Why are second hand prices falling?

[lejonklou]

// Split from Ceilidhs topic "Linn RS232 cable" in the On the Inside section. //

Regarding the second hand market pricing, it has more or less crashed here too. I think there are several reasons for this, let me mention a few and others can fill in with their ideas:

1. Linn have released a lot of new and higher performing products and have been pushing these out to retailers with special offers.
2. The HiFi enthusiast group does not seem to grow. The old customers are buying the latest products and have to get rid of their old stuff.
3. The current market is global and fast, while in the past retailers could dictate their local second hand prices to a much higher degree.
3. The DS players are outperforming much more expensive CD players, so the CD players are loosing value.
4. DVD is gradually being replaced by Blueray in the enthusiast market, so Unidisks are loosing value.
5. Linn have campaigns running almost constantly, making the regular prices loose their credibility. This also makes the entire brand loose status - when was the last time Porsche had their Trade-In-Your-Old-Wreck-And-Get-10%-Off-campaign?
6. Linn's service policy has gone from fixing almost everything to a fixed and very moderate cost, to being much more expensive and dropping the entire support of many older products.

Here the drop in second hand prices came before people started talking about a recession, so I don't think that is the main reason. But of course it now makes matters even worse.

[Lego]

Recession!..What Recession?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Linn-Klout_W0QQit ... 286.c0.m14

[lejonklou]

Wow, that sold for an almost crazy price!

Klouts have certainly kept their value amazingly well, while some better sounding amps have ended up below them in price.

The reason for this could very well be build quality. Or what do you think? Today only the Klimax range is built as mechanically impressive as the Klouts.

Do you have any other example, Lego? Because I think the Klout is an exception.

[Lego]

I think that particular Klout was an exception they tend to go for around 700GBP+ Fredrik.
That link to the review site was a good idea on the sellers part.All the old reviews of Linns LK stuff get great ratings;although I think there was a whole load of testosterone flying around on this occasion

"I GOT THAT KLOUT BABY"

[ThomasOK]

No... in the picture, pin 2 goes to pin 2 etc. You need the other type!

Regarding the second hand market, it has more or less crashed here too. I think there are several reasons for this, let me mention a few and others can fill in with their ideas:

1. Linn have released a lot of new and higher performing products and have been pushing these out to retailers with special offers.
2. The HiFi enthusiast group does not seem to grow. The old customers are buying the latest products and have to get rid of their old stuff.
3. The current market is global and fast, while in the past retailers could dictate their local second hand prices to a much higher degree.
3. The DS players are outperforming much more expensive CD players, so the CD players are loosing value.
4. DVD is gradually being replaced by Blueray in the enthusiast market, so Unidisks are loosing value.
5. Linn have campaigns running almost constantly, making the regular prices loose their credibility. This also makes the entire brand loose status - when was the last time Porsche had their Trade-In-Your-Old-Wreck-And-Get-10%-Off-campaign?
6. Linn's service policy has gone from fixing almost everything to a fixed and very moderate cost, to being much more expensive and dropping the entire support of many older products.

Here the drop in second hand prices came before people started talking about a recession, so I don't think that is the main reason. But of course it now makes matters even worse.

I agree with most of the reasons stated by Fredrik. I'm sure he didn't list them in order of importance as I would rearrange them in terms of the overall effect on used prices.

First off I have to say that many products from a number of companies have lost a lot of value in the last year in the US and a lot of this does have to do with the economy which is in the process of crashing down on our heads as I write this. It is not just Linn but many products from other well regarded companies as well.

From my point of view there are many reasons for this. One is that when the economy gets difficult only the wealthiest feel they can buy whatever they want and very few of them are our customers as they aren't always that interest in musical quality. For that customer it is often more the object itself and any cachet that it has more than what it does that counts. A lot of our customers are middle or upper-middle class people who may have to put Hi-Fi purchases on the back burner just to pay the mortgage and gasoline bills. This depresses all sales, both new and used.

As to the reasons many used products have gone down so much in value I think that BluRay, and Linn's new service policies are both major players. BluRay, at least in the US, has killed most High-end AV sales. I hate to say it but a $300 BluRay player will have better video quality on standard DVDs than a UniDisk SC or Arcam DV137. Apparently the video processing needed to handle HD video is such that they do a great job on regular DVDs as well. So sales of UniDisks and any other top level DVD player are near to non-existent. But that is only a start. Since BluRay also includes new, improved audio codecs that can only be output digitally through HDMI any preamp/processor or AV receiver that can't take in audio through HDMI and decode the new codecs is also obsolete. So goodbye to sales of Kisto, Kinos, Arcam AV Receivers and processors, etc. Both Linn and Arcam are working on new products to address these requirements but both are taking too long with much in the way of real product availability not expected until well into next year.

On the repair prices, it used to be that Linn would repair almost all of their products for a flat fee of $250US plus shipping and dealer handling fees. The exceptions were Ekos and Klimax pieces which were about double that. Now the least of those is $333 and many products have doubled or tripled! The UniDisk 2.1 is $750! On top of that Linn US has been refusing extended warranty on products they used to cover. And finally Linn stopped repairing a number of older products altogether a couple of years ago. Since Linn, Inc. was the only place in the US doing Linn repairs this left a situation where these products are pretty much unrepairable when they fail even though a good technician might be able to fix them if they had access to schematics and parts lists. All this has left Linn products in the used market with a tarnished image as to serviceability with a lot of people confused as to what can be repaired and what can't. Not a good situation with regards to used equipment values.

I also believe that streaming media, both in the form of the DS products and also entry level products like the Squeezebox series, are hurting sales of CD players at all levels and will continue to do so in increasing proportion as people move more and more to this new, convenient and potentially better sounding (than CD) form of music playback.

The other thing I think is helping to kill used Linn product prices is the constant, sometimes unnecessary changes to the Linn product lines. AV5125, 2250, Chakra x100, Chakra x200, Majik x100, Akurate x200 would be a good place to start. But the three different versions of the Akurate 242 and the change from Artikulat 350 to Klimax 350 are also good examples. I really don't think that it should take Linn 2 or 3 tries to get a product right. But this constant change and turnover of products does mean that more of it gets put on the market used. And Fredrik is right that the specials given to dealers just in order to get them to display the product (already a clear indication that the product is not all it should be) just help to make the prices lower when the dealer decides to sell the demos.

The other factors mentioned like the Linn 10% specials or the Hi-Fi enthusiast market shrinking I believe are of less importance here in the US. For one thing I don't think there are enough people even aware of the Linn specials to cause any real effect on perceived pricing or values. And I don't really think the enthusiast market is shrinking outside of the effects, already noted, of the poor economy.

Anyway, just my my take on things.

[lejonklou]

Thanks for your thoughts on this, Thomas!

I'm sure he didn't list them in order of importance...

Correct, there was no particular order.

I hate to say it but a $300 BluRay player will have better video quality on standard DVDs than a UniDisk SC...

That may be true, but the sound quality is most likely a lot better in the SC. And I find that this is of higher importance when it comes to actually enjoying movies. The 1.1 in particular really draws me into a movie like no other machine I have tried, thanks to how it sounds. Not that this will affect the sales of new Unidisks, but still worth pointing out.

The other factors mentioned like the Linn 10% specials or the Hi-Fi enthusiast market shrinking I believe are of less importance here in the US.

I haven't seen any numbers that indicate the enthusiast market is shrinking, but the impression I get here is that there are not as many newcomers into the Linn enthusiast group as there used to be. But I'd like to be proven wrong on this point!

The campaigns may not have any noticeable effect on the second hand market in the short term, but I think that in the long run, they won't increase the total sales and risk deluting the brand image. Those who bought an expensive unit just before a new campaign are punished for being loyal customers and will not repeat their mistake. I have already read and heard several comments in the lines of "Is there any special offer right now? If not, I will wait until the next."

I believe that pricing should have a firm relation to how much the product costs to develop and manufacture. If the pricing is arbitrary or "as high as people are willing to pay", customers will see through that and start hunting for bargain deals. Ten percent of a Klimax DS is a lot of money and if that sum can be taken off the retail price for no apparent reason, then the price should be permanently reduced.

The biggest mistake of all is to underestimate your customers!

[ThomasOK]

This could get complex with the double quotes but here goes. I agree with your comments but have an additional thought or two as well.

Thanks for your thoughts on this, Thomas!

I'm sure he didn't list them in order of importance...

Correct, there was no particular order.

I hate to say it but a $300 BluRay player will have better video quality on standard DVDs than a UniDisk SC...

That may be true, but the sound quality is most likely a lot better in the SC. And I find that this is of higher importance when it comes to actually enjoying movies. The 1.1 in particular really draws me into a movie like no other machine I have tried, thanks to how it sounds. Not that this will affect the sales of new Unidisks, but still worth pointing out.

I see you picked up that I only mentioned video quality. :) For the most part I agree about the sonic quality. I have not done a lot of comparisons here so I won't get too deeply into this but I must say that my impression is that the quality of sound on many BluRay discs, due I imagine to less compressed soundtracks, is better on my $300 Sony BluRay player than it is on the $1000 Arcam DV78 I had before it. And it seems to be comparable even on DVDs. I have a customer who owns the same Sony unit as well as a UniDisk SC which is feeding Aktiv Ekwal and Espeks up front through a couple of 5125s. He has found that he only uses the UniDisk SC for playing CDs and as a preamp. He watches all his DVDs and BluRay discs on the Sony. Of course the SC does the decoding of the DVDs (as does the Arcam pre/pro in my system) so the sound isn't totally governed by the Sony. All things considered, the Akurate CD player was one of Linn's more intelligent moves in recent years.

The other factors mentioned like the Linn 10% specials or the Hi-Fi enthusiast market shrinking I believe are of less importance here in the US.

I haven't seen any numbers that indicate the enthusiast market is shrinking, but the impression I get here is that there are not as many newcomers into the Linn enthusiast group as there used to be. But I'd like to be proven wrong on this point!

This is one of those no and yes answers. No, I don't think the market is shrinking. In fact, I think there is a lot of potential growth from iPodders who come to realize that the music isn't engaging and wanting better music reproduction - I already see some of that happening.

But yes, there are not as many newcomers into THE LINN enthusiast group as there used to be. I believe this can be chalked up almost entirely to Linn abandoning what was their entry level market. A few years ago you could have gotten a Linn system with a CD player, preamp, two power amps and Aktiv floorstanding speakers for a bit over $7000. Now that will only get you the CD player, preamp and maybe the speaker cables. It now takes 8 channels of amplification to go Aktiv with ANY Linn floorstanding speaker. This order of magnitude increase in complexity and expense in Linn's entry level products means that those customers are now going to Rega, Arcam and others.

The campaigns may not have any noticeable effect on the second hand market in the short term, but I think that in the long run, they won't increase the total sales and risk deluting the brand image. Those who bought an expensive unit just before a new campaign are punished for being loyal customers and will not repeat their mistake. I have already read and heard several comments in the lines of "Is there any special offer right now? If not, I will wait until the next."

I believe that pricing should have a firm relation to how much the product costs to develop and manufacture. If the pricing is arbitrary or "as high as people are willing to pay", customers will see through that and start hunting for bargain deals. Ten percent of a Klimax DS is a lot of money and if that sum can be taken off the retail price for no apparent reason, then the price should be permanently reduced.

The biggest mistake of all is to underestimate your customers!

I totally agree with all you are saying here. These promos are obviously signs of a company that is trying to generate some cash and finds that their products are not selling well enough. It is interesting that Linn claims that they are selling many times their original projection of DS products yet at the same time they feel it necessary to offer a 10% discount trade in program on the Klimax, Akurate and Majik DS (which, in case anyone isn't aware, they just announced starting 9/15/08 ). Seeing as the terms of this program allows you to trade in ANY CD player for a 10% discount you would have to be a fool not to go to the thrift shop and pick up a $10 junk CD player to trade in for a $1,850 discount on a Klimax DS! Linn obviously just want to give you a 10% discount.

The point I was trying to make is that the MARKETING of these promos in the US has been so poor that hardly anyone hears of them. We only sold LP12 upgrades to three people during the turntable upgrade promotion as the only people who new were the ones we told about it. And with the economy as it is here many just weren't in a position to take advantage of it. The Aktiv promo didn't even go over that well. With these special programs going mostly unnoticed by the audio buying public there just aren't enough people who know about it to get upset at having missed it!

Anyway, it is fun to have this stimulating conversation. Now if it could just stimulate the US economy!

[sommerfee]

The other thing I think is helping to kill used Linn product prices is the constant, sometimes unnecessary changes to the Linn product lines. AV5125, 2250, Chakra x100, Chakra x200, Majik x100, Akurate x200 would be a good place to start.

I must confess that I see the "great renaming" as a positive step from Linn. Before that, Linn had released products which did not seem to fit in any concept. Stereo or AV - Linn seemed to have problems deciding which route to take. A 2250 was released without a matching preamp avail. An Unidisk 1.1 and 2.1 was released while many customers were waiting for an Unidisk 1.2 (or even 1.0). When the Unidisks were released, there was no matching preamp with analogoue 5:1 inputs. Yes, the "great renaming" may be confusing in the short run, but will IHMO send a positive sign in the long run: "We have a concept and we have consistent product lines."

Furthermore I'm hoping that Linn will not release any beta hardware anymore. 2250, Unidisk, Akurate 242, Exotik - all these products have IMHO changed significantly during the first months after release. And Linn was not offering upgrades for early adaptors of these products. And on top of that: Linn had released Unidisk software updates which fixed bugs but made older units sounding significantly worse. So as an early Unidisk 1.1 owner I still feel cheated by Linn in many ways and gives the unit some kind of "bad tough", although this is IMHO a great product.

Another aspect which hasn't been mentioned yet is the look & feel of the products. A Majik CD player for 3000 bucks with a plastic tray. And IMHO the whole AV-case-line does look like it could had been released by any asian company. There is nothing "special" anymore, which IMHO decreases the "feeled value" as well. This was different with the "bricks".

Regading the 10% promo: I think that the timing could not be worse. Make early buyers feel cheated, and since the promo is not a summer promo to which you already get used to, this is a promo which comes totally surprising (at least for me). IMHO a bad idea.

Back to something positive: There is a hardware upgrade avail for the KK. (Without this we would have many cheap used KK in the market in the near future.) If Linn followes this route in the future, no beta hardware anymore and offering upgrades for existing customers, hopefully there will be better used values for Linn gear in the future as well.

Axel

[Charlie1]

But the three different versions of the Akurate 242 and the change from Artikulat 350 to Klimax 350 are also good examples. I really don't think that it should take Linn 2 or 3 tries to get a product right.

Is it not possible that some of these updates have been normal upgrades similar to what we have always seen on the LP12? - I get the impression you think they are more like 'fixes' than a general round of improvements.

[teatime]

It is interesting that Linn claims that they are selling many times their original projection of DS products yet at the same time they feel it necessary to offer a 10% discount trade in program on the Klimax, Akurate and Majik DS ...

Hopefully the reason isn't that they feel it "necessary", but rather that since they realize they will recoup the R&D costs faster than expected they can use this opportunity to lower the price in order to attempt to grab a bigger piece of this growing ("DS") market?

Though I agree.. these recurring promotions do have a slight scent of desperation, imagined or not.

[ThomasOK]

But the three different versions of the Akurate 242 and the change from Artikulat 350 to Klimax 350 are also good examples. I really don't think that it should take Linn 2 or 3 tries to get a product right.

Is it not possible that some of these updates have been normal upgrades similar to what we have always seen on the LP12? - I get the impression you think they are more like 'fixes' than a general round of improvements.

While it is likely that some of these changes are evolutionary I have to agree with Axel's comments that Linn have released "Beta" hardware from time to time. The original Akurate 242s that we had for demo were quite anemic in the bass and had fittings for the stands that could pull out of the cabinet if tightened one time too many. With no mention of the changes to dealers or the public, Linn upgraded the 242 with an improved cabinet and a change to the bass crossover. When we got our second demo pair in they had so much more and deeper bass that it made it sound like the previous demos had a bass driver out of phase! And these are not the latest versions of the 242 which are supposed to have better bass yet.

Also, anyone who has ever installed a pair of Artikulat 350s has to have been aware that the bases (the same as used on the Akurate 242s) were inadequate for the weight and size of the speaker. Linn have obviously come to the same conclusion with the new solid bases for the Klimax 350, but they should have seen the necessity for it before the speaker was introduced. As to the other changes in the Artikulat to Klimax upgrades it is hard to believe that technology has moved forward so much in the 3 years since they were introduced that it would require replacement of all 5 crossover and 2 servo control boards. It seems more likely that additional testing allowed for more fine tuning of the components leading to improved performance.

While some companies in this industry like to generate income by yearly "updates", Linn has never been one of those companies. Linn has come to stand for products like the LK1, Klout, Klimax Kontrol, Keltiks, CD12, etc. that are at the top of their game when introduced and live a long life with little or no changes being made or necessary over a span of many years. The Akurate 242s, Artikulat 350s, UniDisks and others don't seem to fit in this mold.

[lejonklou]

While some companies in this industry like to generate income by yearly "updates", Linn has never been one of those companies.

Now I'm curious, Thomas. What companies are doing these yearly updates that you mention?

They sound great to me, provided the updates really bring an improvement! And in my view (correct me if I'm wrong) it was Linn who pioneered this upgrade spirit with the LP12. Since then they have gradually moved away from upgrades (as many have advised me; it's not the most profitable policy). Products have come and gone and the average life of them is getting shorter and shorter. But the LP12 still stands - because it is still looked after and updated :!:

I have made the decision to do exactly the same with my products:
1. Each new improvement that is discovered will be implemented into production as soon as possible.
2. When a major improvement has been achieved - or when many small details sum up to a substantial improvement - I will offer all owners an upgrade to the latest specification.

I do agree with you that it's not acceptable when flawed products are released (yes, the Artikulats were extremely wobbly for a Linn speaker), but you seem to look down upon continual improvement in a way I don't understand.

[Charlie1]

The original Akurate 242s that we had for demo were quite anemic in the bass and had fittings for the stands that could pull out of the cabinet if tightened one time too many. With no mention of the changes to dealers or the public, Linn upgraded the 242 with an improved cabinet and a change to the bass crossover. When we got our second demo pair in they had so much more and deeper bass that it made it sound like the previous demos had a bass driver out of phase! And these are not the latest versions of the 242 which are supposed to have better bass yet.

That's useful to know or at least it will be once I have enough cash for a 2nd hand pair of 242s

[ThomasOK]

While some companies in this industry like to generate income by yearly "updates", Linn has never been one of those companies.

Now I'm curious, Thomas. What companies are doing these yearly updates that you mention?

They sound great to me, provided the updates really bring an improvement! And in my view (correct me if I'm wrong) it was Linn who pioneered this upgrade spirit with the LP12. Since then they have gradually moved away from upgrades (as many have advised me; it's not the most profitable policy). Products have come and gone and the average life of them is getting shorter and shorter. But the LP12 still stands - because it is still looked after and updated :!:

I have made the decision to do exactly the same with my products:
1. Each new improvement that is discovered will be implemented into production as soon as possible.
2. When a major improvement has been achieved - or when many small details sum up to a substantial improvement - I will offer all owners an upgrade to the latest specification.

I do agree with you that it's not acceptable when flawed products are released (yes, the Artikulats were extremely wobbly for a Linn speaker), but you seem to look down upon continual improvement in a way I don't understand.

I think I have given you a wrong impression in thinking that I look down on continual improvement. Quite the opposite, I would prefer it if most Linn products were continually upgraded as the LP12 has so effectively been (and as it appears the Klimax Kontrol has been) rather than the replacement with new units that tends to be the industry norm. I, for one, think it would have been great if Linn had come out with a 3K Array upgrade for the Keltik. (I know there would have been a fair bit of difficulty due to cabinet reworking but it would have been a really cool thing.) I also applaud your policy of making improvements available to current customers.

Note that in my complaint I put "updates" in quotes. This is due to the questionable nature of some "upgrades" that have come from a number of companies in the past. And, again, some of this has much to do with how the US audio industry was in the past.

Before Linn was doing anything substantial with upgrades the company who was most known for doing "upgrades" was Audio Research. They would come out with an expensive preamp or amplifier and then come out with quite expensive "upgrades" every 9 months to a year thereafter. You would but a $5000 unit and a year later spend $1500 for the "upgrade" and a year after that another $1700 for the next "upgrade" and so on. It got so bad that at one time it was rumored in the industry that Audio Research never released a product to market for which it didn't already have two "upgrades" designed and ready to go! What is equally bad about this is that often times the "upgraded" product sounded worse than the original. I'm sure everyone here can relate to the replacement product being worse than the item it replaced but to charge thousands of dollars to make your unit sound worse just adds insult to injury. One of the things that has impressed me about Linn hardware is that their upgrades have always sounded better. While this may not have always have been the case with software upgrades, most of them have been better as well.

Another example of the misuse of "upgrades" was when a company like Infinity would come out with a "reference" speaker and send it out to The Absolute Sound and Stereophile for review. When the reviewer didn't like it Infinity would send out a technician to install an "upgrade" to the speaker. Sometimes this would happen a few of times over the course of the review. Once the speaker finally got a good review the upgrades would be made available to customers, usually at some quite high price. What we always felt was that the technicians were actually tweaking the speaker to the personal preferences of the reviewers. We always wondered how different the Stereophile pair would sound if compared to The Absolute Sound pair?!

Both of these corruptions of the "upgrade" process were in large part due to the immense power of those two magazines in the 70s and 80s. Fortunately, even they got tired of these abuses and put some policies in place to try and reduce the tendency. Also fortunately, they no longer have the power they once wielded in the Hi-Fi marketplace. But some of this "upgrade" tendency still continues in the US and one has to wonder if there really have been so many improvements in technology that it justifies the Wilson WATT/Puppy being at version 8? I'm sure their "upgrades" aren't cheap either!

There are two other practices that give the term "upgrade" a bad name. One is the fore-mentioned release of products that aren't really fully developed (what someone accurately called "beta-products") and then fixing them later. This is something which has afflicted Linn a lot of late - especially with digital products. It is a category that is obviously populated by the UniDisks, but which I also feel includes the Artikulat 350, Akurate 242 and the DS products. (I'm sure I'll get some flak on including the DS units but bringing them out without a decent controller included and without support for popular formats like Apple Lossless, AIFF and MP3 - if for nothing else than Internet radio - certainly makes me consider tham as having been unfinished products.) Admittedly, Linn eventually made good on the promise of the UniDisk players after numerous software upgrades just as they are doing now with the DS products. And, equally important, they have made the software upgrades free. On the other hand, what they have not done is compensate the dealers for having to buy special equipment in order to do the upgrades and for taking the time and energy upgrading customers' units 5 or 6 or 7 times! (Which, by the way, we have never charged one of our own customers to do.)

Finally, (I imagine you guys probably like hearing that word from me :) ) the other thing that gives "upgrades" a bad name are the numerous bits of junk sold to "upgrade" your LP12, Rega turntable, CD player, etc., etc. by countless snake oil distributors. I'm sure any of us who have set up a number of LP12s and Regas have their own horror stories of all the junk they have had to remove from some Frankensteined unit to make it sound decent. Sticky mats, damping all over the place, custom rewires, oddball armboards, drilled out tonearms, the list goes on.

These are the kinds of things that make approach the word "upgrade" with a fair bit of trepidation - not the tendency of companies like yours, Linn or Rega to come out with a retrofittable upgrade (at last I can type it without the quotes) that reflects real progress in components and construction and actually sounds more musical. That kind of upgrade I am quite happy to have available and to sell to customers. I just wish there were more of that kind around and less of the others.

[ThomasOK]

By the way, ("Gee, I thought he was finished!") I would have answered your post earlier but I wasn't aware it was there until you put the link in the other post. For some reason my browser, Safari, will show new posts when I log into the forum and if I go away for a while it no longer shows anything new. When that happens I have to go searching to try and find missed posts and sometimes I miss one or two.

[lejonklou]

Thanks for the history lesson, Thomas!

I had no idea that "upgrades" were systematically done in this way. I feel surprised, but I guess it only shows I don't know much about the american history of HiFi...

In Europe I can't think of any important company that have had this philosophy. I can only recall a few high end companies that have announced retrofittable upgraded parts and it all seems to have become increasingly rare.

That many of the "upgrades" you mention did not bring any real improvement only shows that they couldn't properly evaluate what they were doing. Which means their products were most likely no good to begin with. :?

[Music Lover]

That many of the "upgrades" you mention did not bring any real improvement only shows that they couldn't properly evaluate what they were doing. Which means their products were most likely no good to begin with. :?

So...what is that saying about Linn (some Unidisk/DS firmware upgrades)

[ThomasOK]

That many of the "upgrades" you mention did not bring any real improvement only shows that they couldn't properly evaluate what they were doing. Which means their products were most likely no good to begin with. :?

Based on experience, I would say that this is a VERY safe assumption! :)

I don't know if I mentioned the story on here before but when I was representing Linn products to dealers in the US (in the early to mid 80s) I and one of my coworkers visited one of the premier high-end dealers on the East Coast. The owner was with a customer when we arrived so he sat us down in his "reference" room where he put some music on a Goldmund turntable/arm feeding the top Levinson electronics into the Infinity IRS speakers alluded to above. This was essentially the reference system of one of the US magazines of the time and was all considered "Class A" gear. After only a minute of listening my cohort and I agreed that it was one of the worst Hi-Fi systems we had ever heard. There was plenty of sound coming out but virtually no music made it through unscathed. It is no exaggeration to say that the most simple LP12 running through a Nait and Kans would completely plow it into the ground. I'm pretty sure that system of the time with a Rega Planar 3, NAD 3020 and any really good $200 pair of speakers would have been far preferable.

Unfortunately, in my experience there are far too many Hi-Fi manufacturers who can't "properly evaluate what they are doing" and therefore turn out equipment or systems that don't reproduce music at all well. In the US they seem to be the rule rather than the exception.

I had a similar experience a couple of years ago when we took an entire "high-end" system in on trade from a customer. We had a prospect who wanted to hear the entire system so we set it up in our larger listening room. I set up the $22,400US speakers precisely as recommended in the manual, hooked them up to a stack of Klimax gear and quickly determined that a pair of Katans would easily outperform them. One of the other guys here then brought out and connected the rest of the system and gave it a listen. He came out a few minutes later complaining about how bad it sounded. I didn't even want to listen to it as I had already compared the preamp to an Exotik and found the Exotik far superior. However, after a few days of hearing from various people how bad it sounded I decided to give it a listen. I went in, put a CD in the CD/SACD player and hit play and walked back to the chair. As I was walking the sound (I won't call it music) started coming out of the speakers. I never sat down, the sound was so bad I turned right around and removed the CD from the player. It was literally so bad it chased me from the room - just unlistenable! This system consisted of an $18,000US Accuphase SACD player, the top Levinson reference preamp and mono-block power amps (each the size of a small refrigerator) and Wilson WATT/Puppy 7 speakers connected up with some equally expensive speaker cable the size of a water hose. The entire system totaled in the $100,000US range and all of the pieces were top rated by the US magazines. Give me an entry level Rega system (Apollo, Brio3, R1s) instead of this mess any day!

The good news is that the customer, who tended to change his Hi-Fi a couple of times a year, ended up buying a UniDisk 1.1, Klimax Kontrol and Solos, Sonus Faber Stradivari and a REL Studio III sub. A little while later he traded in a huge, but musically unimpressive, Basis turntable on a fully loaded LP12. This system is quite a musical sounding setup and he has happily owned it longer than any previous system.

[Music Lover]

Is he still owning it?

[Charlie1]

The entire system totaled in the $100,000US range and all of the pieces were top rated by the US magazines.

I don't understand how so many magazines reviewers don't seem to hear what we're hearing. I've been lost in the whole audiophile thing once - it was many years ago when I was basically in search of something missing and wasn't enjoying music (1980s CD players). But once I heard the LP12, I new I'd found what was missing. These reviewers get the opportunity to hear just about everything, including Linn, and still don't get it. Maybe they are just very different, but it doesn't make sense to me. I think they are worse than the manufacturers in a way, because they have had the opportunity to hear musical Hi-Fi, yet still prefer the other kit you mention Thomas.

[lejonklou]

... on a Goldmund turntable/arm...

I used to own a Studietto! It sounded really bad, no matter how I adjusted it. I remember some Swedish reviewers at the time thought their turntables were the absolute reference. :shock:

I never sat down, the sound was so bad I turned right around and removed the CD from the player.

This made me remember when I attended a demonstration of an incredibly expensive American system - it was announced as "probably the best in the world". Can't remember the names of the gear now, but I remember the audience and they guy who demonstrated it. When I entered the room, they were all sitting down and everyone was looking at the floor with grave faces. Some had their eyes closed. The atmosphere felt really strange, like visiting some kind of religious ceremony - perhaps a funeral.

For as long as I could stand staying there, they played some weird acoustical audiophile recording with lots of silence and sudden loud notes on various instruments. I desperately looked around for anyone to speak to, or at least get some eye contact with, because I didn't really understand what was going on. I wasn't even sure the demonstration had started yet - maybe they were just warming up the gear? But nobody looked up and after a while I just couldn't stand it anymore. As I walked away I kept thinking "What was THAT about??".

Fond memories! :lol: