Quote Originally Posted by RGA
Woochifer you are narrow minded you believe that if it sells and the democracy buys it it must have superior value. If it is new and it sells it must be superior to what came before. Sony is only in business to create superior sounding products and obviouisly care nothing about profits - their primary goal is to spare no expensie and make the best sound for the good of capturing musicians intent. BS.
Narrow minded? Because I believed my econ professor when on the first day of class he stated that market decisions are based on maximizing utility? Thank you for pointing that out. I guess that we should throw Smith and Keynes out of econ curricula and just adopt the RGA/AN principle that the majority is always wrong.

The point that seems to elude you is that value is a PERSONAL choice. If something sells, then it has value to the BUYER, even if it has no value to YOU. For you to continue to rail about Sony being all about profits, you seem to have forgotten that it was consumers who decided to keep the CD format afloat after Sony introduced it. Sony also introduced the DAT, Betamax, and MiniDisc formats, and consumers did not support those efforts. Obviously, the CD had value for you since that's your primary listening format.

I'm not someone who believes that everything new is superior. I believe that if something new adds to my home entertainment enjoyment, then I will support it by spending money on it. Multichannel audio is in that category, and I'm obviously not alone in that assessment. Contrary to your belief, I was not conned into upgrading to multichannel audio by some profit-gobbling corporate conspiracy. I did my comparisons, did my listenings, and drew my own conclusion. If that happens to follow the prevailing market trend, then I guess that just makes me a clueless corporate lemming, eh?

If anything, the two-channel only view of audio IMO is the narrow minded perspective because it does not accept that multichannel can improve upon the listening experience in any way. Multichannel opens a wide range of options for the sound engineer and the listener. Two-channel is confining.

Quote Originally Posted by RGA
My computer is 5 years old. The reason new computers(at least part of the reason) are $400.00Cdn including all in one printer and 17 inch monitor is because if you really look at the important to most people aspects doesn't do anything my obsolete computer does. It does it faster but there is a value association. People know the price of everything and the value of nothing are the ones who buy whatever is doled out as the new thing.
The point with the CD is that it is a 22 year old format based on technology that's 25 years dated. With DVD-A and SACD, for the FIRST TIME EVER consumers have available formats that can DIRECTLY transfer the studio master at full resolution, with no downconverting and no degradation. AND this high resolution can support multichannel playback, which has been advocated since the first Bell Labs experiments were conducted in the late-30s. A lot of early classical recordings were originally recorded with three-tracks because that's what the recording engineers concluded was needed to adequately reproduce the front soundstage. Two channel was not chosen as the designated configuration because of its sonic superiority, it was chosen because of the limitations of the existing carriers available to consumers.

Quote Originally Posted by RGA
The high end industry is very small - but MP3 is NEW and it is hardly GOOD. But it's not sold to anal audiophiles so who cares. There are reasons we still have LP versus CD debates - the regular Joe non stereo guy could give a rats ass. I'm not a Car guy - give me a reliable as hell Honda Civic and let me stick gas in it it goes for 10 years and i'm happy. The niche car guy in his loaded up sports thing wouldn't want a Honda hatchback.

I have no problem with all in one machines, I have no problem if Sony wants to flood the market with hybrids and I have no problem if people want to listen to SACD or buy Digital amplifiers or DVD-A and listen to it all with 7 small surround speakers and a sub - I don;t even mind if they think that sounds better than old school design Audio Note speaker, Audio Note turntable and a stone age SET amp.

Luckily my dealer has had their surround room designed and built by B&W - so people can listen to the ultimate in front projection SACD with the best Denon receiver and allthe cutting edge stuff and walk right out of that room and listen to the Stone age 2 channel gear of Audio Note and pay considerably more money for the privaledge. Obviously the 2 channel folks are clueless and don't know what good sound is.
Yeah, and the high end also has five-figure cables, carbon fiber racks, and isolation pods that cost over $1,000 each. If that represents value to someone, then more power to them. To me, a portable MP3 player has more value to me than a $10,000 cable. But, that's just silly me because my definition of value has more to do with being able to carry my music collection with me wherever I go, rather than overpaying for something that gives a subtle sound quality improvement at best.

BTW, if you think that a surround room anchored by a Denon receiver is the cutting edge for multichannel playback, then you seriously need to visit a store that knows more about putting together a dedicated multichannel setup. There's plenty of room above a Denon multichannel receiver, just as there's plenty of room above a stereo receiver.