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Joseph Oberlander wrote:

Stewart Pinkerton wrote:

Indeed they are, and you can play the same trick with a 'false
sighted' AA test in audio, where the audience is told that it's an AB
test. The scales fell from my own eyes when I got all excited about
the wonderfully smooth treble of a new amplifier - but when I checked,
the old one was still connected!

Heh.

If you look at the insides of a piece of electornics/audio equipment,
you'll see that ALL of the new stuff, ranging from $100 amplifiers
to $5000+ amplifiers all use components made in the same dozen o
so offshore companies. Rare exceptions exist, but the buttons,
remote control IR units, the capacitors, and so on are all from
the same dozen or so (mostly third-world)sources. All as cheaply
as possible.

The circuitboards are also usually made in simmilar factories.

So are the cases.

In reality, all you are doing is getting bigger or different versions
of the same crud components with most consumer-grade electronics.

So? My point?

It all ties in - if the bits that make up the units are all from the
same source(s), the sound should be very simmilar(unfortunately, too
often - all simmilar sounding budget crud).

That label is moot, as are expectations as it is all the same
stuff remarketed and assembled a bit differently.

Several years ago I received 2, at that time, high priced stereo receivers for
evaluation. One had an American brand name. all-black cosmetics, with push
button switches and tough-guy rack handles. The other, european brand name, was
champagne with, leaf switches. Both had a bright display and required a remote
control for set-up.

I unpacked both the them, broke out the owners manuals and began set-up with
the champagne finished one. Things went along swimmingly well until I realized
that I was accidentally using the remote control and the manual from the Black
one.

Stunned I investigated more carefully by bringing in the Black one and placing
directly atop the first unit. Now it was farily obvious that the switches and
display were in the same locations. Not only that but the back panels were not
just 'similar'; they were identical right down to the "Made in Japan"
stickers.

So we had competing products from the Netherlands and the USA that were both
manufactured in the same Japanese factory by a manufacturer who had similar
(identical?) products in the market using their own brand name.

Now it is true that the first two units were not 100% identical, one of them
had a special tuning circuit along with a small extra circuit board in it. But
otherwise they looked completely identical with the case off.

It should surprise no one that they sounded exactly alike either.

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