After I started this thread I thought a little more about the high cost of some of the audiophile approved finishes that are seen on many pieces of high end audio equipment, such as the (in)famous "front panel milled from a solid billet of aircraft-grade aluminum", and came to the realization that quite a bit of overall cost of these pieces of equipment is being wasted (from a purely sonic viewpoint) on expensive cosmetics. Which brings us smack into the good old, mostly plastic, Squeezebox Touch and its very high level of performance relative to its low price.
What I'm trying to say is that it is quite possible to made a portable audio player that costs much less than the mighty Astell & Kern AK240 but without the costly duralumin casework, since the fancy casework does absolutely nothing to improve the overall sound of the player. Sure the fancy casework goes a long way in helping to justify the high price of the player and does result in a very fine and expensive looking piece of kit but from a strictly sonic performance stand point the casework adds nothing. Unfortunately the constantly rising prices of high end audio equipment have basically guaranteed that most, if not all, equipment come with some kind of fancy cosmetic finish in order to justify the high cost. For example, the Vandersteen Model 3A Signature, which kept its cost low by using fabric instead of a fancy cabinet, is now more or less the Treo, which has a fancy cabinet. Sure the Treo is much better looking but does it offer vastly improved sonics? My guess is that there is now a very big opportunity for someone to come along and offer well made, lower priced but still great sounding audio equipment without the fancy "audiophile approved" finishes. Living Rm: Transporter-SimAudio pre/power amps-Vandersteen 3A Sign. & sub Home Theater: Touch-Marantz HTR-Energy Veritas 2.1 & Linn sub Computer Rm: Touch-Headroom Desktop w/DAC-Aragon amp-Energy Veritas 2.1 & Energy sub Bedroom: Touch-HR Desktop w/DAC-Audio Refinement amp-Energy Veritas 2.0 Guest Rm: Duet-Sony soundbar Garage: SB3-JVC compact system Controls: iPeng; SB Controller; Moose & Muso Server: SBS on dedicated windows 7 computer w/2 Drobos 'Last.fm' (http://www.last.fm/user/jazzfann/) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ralphpnj's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10827 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=102330 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
