Component tuning for 'UK' taste?

According to an editorial reply in this months HIFI choice,many manufacturers 'tune' some components,particularly amps,for European taste.Apparently,in the UK,we have a liking for 'musicality'

what does that mean exactly?
how on earth do they make significant changes in sound without increasing production costs?

if they can tweak there kit that cheaply and make an difference in 'musicality',then does this imply that changing cables will add value to a system?

 

its partly a marketing thing, Japanese design to figures and specs., mind you, all engineering is.

Typically, though, you will find far easterners like bright things, lights, bells, whistles and all that, and that too extends to sound, they like music bright, have you heard their pop music? uggh, mind you ours isn't much either...

We English are largely conservative lot, polite, refined, so the 'British sound' has become a bit like that, and to do that, they tend to perhaps reduce feedback a tad, add some posher capacitors, maybe run the amps a little hotter, and all sorts of other minor tweaks like resistors in certain places,perhaps better grade components.

Remember the most important thing, musicality is in the ear of the beholder and its a nonsense term. Your musical may well not be mine.

 

Ah that explains why the likes of Harbeth, Proac, Tannoy find the Far East to be their largest markets then. Also why the Japanese love vavle amps I guess.

It's all marketing IMO. The average Brit still thinks the stereotypes of Far Eastern hifi perpetrated by the FE boys twenty years ago are actually based in fact, and therefor the likes of Sony prefer to pretend their far eastern amps are UK designed (well it worked for NAD)

 

^^ What he said. It's a load of old guff, spouted for marketing purposes.

-- Ian

 

A chill runs down my spine when the word 'musicality' is used. Has that word been invented solely for use in hifi marketing? Absolutely meaningless ...when was the last time anybody raved about the musicality of a live performance?

Perhaps if hardware manufacturers concerned themselves with actually making good kit rather than inventing/misusing naff terminology for the selling of mediocre kit, the hifi industry wouldn't be in such decline and losing massive sales to A/V, an industry which really is progressing at quite a rate.

Video killed the radio star? In years to come perhaps we'll be saying that 'Musicality' killed the hi-fidelity star.

Apologies for the tangent. Rant over

 

so musicality is bollox? and the Japanese are deaf and like shiney things?