Where have we gone wrong.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

Well you are an enthusiast and this is your hobby, that is the difference. The suits are scared of you as you know what idiots they are. Home computers used to be a hobby full of nerds, now it is mostly marketing men and accountants who hire the nerds and make them wear white coats. I doubt if computers will ever go back to a hobby but hi-fi will and is already in the process.

[SteveTheShadow]

I hope hi-fi does go back to being a hobby and returns to its roots of artisans, making great sounding equipment.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

It is on the way, but there will of course be a fight back. The problem is they (the established mainstream companies) rely on a brainwashed small portion of the population almost entirely male, who are in the process of dying out, to make their money. So in usual suit fashion if your market diminishes then bullshit and con them into giving you more money for the same thing. There must reach a point where even these idiots realise they are having the piss taken out of them. I thought it was way before now but still some are wasting their accrued property value on keeping these crooks in the luxury they are used to.

The future of the hobby is in our own hands.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

Oh and BTW if you hadn't realised it recently it has been China and Russia keeping companies like Linn and Naim alive. They may well be losing a lot of that now.

[Classicrock]

Naim for some reason appear to have a strong US market. Not so much Linn apart from the LP12. Both companies appear to be now reliant on their streaming products which does make them vulnerable when people realise this can be done far more cheaply. Naim / Focule are now controlled by an investment company so more likely to survive than the Tiefenbrun clan. Linn came close to folding about 10 years ago.

[Mugwanya]

I thought that the NVA philosophy was that it doesn't matter about the design or the components, but that it was all about the sound quality that results, how musical it is. That doesn't mean that good design and good components aren't important, just that they aren't important in themselves - it's what they produce that matters. I'm new here, so maybe that's wrong.

Sound quality or musicality is in part (and probably in large part) subjective. So if someone likes the sound that Harbeths produce, then regardless of how they are made they are a success - for that person. And price is also a factor - a pair of Super HL5s (note: I've just pulled the model off the search pages, I know nothing about them) at £50,000 would be a rip-off, at £50 they would be a miracle.

I haven't listened to either Harbeths or Cubes, or looked inside either, but my guess is that if Alan Shaw looked inside a Cube he would be equally dismissive (say about the construction/lack of a large crossover/design) as you are of his products. And both of you would miss the point - it is about how the music sounds to each individual person who buys or listens to those products. You have an impressive reputation and a solid base of people who like the sounds your products produce - but so has he. With something that is inherently subjective, both approaches are viable - they will just appeal to different people. If I were in your industry I would embrace that there are these different approaches that appeal to different people, as it brings more people who like listening to music into the 'community' and creates those niches where artisans such as yourself can survive. Someone listening to Spotify on their phone is never going to spend thousands on an NVA setup. But they may buy a Sonos because it looked good and sounded a bit better. And then they might buy a cheap hifi because it still looked alright but sounded even better, then some Harbeths because they sounded a lot better, and then an NVA setup purely for the sound.

And society is as it is - more capitalist that socialist. That means that if you have a good product (or what you think is one - the 'market' is supposed to 'decide' if it is) you are expected to want to sell it to more people and make more money, which means marketing and mass (-ish) production. You are sneering at someone who is following society's norms because you are happy not following them, but the two of you are just travelling different roads to the same destination - helping people enjoy music.

Would I change society radically if I were in charge - absolutely. But it is as it is.

Disclaimer: I haven't heard any Harbeth or NVA speakers, and haven't set up the Tower of Power yet (because someone who was preparing a room for me let me down, so I had to spend my spare time doing that).

[_D_S_J_R_]

Set up the tower of power, use recommended interconnect and speaker cables and enjoy it with ANY speakers that take your emotions deep into the music you play.

We're ALL on a journey of discovery in life I think and we're all at different stages in different areas. Audio is the main one we share here and there are plenty of ways to get a good sound in various rooms - in my opinion and personal experience of course. The 'Cube' way is 'different,' but tantalisingly valid and I have a workroom listening situation that would, I think, be perfect for Cubettes or Cube 3's.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

I repeat my first post as we seem to be losing the plot. I don't consider myself to be Socialist, or my ideas to be Socialist, any similarity is coincidental.

Much about hi-fi music reproduction has got better over the last 40 years from the so called golden age of hi-fi. For me the biggest one has been the realisation of how important cable is in a system. So where have we gone wrong, for me it is loudspeaker design, it has become more and more about image and less about substance. They look nice now but the build quality and materials and concepts are shite. And there is so much bullshit leading them around, the worst companies at it have varied over the time but at the moment the biggest bullshitter is Harbeth. Take *everything* that company says and reverse it and you may be getting somewhere back into reality.

[Macca]

I also do not understand why Harbeth are being singled out. I have only ever heard some once, the Super SHL5, they were neither terrible not memorable and I certainly wouldn't pay the asking price but they looked well built and well-finished. I guess like all speakers they appeal to certain tastes, both in looks and sound.

They are not for me but then neither is a Bose Wave, but I have no problem with those products being for sale and I don't regard those who purchase them as being ripped off.

I think i could probabaly find a speaker manufacturer that is a complete rip off (i.e one with high prices and a crap product), I' sure they must exist, but Harbeth? That's a really odd choice to single out.

I think, Richard, that you shoudl clarify what you are driving at with this since it does come across as 'anything but NVA is overpriced rubbish'. or is that essentially what you are saying?

[Classicrock]

Where I differ from you Doc is that the sound Harbeth produce does not align with the outpourings of the owner. Just look past the hype and judge from what you hear. The speakers are very strong in some areas are well made and use high quality components. They don't pander to fashion either. However they sound mighty different with different amps and in different situations. A good number of people like them. They aren't aimed at mainstream market such as KEF and Monitor Audio. Actually you might as well have picked on those companies as examples but the difference is they don't have an obvious persona running them. Anonymous mass produced boxes?