£1000 for a BlueRay player?

They have only just got around to bringing their first unit to market!

Great perfrming £150 Sony player Even has internet functionality.

British hifi hasn't a leg to stand on when it argures that it's technology is superior to that of the mass market giants. They may once have had the edge over the competition in terms of sound quality and with the sumptuous heavy casework, power supplies etc, but since then, everyone has focused on A/V where none of this really matters.

Sadly, with the demise of high quality audio (highly compressed audio downloads – thanks Apple Corp.) the industry is a bit of a lost cause. This is especially so when you factor in the inevitable annual 10% price hikes.

What a crying shame!

With this kind of BS, I'm sure there are plenty of numpties who'll buy them…

It uses high-quality 24-bit digital-to-analogue conversion from Wolfson, coupled with a linear phase Bessel filter, and high-precision re-clocking of data from the main decoder, resulting in reduced jitter.

People who can afford it will still buy it – there is a big enough market for bling stuff.

(Thinks high end bike gear)…

You can get that sony one for £99 on amazon. I now have one in my lounge. 🙂

The reason why they haven't bothered with Blu Ray is that it's still not mainstream enough – given the amount of money that has to be spent on development and so on, they need to know that they'll shift them to recoup their costs. And until now, enough people haven't been buying them.

I agree though, that I wouldn't buy an Arcam Blu-Ray player, despite having an Arcam hifi. DVD playback just isn't as important to me.

The ergonomics will probably be sh1t as well, people like Sony, Samsung and Panasonic spend millions on the layout of on-screen menus etc.

I fell out with proper hi-fi when I relised the digital to analogue converter in my £350 Yamaha surround amp did just as good a job as my £1000 Audiolab 8000DAX.

If you want to spend money on hi-fi spend it on amplification and speakers thats where it makes the most diference, these days I just look for bargains on ebay

£1000? – you could buy a set of speaker cables for that.

£1000? – you could buy a set of speaker cables for that.

😆

people like Sony, Samsung and Panasonic spend millions on the layout of on-screen menus etc.

Sony?

Spend money on user interface design?

More like, Sony have hardware/firmware engineers, who hack together some kind of user interface which is pretty much based on how the hardware works, not how any user might use something. Or at least that's how it is in sony stuff I've seen. I'd be surprised if they hire any UI people for most of their stuff (except possibly the games company bit).

Same is true for a lot of the big Japanese companies. They are very hardware focused, despite most of the good stuff in hardware actually running in software nowadays. Either they don't do user interface design / user interface testing, or they only test them much in Japan, and Japanese users must be very different, I'm not sure.

Joe

My kids friends were over at the weekend he's 9 and there is nothing to make you feel older than putting a vinyl record on in front of children who have no idea what it is and then marvel at the fact that music comes out!

British hifi hasn't a leg to stand on when it argures that it's technology is superior to that of the mass market giants

Fail.

They may once have had the edge over the competition in terms of sound quality

Massive fail. They still do…

Sadly, with the demise of high quality audio (highly compressed audio downloads – thanks Apple Corp.) the industry is a bit of a lost cause

Billions of CD's still available…

Sadly, with the demise of high quality audio (highly compressed audio downloads – thanks Apple Corp.)

I assume you can back this up with ABX logs of current iTunes downloads? 🙂

Their AAC encoder is a good one, it's transparent to my ears at the bitrate they use.

The death of sound quality in modern music is much more down to modern mastering practises.

Ah, good to see Mr Woppit still preaching his HiFi religion. Brilliantly funny 🙂

Billions of CD's still available…

But have they been kept in the fridge?

clubber – Member
Ah, good to see Mr Woppit still preaching his HiFi religion. Brilliantly funny

Only to those with cloth ears…

thisisnotaspoon – Member

Billions of CD's still available…

But have they been kept in the fridge?

As long as you have a picture of a black dog on the coffee table …

Yeah, poor disbelievers, Woppit. They're missing out on something that you can see for a fact 😉

Are you trying to tell me I'm suffering from synaesthesia?

erm… (wikis it)… yes 😉

With this kind of BS

Why's it BS? Seriously, just asking.

It's BS because I'm pretty confident that irrespective of the actual facts (and what's written may well be technically true) it makes precisely no difference that any normal person would ever notice.

A bit like if I was building bike frames and mitred each tube to 10x better tolerance than industry standard and similarly welded it together with 10x better accuracy.

British hifi is a total joke, the dealers, the sound quality, the manufacturers, the fanbois. I'm a big advocate of British industry, but I would love Linn and Naim to go bust after the fleecing of the British public for the last 20 years.

people do funny things with their money. like buy push bikes for £2.5k

Great perfrming £150 Sony player Even has internet functionality
Posted 23 minutes ago

You can get that sony one for £99 on amazon. I now have one in my lounge.
Posted 33 minutes ago

Jesus!, not even CRC in their heyday could have come close to that
(via royal mail as well ?)

😆

A bit like if I was building bike frames and mitred each tube to 10x better tolerance than industry standard and similarly welded it together with 10x better accuracy.

In which case, you'd have to brand your frames "Naim"… 😉

it makes precisely no difference that any normal person would ever notice.

Ah, so you're assuming something you've not experienced must be rubbish based on your absolute 100% knowledge of the subject? Basically, you're being TJ 🙂

Pre order sales for the arcam blu ray are very promising, as were the sales when it's first hdmi dvd player hit the shelves at 1k when others were at 300.
The arcam stuff is good s++t and people who are into hifi/home cinema will spend money on quality stuff. which i'm surprised is not understud on a forum for high quality bikes where the average spend is £1500-2000

Wot Molgrips said +1

I do find it rather ironic that people are slagging off high end hi-fi on STW of all places….

Yet tell them that a US/UK made £2000 Ti frame is hardly any better than a £150 Taiwaneese On-One and they'll go blue in the face with rage!

😉

Why's it BS? Seriously, just asking

digital-to-analogue conversion from Wolfson – like my 2G iPod nano (although I don't know whether that's 24 bit)

linear phase Bessel filter – isn't the only reason you use a Bessel filter because its reasonably phase-linear?

high-precision re-clocking of data from the main decoder – can't even figure out what this means!

I like Arcam stuff, but if this is the best their marketing people put out perhaps they need to do some re-thinking. If I were to buy one of these (unlikely – I wouldn't invest that much in technology (BD) with potentially a short lifetime combined with a rapid development rate – 3D anyone?) it would be because of their reputation in producing good analogue audio stages, not because of "high-precision re-clocking of data".

i was with you till you mentioned 3D.

retro83 is right – the way that new music is mastered is the problem.

Haven't some people started producing multiple versions of recordings? Like, one for cheap everyday hifi/ipod and one for audiophiles?

The biggest change in my listening enjoyment after the actual music itself is the recording. I've got some CDs that are blatantly crap, and some that are excellent.

Billions of CD's still available…

at the moment!

CD sales have plummetted in recent years.

BTW. I am a hifi enthusiast! I bought a CD player, 2 Amplifiers, rack, interconnects and speakers totalling close to £4k some sixteen years ago. It's still awesome and I know I couldn't improve on it much.

When I bought the kit, the difference in the price of Japanese and British Hifi was not that marked. Since then, Japanese technology sales have burgeoned. Prices have dropped and the products have evolved almost beyond recognition. Conversely, British hifi has remaines pretty much the same, but has become more expensive, whilst the quality of budget equipment has been reduced.

When I went into Sevenoaks hifi recently, I saw a light sprinkling of cheap looking, but epxensive hifi, but the shop was predominantly full of ridiculously overpriced A/V kit. For example: an HTPC priced at £7200. What utter bullshit!! British hifi is dead! Nobody talks about it, nobody buys it. It's become an extremely niche product that offers poor value. I'm very disappointed, but if the market wants £200 compact systems, that is what it will get.

Yes I know, people have no idea what they are missing, but the British Hifi industry has frightened them off with stupid prices!

The biggest change in my listening enjoyment after the actual music itself is the recording. I've got some CDs that are blatantly crap, and some that are excellent.

You must have a decent hifi. 😆

Haven't some people started producing multiple versions of recordings? Like, one for cheap everyday hifi/ipod and one for audiophiles?

Yes, also unmastered albums occassionally leak or get accidentally released. I've got quite a few unmastered ones and they all sound vastly better than the retail CD.
The Red Hot Chilli Peppers Californication, Amy Winehouse Back To Black and Metallica Death Magnetic being some of the best examples (in terms of sound quality difference!).

The right thing to do IMVHO would be to integrate the dynamic-range compressor into the playback hardware like the 'nighttime mode' on DVD players.

i was with you till you mentioned 3D.

Only mentioned that as an example of the way new things come along – not something I'd worry about myself! There's a deliberate policy of rapid obsolescence with recent technology which is why I wouldn't bother buying most of it from one of the top-end manufacturers. Next month's cheapo BD player may well be better than this month's top-end one, or have some must-have feature.

molgrips – Member

it makes precisely no difference that any normal person would ever notice.

Ah, so you're assuming something you've not experienced must be rubbish based on your absolute 100% knowledge of the subject? Basically, you're being TJ

Not really. I have a few mates who are as deluded about this as many on here clearly are. They rave on about their £20k (seriously…) systems and yet when I did a blind test (against an older (cheap – only about £2k) system that one had in the room) they all failed despite having claimed a few minutes before that the new one sounded loads better. Obviously everyone on here will say that they all just had crap hearing but that's basically the usual excuse. You won't find any blind tests that are conclusive once you get into half decent hifi territory.

Besides, I always think that hifi buffs are to music what people who buy flash mtbs but never ride them are to cycling – eg for them it's all about the equipment rather than actually about the music itself.

I purchased an Arcam amp and DVD player about 7 years ago. Ex-demo, about £500 each from memory, otherwise I couldn't have aforded them. Whilst they do cost a fair bit of dosh they're still going strong and I'd imagine that they will last me a good few years yet.

Before that I had a Aura, Marantz setup and still have the speakers, which I think are around 15 years old now. Passed onto a family member and still working fine. So yes it may cost a bit more but if you keep it long enough it's TCO is failry low. Compare that to the cheap freeview boxes which we were replacing every every 18 months or so in the past 🙁

Saying that now with kids, mortgage etc I'd take the £99 Sony 🙂

I always thought there was something that sounded a bit meh with Californication.