advertisement


Son et Image Montreal 2014: Naim disappears up it's own a@*%!

Splityew said:
The only room you couldn't casually wander into was Naim, which had a closed door guarded by bouncers behind a red velvet rope. You had to make an appointment to get in by handing over your email details and then get in line.

As I was leaving the door to the Naim room was actually open so I thought 'why don't I just join the end of the queue and walk in?' then I noticed the people handing over their 'Naim VIP' passes to the bouncers, I mean please this is just hifi isn't it?
Click to expand...

Just look at it this way:
  • you ended up not wasting time listening to some very iffy overpriced equipment, and;
  • you avoided being associated with the wrong sort of people.
 
Capitalism is ultimately a destructive force for hi-fi, just as with everything else in life.

The object moves from from producing great equipment available to many, over to bolstering the bottom line in a fight for economic survival.

Sad but there you are.
 
Robert said:
Capitalism is ultimately a destructive force for hi-fi, just as with everything else in life.
Click to expand...

Yes, just look at the fantastic range of kit which came out of the former USSR in it's heyday, and North Korean kit is simply, and possibly quite literally, to die for.
 
Robert said:
Capitalism is ultimately a destructive force for hi-fi, just as with everything else in life.

The object moves from from producing great equipment available to many, over to bolstering the bottom line in a fight for economic survival.
Click to expand...

And yet great sound is available more cheaply and easily than was ever the case under the Socialist flat earth regime!
 
Robert said:
Capitalism is ultimately a destructive force for hi-fi, just as with everything else in life.

The object moves from from producing great equipment available to many, over to bolstering the bottom line in a fight for economic survival.

Sad but there you are.
Click to expand...

For every stupidly expensive Naim Signature, there are probably 2-3 million Squeezeboxes. Both products of filthy capitalist companies.

Chris
 
JADISMAN said:
Yes, just look at the fantastic range of kit which came out of the former USSR in it's heyday, and North Korean kit is simply, and possibly quite literally, to die for.
Click to expand...

Joe Hutch said:
And yet great sound is available more cheaply and easily than was ever the case under the Socialist flat earth regime!
Click to expand...

Tut tut - no historical perspective of understanding of the underlying economics. Not to mention some very strange ideas on N Korea....

Naim started building kit for friends on the kitchen table, morphed into building good kit at sensible prices in reasonable quantity, now the market is forcing them to sell bling to millionaires in order to satisfy the shareholders.

The cheap goods available today take advantage of slave labour and are built down to a price, such that most will be in landfill within the decade. Just like Naim, these companies too will need to change tack and exploit new markets in order to satisfy their shareholders. Of course the electronics industry isn't immune from the economic pitfalls of capitalist overproduction. You expand production in a massively competitive arena which by its very nature demands that you pay your workers (the consumer) lower wages. Lower wages = lower consumption = crisis of overproduction. Whoops.

There is nothing good here.

Mescalito said:
For every stupidly expensive Naim Signature, there are probably 2-3 million Squeezeboxes. Both products of filthy capitalist companies.

Chris
Click to expand...

2-3 million pieces of tacky cheap crap built down to a price due to market forces.
It sounds nice of course, but that's because cheap electronics does sound fine, regardless.
My point stands - most of these SBTs will be in landfill within a few years and not just because the tech moves, simply because there is no money in keeping them working.
 
Robert said:
Tut tut - no historical perspective of understanding of the underlying economics.

Naim started building kit for friends on the kitchen table, morphed into building good kit at sensible prices in reasonable quantity, now the market is forcing them to sell bling to millionaires in order to satisfy the shareholders.

The cheap good available today take advantage of slave labour and are build down to a price, such that most will be in landfill within the decade. Just like Naim, these companies too will need to change tack and exploit new markets in order to satisfy their shareholders.

There is nothing good here.
Click to expand...

Superb sound quality at Dansette prices is plenty good enough for most people, Robert. And slave labour? The slave labourer's you refer to are enjoying higher standards of living than they could ever have dreamed of.

Chris
 
Serious demos tend to be all but impossible at shows.
Popular rooms tend to be heaving with noisy show visitors. In order to give a worthwhile demo a ticket only solution may be the only one that works to make it serious.
It would probably make sense to have a room for browsers which is open as well, or give up on making any attempt at a serious demo at a show, as most manufacturers have.

I never bother with ticket only demos since I am too disorganised to get a ticket in time. FWIW many of the demos at the hifi news show were like this.
 
Mescalito said:
Superb sound quality at Dansette prices is plenty good enough for most people, Robert. And slave labour? The slave labourer's you refer to are enjoying higher standards of living than they could ever have dreamed of.

Chris
Click to expand...

Capitalism is a massive block on development, in hi-fi as in all other areas.
Development is contingent on satisfying a bottom line and staying alive within a contracted market. Development should be aligned to needs and requirement, not economics.

Superb sound at Dansette prices is of course good enough for people not accustomed to the finer things, and of course under your preferred system they never will be accustomed to those finer things since they sit out of reach.

In hi-fi we're quite lucky in that you put cheap crap in a box and it sounds very good - that's because processing audio signals is actually trivially easy in 2014. In other areas more concerned with health and living standards things are rather different.

Living standards are relative.
If someone is taken out of abject poverty, starvation and malnutrition and placed one notch up the ladder to subsistence level, that is a welcome step forward, perhaps even a step beyond their dreams but it remains utterly inadequate given the earth's resources and our capacity to think and organise.
 
Robert said:
Capitalism is a massive block on development, in hi-fi as in all other areas.
Development is contingent on satisfying a bottom line and staying alive within a contracted market. Development should be aligned to needs and requirement, not economics.

Superb sound at Dansette prices is of course good enough for people not accustomed to the finer things, and of course under your preferred system they never will be accustomed to those finer things since they sit out of reach.

In hi-fi we're quite lucky in that you put cheap crap in a box and it sounds very good - that's because processing audio signals is actually trivially easy in 2014. In other areas more concerned with health and living standards things are rather different.

Living standards are relative.
If someone is taken out of abject poverty, starvation and malnutrition and placed one notch up the ladder to subsistence level, that is a welcome step forward, perhaps even a step beyond their dreams but it remains utterly inadequate given the earth's resources and our capacity to think and organise.
Click to expand...

Rare for me to agree with Robert, but I suspect his political take on events is going to become more popular. You don't have to be a genius to see that conspicuous consumption and preventing global warming are opposites. And late-stage capitalism isn't working well at all....the alternative to what we have now isn't North Korea but a philosophy which isn't driven by the notion that markets are 'perfect; for a while capitalism was a good servant, then it became master. Can't last, isn't lasting well at all...
 
YNWOAN said:
Sorry, it wasn't my intention to misrepresent you, but you did write this in your opening post:



I understand why you may have felt Naim's approach was pretentious, but pretentious is somewhat indicative of high-end audio (and the new statement Naim amps are very much aimed at the high-end).

I've also encountered the 'give your email details' scenario before - I just asked politely if I really had to and they said no, not if I really didn't want to - so I didn't and was still given a ticket.
Click to expand...

Yes I did write that about joining the queue, but it was an internal dialogue with myself, in reality I had no intention of gate-crashing, it was a 'what if?' suggestion to myself, and at the exact moment I posed that question I saw the 'Naim VIP' ticket in the hand of the guy at the end of the queue. At that point I imagined trying to get in and the bouncers jumping over the red-velvet rope and having me spread-eagled up against the wall. The whole 'attitude', for want of a better word, seemed so easy to parody, I could go on about helicopters overhead and being bundled into an SUV, but I won't.

Just for the record, I have nothing against Naim, they can build what they want and sell it for what they want, and the people who buy it can do what they want with their own money. At the end of the day, I'm sure it does sound stunning, that was never my point. As for the people who registered for an appointment then came back and queued, good for them they made the effort I didn't want to. They were there because they appreciate good quality audio and just like me enjoy looking at stuff you would never actually buy. But unlike them, I found Naim's presentation a bit too 'Kanye West' and was put off.

Compare and contrast to the Tannoy room next door that I was actually on my way to at the time to see and hear for the first time a huge pair of Canterbury's. Had the roles been reversed then Tannoy would have headlined the thread and not Naim.
 
Capitalism and democracy are truly rubbish, but what are the alternatives?

I think transparency needs to be added as a third principle in its own right, weaving into the above two, if we are to survive. Maybe t'internet is the key? Actually, I'm somehow feeling if the internet became no longer free and global we'd be heading for deep trouble ...
 
darrenyeats said:
Capitalism and democracy are truly rubbish, but what are the alternatives?

I think transparency needs to be added as a third principle in its own right, weaving into the above two, if we are to survive. Maybe t'internet is the key?
Click to expand...

I apologise if this starts a war, but here goes

Does it concern you that you cannot think of a workable alternative to Capitalism and democracy, does it indicate lack of ability to visualise something better or is there really nothing better than capitalism and democracy?

This is not saying you or anyone has a lack of imagination, or is stupid, but is it possible that it is in the interests of the status quo to discredit any other system and only cite those examples where alternatives have existed and failed, based on how it defines the criteria of both success and failure?

I live with a social anthropologist and human geographer so I had my deprogramming done almost 20 years ago.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.


advertisement


Back
Top