Looks are Everything
Not really.
But they ARE [almost] everything for some people, and I thought it might be fun to think about what categories high-end audio components might visually fall into and how we might assign these categories to various popular components.
Impressive Looking
I think some components are obviously Impressive Looking. Big amps like the 350 lb Boulder amps, or the big tube amps like ARC and VTL. The Wilson Alexandrias most might agree are Impressive Looking speakers and the 70+ lb Esoteric top-o-da-line digital might be as well.
Functional Looking
I would put most Audio Note gear and the Walker turntable in this category. What these companies say is that they spend their time and investments in improving the quality of the sound, not appearance [I add this because Functional Looking is interpreted as a somewhat derogatory category to some people ].
Artistic Looking
The Brinkmann turntable belongs in this category, I think minimalistic designs like these belong in a museum [if there is no museum for these yet, perhaps we should start one :-)].
Bling
Most turntables belong in this category – things in this category have lots of gratuitous stuff that is primary for appearance sake.
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Of course, most equipment, have not only several sonic characteristics, but several visual characteristics as well.
For example, Jeff Rowland gear is a little Artistic and little Blingish and a little Functional looking but not very impressive looking [I remember us – back in the day – comparing the old Levinson Impressive Functional Looking 20.6 monoblocks to a Model 6[?] Rowland monoblock. The Levinson so much more Yang to Rowland’s (much more attractive) Yin appearance. We chose the Levinsons, I believe [hope] for sonic reasons :-)].
One of the important points here, for manufacturers, dealers and audiophiles, is that there seems to be a natural human expectation that, when sonic virtues are not very well known by a person, the more expensive and, in particular, the BETTER gear, will naturally be more Impressive Looking .
And, unfortunately, this natural human expectation is almost always incorrect. The better gear is the better gear, looks be damned. 🙂
Just gotta echo your sentiments on the Brinkmann…….Although I would call it understated beauty or something like that. And it’s made or ROCK (equally amazing and wtf at the same time).
Maybe I’m just a sucker for everything black..?
Mike M
Hi Mike,
I have always found the argument from companies that sell $100,000+ equipment that claim they spend their time and investments in improving the quality of the sound, not appearance, to be rather specious. It seems to me that anyone in that market would be prepared to spend an extra $1000 for nicer looking equipment. I have no problem with companies that are going for the functional look to begin with, but they should be honest about it and not pretend they are doing the purchaser of such components a favor.
I am quite certain that there are manufacturers that do in fact produce functional looking equipment in order to emphasize quality of sound to the exclusion of appearance in their product design. But, I would suggest that such equipment is geared towards audiophiles that can not afford the best of the best. For those individuals, any saving will allow them to maximize the sound of their system and remain within their financial means.
Just some food for thought.
Michel
Hi Michel,
You have a point, but I think it is more complicated, and much more expensive, than what one might think.
Apple products are a good counter-example – charging a premium for quality industrial design.
If I remember correctly, the Edge NL Reference amps [pictured at the right, near the bottom. These have been sold but I’ll leave the photo up for a bit so you all can see what I am talking about] cost about $10,000 to produce the chassis [100+ lbs of aircraft grade aluminum, and they had to go through a lot of it to make slabs that did not have imperfections, and then all the machining, etc] and this was back when the amps were $70K.
Similarly, fine furniture style veneers and finishes on speakers can be expensive, just like they are for fine furniture that is not produced in a factory [skilled wood workers need to make a living]. Bigger companies like Sonus Faber no doubt have these people in-house, and economy of scale allows them to make more attractive products at a lower price, but most out-source this kind of work.
So, my guess is that an attractive appearance adds perhaps 20% to the cost of a component, on average, at any price range.
Then there are the constraints the attractive design puts on the performance of the product – or, similarly, the extreme amount of effort that has to go into making sure that the design does not impede performance.
Think of the decision like this: Either
1) optimize your circuit layout for quality of performance, distancing things so that one can minimize connection lengths and parasitics, making sure there are no parallel connections, making sure things with strong magnetic fields are kept away from things that are sensitive to magnetic fields…. versus
2) Going through hundreds of possible designs, making sure tubes look attractive and are lined up in nice rows. Making sure the chassis has an attractive design, that the design components can be made reliably, economically and within a reasonable amount of time and with hopefully by more than one artisan, going through several revisions, getting design samples made and getting feedback from potential customers about what they think. And, whereas performance is an absolute [IMHO], appearance is often in the eye of the beholder – any kind of strong design statement often generates as many haters and lovers. All this effort takes a LOT of creative energy, which might be better spent on performance.
As I hope people can see, these are 2 entirely different disciplines, and will often conflict with one another.
Looking at exotic cars for point of comparison, to me the Zonda go for functionality and then try to polish up the result in a kind of half-baked attempt to make it look not entirely geeky. I think many audiophile brands fall into this category. Porsche just punts and made one design then makes all their cars look exactly the same forever. Lamborghini designs make a statement and it can be hard to tell – for me – if they extremely ugly or extremely cool looking.
All that said, some manufacturers do seem to make a design statement by ignoring any kind of design sensibility – completely – i.e. it would not take much to make their products look a little better, but they purposely choose not to. I personally find this kind of reverse psychology annoying – but that may just be me 🙂 [they probably think they HAVE put effort into design, and that I am just not noticing it :-)]
Take care,
-Mike
I think you should reconsider Jeff Rowland. I’m one of the few distributors (may be the only one;)) who does Jeff Rowland and Marten. Their new Model 725 mono blocks with the Coltrane 2 (and Jorma Prime cables all over) are absolutely “drug-like”. When turning up de volume a bit I’m completely lost:)
Cheers,
Hans
Hi Hans,
I’d love to hear Rowland on the Coltrane 2 speakers. That would be fun.
I had occasion to spend some amount of time on Jeff Rowland’s site a couple of weeks back. I was really impressed with the technical quality of the design of the amps – seemed like a very clear-eyed and innovative implementation of the middle ground between the overly-complicated and the decades-old bare bones designs which abound in the solid-state amp universe these days.
Typically the Rowland is paired with speakers not quite in the same league as the C2, especially at shows. In the above comparison with Levinson, performed about 16 years ago, we were listening to the Von Schweikert VR4 speakers [which were awesome even though we ended up getting the Dunlavy IV instead…
Take care,
-Mike