To take this a bit further and a bit off topic, something that bugs me as an electronic engineer involved in the design of hi fi equipment, and as a OMB manufacturer, is that companies are kind of "required" to build things to the spec which the layperson who's read too many hi fi mags etc imagines to be important, rather than to the specs which actually are important!!
ie huge gold plated speaker connectors which could easily cope with literal welding currents are considered important by the layperson when in fact something ok for 10 Amps is fine.
All sockets are required to be gold plated whether or not it makes a difference (it can to long term reliability, slightly, but that's all).
An expensive to make external PSU is "required" whether or not a wallwart is more than adequate for a specific job
Other power supplies are often made vastly bigger, heavier and more expensive than needed cos it looks impressive and "feel the weight of that!".
A non captive mains lead is "required", to satisfy those who think mains cables make a difference.
Tone controls (very useful to many) must be eschewed because the layperson won't believe they can be transparent enough.
Amps must be 100WPC even if you never go beyond number 2 on the vol control cos the layperson thinks more power
always equals more control and ease to the sound.
External PSU's must be provided even for equipment that is not in any way compromised by having the PSU internal... cos the layperson thinks external ones are
always better (yes sensitive high gain things like a phono stage are better with an external supply but many other items are not).
just a few examples there... (yes there are a
small number of ifs and buts to that list above which I am well aware of)
Much of this is of course the fault of certain manufacturers who exploit the lack of technical knowledge of the layperson in order to increase profits... They will eg make a new CD player which is the same as the last one they made but which puts the power supply in a separate box, needlessly, and then market it as a two box CD player which for the sake of an extra metal box and an extra umbilical power connector is now £800 more than the last model!! The problem is laypeople then think a two box CD player is technically superior and worth twice as much money, so woe betide you if you offer an expensive player in one box... it just can't be any good to said layperson...
A good example is a Roksan Attessa 3 box CD player I have in for repair at the moment.... The PSU for the DAC is maybe 10 times or more heavy duty than required.... but then puts its power out via a pair of 20p 1 Amp voltage regulators! The DAC is a virtually empty box and there is plenty of room inside the main transport for it all to fit in there without any compromise... Try selling it for £8000 (or whatever... something like that originally IIRC) if it was all in one box! But no, to the layperson it's twice as good, and worth three times as much just cos it is indeed split into three boxes.
To me the most bizarre thing is the way that once conned into believing all this techno bollox, people are offended by any attempt to disabuse them of such false notions... it's like they WANT to be bullshitted to and conned with false techno babble. Maybe there are marketing people reading this and thinking "FFS doesn't he get that this is how things work and that it's our job to make things thus? You
have to play the game old boy.." but it will always seem bizarre to me and be a current I perpetually row against
