On Nov 15, 2009, at 13:26 , J.C. O'Connell wrote:
you seem to misunderstand, you cant get state of the art audio gear for low cost, even if you build it yourself. acutally its practically impossible to build state of the art audio gear yourself, there is too much overhead in R&D and its not economical to build one-offs, that's even worse the low production items in terms of cost per unit.
Most of the components in Hi-End audio gear are available readily. There may be a few limited production capacitors or coils. The tubes are available in various qualities. It's the circuit design. The care of construction, and component placement for isolation/minimal wire length/optimum trace thickness and length that is critical in most designs.
I can send you photos of the system I was listening to in 07/08, and you will see that the cables, the mains, and elsewhere in the system are handmade and grossly overpriced "doo-dads" installed to enhance (or reduce) system anomalies that in the opinion of the owner made the system sound "better", to him. A 60-something year old with inevitably some hearing loss. He had money, he hadn't worked in years,his kids were through college, and needed something to do to fill his time. The endeavor was one he chose and could afford.
The main reason much of the "high-end" gear is expensive is because it has a limited buyer pool, and must be made in very limited quantities or hand built. If you are going to sell 125 units of a custom designed amplifier, and your competition is also low yield and sets a high price, your price is driven up no matter what, lest you be seen as "low-end" gear.
Schematics are available for gear the equivalent of much of the commercially available gear at that level. A turntable can be cobbled together that has similar specifications to the very best if you mount an accurate dc servo motor and it's controller on a separate structure, connect it to your platter(doesn't have to be super heavy, just controlled), use your very best $300 cartridge, best wire, a used 10 year old arm that was once a darling, and mount the whole thing hanging from 3 or 4 vertical posts via dozens of old cassette tape player drive belts (rubber bands that don't stretch much).
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