Got me a THETA

And there was me thinking how wise you were Ian

 

I'm ever so wise, me.

It's because I wear glasses.

-- Ian

 

The thing that I find most annoying is that as far as US kit is concerned, the distributors are now profiting from a very significant decline in the dollar of around 30%. Have any of them reduced prices to reflect the weaker dollar? Not a chance. They are just happy to increase their already outrageous profit margins and hope we dont notice

 

you an me both mate

 

Am I the only one that only expects a 12 month warranty on new hifi goods?

If Theta were to prove problematic (and you never know till you try) - theres thousands of people who can fix their kit for not too much.

Our very own WM for one should be able to deal with a lot of it.

 

NB

I wouldnt fancy having to shell out 100,000 pounds on stock just to run a shop/distributorship, and then be at the mercy of magazine reviews for sales.

Its a high volume, low turnover industry..


.. precisely why smartypants like us lot by second hand, and modify/diy.

 

Spin it round though Wadia as I am sure you are aware imports into America are most likely crippling stuff going out of the UK.

I think that it does seem in context bad business practise. BUt look at just about everything else int he world, cars, computers etc. You can't expect for instance to take a ford KA to a dealer and have it upgraded or fixed for nothing can you?

 

That's the thing though Gary. When I bought my car, the warranty is three years, transferrable. So why not hifi? The original margin is certainly vast enough to provide for it.

 

There are examples where the car industry has been just as blinkered. When people first started personally importing various Japanese cars that weren't available here (eg Mitsubishi Evos and Subaru Imprezzas) the UK importer/dealer network not only wasn't going to honour the warranty but flat refused to work on them at all, even if the customer was prepared to pay!

Chris - if it's not the law already it soon will be that all electronic goods must have a 2 year warranty, regardless of what the piece of paper in the box says.

As with the music industry, the hi-end hifi industry has to adapt to the internet instead of trying to ignore it. It's now a fact of life that people can browse eBay and audiogon etc. and have access to a vast s/h market that just didn't exist before. It also brings into sharp focus the price differentials between, say, the US and the UK. People are more savvy and are not going to put up with the cosy little distributor/dealer cartels and their 45% margins anymore.

IMO more companies should start selling direct. Take a leaf out of the PC industry and do a Dell. However, I'm not sure how you'd solve the "need to audition" problem but clearly the staus quo is untenable.

Michael.

 

You get a life time transferable warranty with all our signal transmission products.
I will say, ARcam fixed my DV27 even when it was 3 months outside the warrenty
Circuit componants very rarely go wrong to be honest, although thats no comfort for a guy with a friend output board on a 40 month old Theta T.

 

Even if the distributors refuse to look at/repair imported kit that goes wrong, I am sure there is enough expertise amongst the members of this forum and PFM for most things to be repaired.

 

Let's face it though, what could go wrong with a cable? Worst case they might need reterminating. Allthough I suppose the serpent lubricants might leak out after a while

Michael.

 

Michael,

Are those audiophool snake oil cones I see under your dac64?





For a non believer, there's rather a lot of expensive cables and general tweakery in your system

 

Aa regards 'doing a Dell', a number of companies have - Bottlehead, Hi-Fi Collective etc. However, I think many of us can suffer the old overestimation of the importance of the 'net - for every one of us who actively involve ourselves in fora culture and buy with the benefit of the net, there are still a dozen buyers who go to their local shop and pay full price for a (say) Arcam system, and two people who have more money than sense and don't care about good kit at low prices that you have to get your hands dirty with, they want to stuff cash into a dealers pockets (KJ West One?) and have the Hi-Fi equivalent of a racing yacht that they can show off to their friends - Wilson Audio anyone?
Simon

 

They are indeed audiophool snake oil cones. Michell Tenderfeet to be precise. They're there to look cool and raise the DAC off the rack a little to aid cooling as much as anything else. Sound wise they made absolutely zero difference.

Still, I'm not ashamed to admit I was once a believer

I had written a long post detailing the price of all my "tweakery" etc. but I realised it was far too serious. However, none of my cables and tweaks could really be called expensive.

Michael.

 

what could go wrong with a cable?

If they can burn-in, then presumably they can burn-out, too. Plus you might put them round the wrong way, but at least you'd never know.

 

Just out of intetrest tony, are your cables directional? And if so.... why?

Never understood that.

 

No one understands it because it's complete bollox. Not even Tony.

 

Apparantly, if you connect them up the "wrong" way round, the music plays backwards!

kill who?

 

?wise-that 'head your in bullet a'.