PeterWhite,
Have you listened to the equipment yourself, or are you just repeating what others have said?
Over the last few years I have auditioned dozens of sources preamps, and amps at various price points in my home. There are differences - Surprise!!!!
No one knows all of the factors that affect sound. Once all of these factors are understood and shared among the designers, then the equipment will all sound the same. I am not holding my breath. My understanding that a few years ago the Japanese (Yamaha, etc.) were able to engineer equipment
with great measurements, but they sounded like crap.
I know there are some people that believe what you claim. (One of them maybe Roger Sanders, but I am not sure. He claims to have some A/B switch that "equalizes" components.) I personally don't, as I listen and choose for myself.
Nevertheless, please share some more information before making these claims.
David Matz,
What a delightfully insulting question! Thanks for asking. Yes indeed, I've been listening to "equipment" since I bought my first turntable (an AR) in 1969 to use with an old Lang & Taylor console that had been languishing in the basement. My father had a shop that sold them in the 50s. I used to accept on faith that some amps sounded better than others, though I was never able to hear the differences myself. BGW, Radford and Quad were alleged to have exquisite sound quality, far better than the 7c and 8b I picked up used a year later.
It was perhaps 1980 when I first heard the news that the wires we'd all been using to connect tuners and pre-amps were junk and that to get really good sound, you needed these new expensive wires. I thought that was interesting, so I took a phono cable and plugged it into a tape monitor loop, put on a well recorded record and spent a half hour or so switching the cable in and out of the circuit. If that cheap phono cable was degrading the sound, you might think it would have been obvious, but there was no difference at all.
I've never done a proper double blind test comparing amps. However, I did have a very interesting experience a few years back. I'd always been happy with my Spendor BC1 speakers. But a friend suggested a try some Aerius Is. He said they were much better than the Spendors. So I waltzed on down to the nearest shop that sold them and brought home a demo pair. I hooked them up, put on a good CD and listened. Yup, they sounded much better than my then twenty year old Spendors. Everything was better, imaging, detail, bass, the works. I was convinced! Then I thought, hmmm, just a minute. So I grabbed another amp and set up a A/B so I could switch between the Spendors and the MLs quickly while matching levels as closely as I could.
Indeed, the Aerius speakers were better than the Spendors. They had just a tad more detail, and the bass was a hair better. The one thing that was clearly better was vocals, since, without the front baffle, there were no reflections with the MLs.
But the huge differences I thought I had heard when I first set up the MLs were either gone or now only very subtle. And while vocals were better with the MLs, it wasn't enough of an improvement to justify the expense. The more I compared them, the more I realized that while the MLs were better, they would do next to nothing to increase my enjoyment of the music. So they went back to the shop. My initial impression was probably due to the fact that when I had last listened to that CD using the Spendors, I was just listening to the music. Now, auditioning the martin Logans, I was listening to the sound, trying to hear any differences that might be there.
In fact, every time I listen to a piece of music I hear something new. It's easy to fool oneself into thinking that the new thing you just heard is due to the new speaker or that new amp or cable, when it's just the fact that you're trying to hear something new.
It was only recently, when we decided to set up a surround sound system for movies that I decided to replace the Spendors, since they simply won't handle the random explosions and various sound effects in movies if you play them at realistic volume levels. Since I knew the MLs sounded so much like the Spendors, while being much more efficient and far more robust, I bought the Vistas without even auditioning them.
I must say I'm surprised at the nastiness of this group. You're much like religious fanatics, appalled that anyone should question the group dogma. Too bad.