I know what you mean , but luckily i have been blessed with a very tolerant and understanding wife ( or so she says ) and I'm sure she will see good sense !
I believe a stunningly good system can be assembled for about £1000, a system so far beyond most expectations that they simply would not believe it possible.
Once all the 'claptrap' is taken out of the equation and replaced by sound engineering then real Hi-Fi is possible for a fraction of the price.
Hence I will say that 'the hi-fi industry is corrupt and self serving', like big time, for the most part it is a monumental rip-off, there are similar rip-offs in life like insurance and they are based on the same insecurities. There are loads of major rip-offs in life, here are a few that come to mind:-
Payment protection for your credit card - a monumental rip-off.
In store 'extended warranties' that was always a good one to extract your cash.
Life insurance, many of these policies do not even pay you back what you have paid in!
Pensions, a lifetime of saving and at the end what have you got, a pittance that you saved up for over thirty years and is now worth nothing, is that not a monumental rip-off.
Home contents insurance, in living here for 25 years I realised that I had paid the insurance company more than I could ever claim, is that good business sense?
Now lets postulate on a fair Hi-Fi system, we will be reasonable here and say £100 on a CD player, maybe £200 for an amp and maybe £600 on speakers, that would put together a seriously good system.
Many Hi-Fi dealers would now expect you to spend a further £200 on leads etc. Oh sorry interconnects, complete nonsense, just another monumental rip-off.
Car insurance, another one, but a legal requirement, I have paid 'shit loads' over the years but have never made a claim, so another major rip-off in life.
Unfortunately we appear to be surrounded by rip-offs and scams and junk mail but that is life, the secret is to decyfer the difference!
Worst perpetrators-hifi magazines/journalist. Next in the food chain-Distributors...and so on.
John, sorry cant agree you can put together a satisfying music system for around £1000. At best you'll get a quality hifi system but musically ..nah (IMHO).
In the case of the journalists-Im sorry but I cant. the stories although true- and many first hand - are rather, ahem, potentially libelous.
Magazines particularly the higher end ones are notorious for linking advertising to editorial
The Distributor brings in a product from the US say. He gets, say, a 50% margin based on US retail-which is pretty standard I believe. Yet he prices that product in £'s at the same or pretty near the same as the US $ price-ie its rip off! I know of quite a few who do this-I bet you do too.(and most have got "mates" amongst the journalists, who pretty much give them an easy ride).
Thanks for the reply, it sounds as if the hifi industry is pretty much the same as all other parts of retail industry, they just charge what they think they can get away with or what the market will stand by any means as long as it is profitable.
There is an awful lot of overpriced rubbish out there, but as the law states " let the buyer beware ".
Hi, I myself a few months ago started to look for a new setup and was willing to pay anything up to four grand. I started by looking at NAIM,cyrus etc... and was shocked at how mediocre they sounded compared to my old system at home that i had thrown together over the years which comes in at around £1000's. The retailers that i went to also set up the demo's with hundreds of pounds worth of chord company cable which they didn't tell me about so the sound if i had of purchased the system would have sounded different once home.? How can they justify the prices for systems like this? why do you have to buy thousands of pounds worth of other gear to " upgrade" what you have bought already?? Why don't they just make in good in the first place and not pay through the nose for marginal difference's???
Yes I agree you have to be very careful not to be sucked into the upgrade race , Naim are the masters of this practice, once started you can never be satisfied with what you have , the next upgrade will always be the one that cures all , and boy do Naim offer some upgrade options, very clever marketing indeed!
The best advise i can give you is to listen to as many different types and brands of equipment as possible , Hifi shows are great for this, when you hear something special you will know .
Don't worry too much about cables until you get the basics right then experiment , the most expensive cables in the world will not make a bad system sound any better.
A good place to start is with a good amplifier preferably class A or class D then good speakers .
I suppose to finish i would say if what you go to listen to does not sound better that what you have already don't buy it no matter what the salesman says.
Thanks for the reply electro, At the time of testing all these systems i was really excited about buying a new set up but just ended up feeling really disappointed and even a little bit mislead!? As for the cabling i spent probably a little more than i should have for the kind of setup i have but i did wait and wait until "russ andrews" had a sale! I did recommend russ to a friend who has a cyrus setup and he went cable crazy and ended up spending thousands upgrading his system! which to my mind made minimal difference ( quantum symphony, what's all that about???!!! ) My quest for a new setup will continue but now i will be a little more informed and less eager to part with my cash until i find that perfect sound, cheers.
Despite what is said I still believe that a seriously good musical and engaging system can be put together for less than a thousand pounds lets look at the components:
First forget cables, nothing more than £5 for anything, say £20 for all.
CD player, from my listening tests a £25 jobie from Tesco is pretty good.
Amplifier, class 'D' or 'T' will probably sound better than any expensive class 'B' unit, and probably cost around the £100 mark.
Now that leaves £855 for speakers and there are some pretty good speakers out there at that price, maybe only spend £600 on speakers and keep the rest for 'room treatment' but either way a truly engaging and musical system can be built for £1000.
Lets look at 'bottom end' Tesco DVD/CD at £17, Tripath amp at £50, minimal floorstanders at £70. allow £3 for cables, Total cost £140 and that would be way beyound most peoples expectations of reproduction.
Sorry to blow a myth here but Hi Fi need not be expensive, simply by picking the components that count, almost every aspect of Hi Fi is shroulded in in expensive mystery but that is a myth, it has no truth to it.
Sorry Grumble33 but if you even visited Russ Andrews then I can see where your name came from, when he has a sale on he is selling at 3X purchase as the normal prices are more like 10X purchase. Far be it for me to do the guy a disservice but he is a leader in 'snake oil' sales, the best this country has ever seen, he is one major 'rip off company' he deserves the 'Queens award to industry' for conning the public, here is a man who has taken coning to the level of 'fine art', a carefully practiced 'art form' and laughs all the way to the bank every day, and all in the beautiful surroundings of the lakes.
Got to agree with John on this one, it's not that Russ Andrews sells bad products in most cases, although some are a bit dubious it's just the massively over inflated prices he charges, buying second hand is the best way, you get much closer to the price Russ should have charged in the first place.
I don't know how Russ sleeps at night, well actually i do ! IN A VERY EXPENSIVE AND COMFORTABLE BED.
There are thousands of Russ clones out there , most of whom are winning business awards and being praised for their fantastic contribution to society. I'm sure Alan Sugar would be proud of him.
Sorry electro, I know that I have agreed with you lately on several posts, but not this one.
Many years ago I was closely involved in the Amstrad range of computers, they offered many of the best 'value for money' features' at the time, they were well made, reliable and offered more than most.
What Mr Sugar did was to find some ailing technology and buy it at a good price, hence the 3" drives. He made the best of what was available, not by conning anyone but simply by using what he could find at a good price.
Many years ago I actually met Mr Sugar and he came across as a well meaning and honest business man, I also designed an external interface (8256/8512) to convert the hated 3" drive to the much loved 3.5" drive that is still in use today.
So no I don't think Alan Sugar would be proud of him and I don't think business awards are given to Conn artistes. Sorry mate but there is a respectable side to business in the same way that there is a respectable side to almost everything in life. Who you choose to believe in is your choice.
Only tonight I met a neighbour I had not seen for some months, an Arab from Dubai and of course a Muslim, we had a long chat about world events (911), now that would not have been possible if I had 'pigeon holed' him.
I bought an Amstrad IC 2000 many years ago it was cheap sounded OK but was not very reliable and the slider volume pot's needed constant cleaning .
Maybe Alan Sugar would not be proud of Russ I don't know , but there are many other companies that conduct their business in the same manner as Russ and receive praise for the large amount of profit they make with no questions raised about the quality of the product.
)
