I buy audio equipment infrequently and when I do, I tend to keep it for long periods of time. I previously had the Puccini in my system for a decade, and my humble speakers were made in 2005 (!) I know, boring!
Anyway, the trend toward “more expensive is better” bothers me, and some things I just find plain offensive, like the below.
Personally I believe Sonus Faber peaked in its last years under Franco Serblin. Anyway, news from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week:
From what I’ve read, more expensive sells better. But I think this is limited to high end luxury brands. Those buyers might fund downstream technologies and sound quality improvements.
That said, there are a lot of options at much lower cost and possibly better SQ.
I wonder what Franco would make of this? I strongly suspect he would turn in his grave…
More interesting to me than the product is the choice by Sonus Faber to exhibit at CES which has been largely bandoned by the audio high end over the past few years. This probably indicates that the primary market for Sonus Faber is not the audio enthusiast market but luxury goods where the USP of the speaker is the $750K price itself. This is desired by those for whom the whole point is that it is more expensive than anything others can afford.
Very true Pete. But in pretty much all fields of endeavour there will always be someone below you and (almost) always someone above you. I remember once during my midlife crisis I decided to complete an Ironman and (for a brief period) started training to, what was for me quite an extreme level, ca 10 hrs a week. But there were folks at the gym (and the pool, and the local track) who trained even more than me, some much more. I thought they were nutters, they thought I was a lightweight. T’was ever thus. Wherever one is on the bell curve that is the ‘right’ place. Below is ‘too little’ and above is ‘too much’.