Superfrag said:
But all the action happens on campus, not in the town.
Hah, that there little bit makes all the difference between life & death
stalker said:
At the end of the day, Delhi or Detroit, you are still gonna hit up Head-fi for any opinions to assist your purchase :bleh:
Perhaps, but its harder than it should be. Thats a sign of a new market segment thats opened up recently especially in the under $500 range. I guess with more ppl listening to audio than before those with the skills figured there was a buck to be made.
5 yrs back how many DACs' were available in that price range, not too many i think. Above that range there were the usual suspects but out of the reach of your casual listener. I say casual because the real enthusiasts would save up to buy the more expensive stuff and if you were willing to plunk down as much you would be in another category of music listener.
superfrag said:
What I mean to say is that products such as Bel Canto which are sold commercially in large numbers can be auditioned, but products like Woo Audio, Audio.gd, Mapletree to name a few can only be auditioned when you know/meet someone who owns the respective gear.
Exactly
So how do you tell whether you're getting what you paid for, you can't. Even if you go to meets, all you've got is whether it sounded better or not. You might like something thats really cheap but the more experienced would prolly turn their noses at it. That's ok the harder thing is when something cheap gets touted as sounding very good. You know the usual line, as good as something twice its price. This one is harder to gauge. Does this mean its a good buy because you liked it ?
Everyone's pimping their wares as if its good as something that goes for twice as much. Does this make sense ? For any other product, the company would lose because the market would fix that difference very soon. It works for everything else so I cannot believe DAC's are immune to these basic laws. But they say you gotta hear it to believe it and it gets left at that as there's no objective way to say otherwise
Therefore some insight into how this market works might be useful before making a choice.
What if you plunked down $500 and the year after read about how this or that thats half the price is as good. What would you think then ? You'd be hard pressed to get anyone that paid more for theirs to admit it. For that kind of money i'd like to think it would last a bit longer before getting beat.
But if it really did get beat it means you paid more than you should have at the time. The same logic applies at lower ranges down to $200. Anything less and its a given something the year after will do a better job for the same amount.
So given the above what price range do you go for ?
$100-$200 or $500 ?
There isn't too much of a diference here, so you save a bit longer to be able to afford one thats it. The question i'm asking is if you pay more will it retain its value longer. It will if the reasons you got it for are sound (pardon the pun) and what would those be ?
Otherwise there is no sense in paying as much.
