissance in digital room correction systems starting to hit the
market from mass market producers i.e. Pioneer and now Yamaha. I
would think people could talk at length at where this is headed, how
it will affect the speaker industry etc. In the end, even if there
was some minor difference in a cable that affected the sound, it is
minor to some of the things in the works in the form of digital-unless
of course you hate all things digital.