Interesting to note that those of us who find GanFets superior in sound quality to tubes or SS, must be falling for marketing schtick or the newest thing. I guess over 35 years of owning tube products, and high quality SS, doesn't immunize me from marketing. I guess I just can't hear the difference and I must want this inexpensive GanFet product because, well, I only have 4 pair of high quality tube monoblocks in the house. Oh well, grateful to be educated...
Only buy from long lived companies? I guess I'll try to get rid of my M3's. How about LTA or Don Sachs or.... Probably should never have purchased my George Wright 2A3 monos, some of the finest sounding tube amps I've owned. Resale value? That's comical in the high end. For those us who've been buying/selling used for years, we know that, except for truly classic gear, the depreciation of high end kit, just walking out the door of the stereo shop (what's that?) is obscene. Yes, some pieces hold their value better than most, but it's a handful of pieces that retain anything greater than 60% or so of their MSRP post-sale.
Likewise, I guess nothing revolutionary about a 5 lb amp that, to my ears, and apparently others as well, equals or surpasses in sound quality any amp I've owned and with an over 80% efficiency, etc., etc. The next time you pay shipping costs for repair of your big SS amp, you might rethink that sentiment.
You get what you pay for? Whatever that means, I find it just plain silly. I've written previously about a high end marque that used, in a $4,000 transport, an $18 ASUS drive (which incidentally broke every year for the almost three years I owned the transport). Great fun shipping the unit back/forth (until I just bought the drives myself off Amazon and replaced them myself). I remember when my Levinson 590 CD player drawer broke, twice over 3 years, and gosh Levinson only charged several hundred dollars to replace it on top of the shipping costs to and fro each time. Glad that player only cost several thousand dollars. I won't mention the many crap x-over parts and drivers in various expensive speaker lines I've owned. Likewise, the mediocre parts in amps costing upwards of $5K, etc., etc. The only thing high price reliably demonstrates is high price. It should be the case that high price connotes better quality parts, construction, and the like but too often it's not. And, yet, in the same breath I hear complaining about AR! That "disconnect" should demonstrate the fallibility of such generalizations. If I wanted to name examples of high priced kit that uses embarrassingly cheap parts I could easily do so but I think it's in bad taste.
In all, the generalizations about high price connoting quality or reliability, or longevity of the enterprise equals security in ownership, or whatever, seem overblown. I've never enjoyed a system like I currently do using the MiniGan monos and M3's with, oh no, another small short-lived company Schiit's Freya+. Hell, I'm really in trouble here because my DAC is an Okto Research, another short-lived foreign enterprise producing a revolutionary product which John Atkinson concluded was one of the best measuring DAC's he's seen and the equal of the $15,000 MBL (but I guess at 1/10 the price of the MBL, it just can't be competitive in quality...) I won't even dare to comment on my Jay's Audio CDT2-MKIII which simply blows away the far more expensive transports I've owned (@ $2,500). I'm grateful to own the courage and curiosity to try other than the usual high priced fare... It's been the most gratifying part of my audio experience over the last almost 40 years.
