Evan, does this not surprise you?
We are in this hobby to make music.
Manufacturers are in the business to make money. (OK, most of them.) back in the early days of high end most manufacturers started out as high end enthusiasts and as such had a love of the hobby and prioritized sound first and foremost. But as the years went by most of those original owner that didn't close up shop have aged out of the business and sold out to new owners. and in most cases those new owners are most interested is how much profit can I make with relation to what I paid for the company. For them it is not a passion, it is an investment. If they can make money selling good sounding products that's great, but if they have to make a choice between better sound and higher profits on a new product 99% of the time the $s will take priority.
It's sad, but you see it happening in other industries as well. (Look at what happened to newspapers as the transitioned for family to corporate ownership.) It is just typical of the life cycle of a cottage or boutique industry, which is essentially what high end audio is.
Amen Tmazz. Audio is the most notorious field, where anyone can make any statement, claim, market whatever they want, so as to make a buck. Martin DeWulf, criminal defense attorney wrote an article "truth be told" about the audio
industry, reviewers, shills, and marketing tatics.
For general consumption.
There are thousands of similar circuits from those claiming to be designers, with virtually none being natural, true to the live instrument reference. The one common thread is that they are inept with the science. There are many many
different aspects that need addressing when designing, not just a few equations. Unfortunately, marketing tatics
always triumphs over science. However, there is no magic, or mystical applications.
Consumers, ever wonder why entities are constantly offering new models? If the designers understood all the science, they would not need to offer the new models. Maybe just a different look to appeal to customers. Another marketing technique, revolving door, go back to yesteryear to push huge buck items. How many electrolytic capacitors are in the
power supplies of each component, and how many decoupling capacitors are electrolytics.
Fortunately, there
are some higher quality recording electronics (most are quite poor). Minimizing
the complex and poor designs in the recording studio has helped sonic quality immensely. Did you know that a typical musical signal can go through 100 or more transistors, whether in ics or discrete. That is besides all the other hundreds of very poor parts, cables etc used inside the ic or discrete transistors. Here are links showing typical studio consoles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qahZ-whM6o (check at 1-2 seconds)
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=photos+of+recording+studio&id=AD963D6387A8DA6DAB81F5DA3E7C1AA3991E7A6E&form=IQFRBA&first=1&disoverlay=1 (check any)
How is anyone to design any speaker of quality when the music is so manipulated by poor electronics etc.
The reason for "Sharing Top Notch Reference Music Links" in "Music Discussion" forum is to allow one to check their own system. And yes, there are absolutely incredible recordings for those in the know.
Although most links are YouTube Premium (a few from Tidal), one can still assess their systems quality to a pretty descent extent.
Thank you Tmazz for your excellent post and points.
cheers
steve
ps. One other point. When my brother and I (and one or two in our class) received our reel to reel tape deck, we would record ourselves using our mic, our upgraded amp/system. We would then playback what we sang (we were not very good). The recorded was so close to the live, we would say we could hardly tell the difference.
We were between 12 - 14 years old.