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Do you buy hifi because it looks good or sounds good?

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To answer the original question... yes
 
My first turntable (more sold to me than bought) was a Transcriptors Saturn. Despite being a fairly mediocre performer it was 'recognised' as hifi far more often than any later purchases.

Units that combined good looks with, good to very good, performance - Yamaha TC800GL cassette deck, Gale 401 loudspeakers, Meridian 101/103/105 amplifiers, (?) JR 149 loudspeakers, Red Wharfedale Diamond 3 loudspeakers, and Naim CDS3 CD player.

So ugly they're almost beautiful - Decca London, NAP 120, Celestion Ditton 66 loudspeakers.

Plain ugly - anything Naim with the Wagonwheel knobs and Hadcock's original arm. Perhaps the ARO deserved a mention (several lines) above?
 
Amps and sources - sound over aesthetics.

Speakers - I'm quite tolerant. I could dig the industrial look of Isobariks and would welcome the opportunity to give some larger Shahinians a home. Mrs Iota has a different view, thus the small and unobtrusive models I've named myself after.
 
Indeed. VU meters are very important for the looks. I remember that when I was kid in the eighties, that I was fascinated by the Technics VU meters. It made me going to the nearest hifishop when I decided to buy a new amp and I asked the hifiguy for Technics. I was fallen in the trap of a Naim dealer. The rest is history.
 
Sound always comes first but as I am not the only person living in this house I pay notice to the looks of equipment. For all the money I have spent none of it fell into place until I bought a regenerater.
 
So what would a blind person select? Hopefully their enhanced senses would pick the better sound and not worry too much regarding the touchy feely of looks.
 
As long as it can be kept tidy and doesn't light up like a Xmas tree, I don't really care. Although I also hate overbright LEDs and prefer the only lighting when listening at night to be from the fire.

My current choice of post-LK Linn electronics and speakers looks cheaper than it is, but that's more than made up for by my acoustic signature turntable which piques the curiosity of everyone that comes in the house.

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Rug Doc said:
I adore this hobby but I wondered how many of us choose hifi components because the design initially attracts us rather than actually going to audition a load of things and buying because it sounds good and say screw it to the looks.

Especially in this the classic section? As loads of people love the classic gear, but surely it's as much aesthetic as the sound that comes out?

Furthermore as all amps sound the same etc etc, surely it's at least a 50% visually driven hobby?
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As we take 80% of the information around us from what we see then looks drive our expectations of what we hear
 
I don’t think that Briks & LK series black boxes, and Naim Olive series could be described as Bling. I suppose that the Meridian 100/200/500 series do look slightly better.

But compared with the sheer good looks of a B&O system.............
 
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Major lust for this in 1980.... Radford HiFi in Windsor had this in the window for a while...
 
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