[Photon46]

Robin, I agree that you have to bear in mind the maxim that an unhappy customer tells at least ten people of their woe and the happy customer just enjoys their purchase quietly. That said, useful info can be garnered from these sorts of threads, as in: how was the issue resolved and was it handled fairly and quickly. I've had very poor customer service from one audio company and sterling service from all the others. Everyone can have a bad day, so I never made an issue of trying to trash someones reputation in forums over my one bad experience. We all know of some companies who consistently get mentioned when issues of slow repair service come up and that definitely steers me away from them.
 I also agree with BrianM about modded gear having potential issues the consumer can't evaluate prior to purchase. If a problem develops once your gear is modded, you are left in a bad place as far as manufacturer support generally. The exceptions to this rule like the Partsconnexion/Underwood Wally mods that are supported by PS Audio could definitely be a factor in your decision to modify or not. There's no doubt though that modded gear can sound better, a lot better in some cases (as is the case with the RAM HCA-2.) It's just a question of what you are comfortable with.

[dogorman]

    
Is high end gear unreliable?

In my opinion, some of it is unacceptably unreliable, and a lot of the rest is too finicky about matching. I mean to say, if the only two brands of car out there were Yugos and Jaguars, I guess I'd probably own a Jaguar, and put up with all the headaches, but when it comes to cars I don't have to: I can buy a Lexus and have 90% of the fun of the Jag, at near 100% reliability, plug'n'play. I don't have to worry about whether it will create some bizarre interaction with my garage, my parking space at work, my household wiring, or my relationship with my girlfriend. It doesn't need me to buy doubly-expensive tires or new shoes to drive with, or a different type of fuel.

By contrast, I recently had a Naim Nait5i integrated amplifier that sounded just great (maybe the best sound I've ever heard from my own rig, come to that), but which suffered from an almost comic festival of performance quirks, the climax of which was a conversation with Chris West of Naim USA, in which he asked me -- with a straight face! -- if there was a television or an incandescent light IN THE SAME ROOM.  I mean, can you imagine the nerve of some aspiring Naim-owner, having a television and an incandescent light in the same room with his home audio rig? Who does this snitty little customer think he IS?

Several people in here have mentioned Bryston -- and Bryston certainly deserves its reputation for rugged build quality -- but I had a pre-owned Bryston 3B plugged into a casually-acquired preamp from another vendor (and, in the other direction, into relatively high-efficiency speakers), and the noise floor was  so high that my girlfriend asked me if the water was running in the next room.

Manufacturers need to pay a lot more attention to real-world applicability, it seems to me -- starting with voicing their stuff in real-world living rooms and not anechoic chambers, and continuing through some sort of industry standards for amplifier input impedance and sensitivity (one for tube and one for SS?), and proceeding with all due dispatch to a major overhaul of their approach to shielding and power transformation. I mean, really, folks: in what other hobby could you reasonably expect to pay $3500 for a block of metal that can't be guaranteed to work to its own design specifications when it's plugged into your garden-variety wall outlets? It's an outrage that these guys can blame the disappointing behaviour of their temperamental, foofy crap... on YOUR ELECTRICITY. It's an OUTRAGE.

[martyo]

Smaller companies definitely cannot turn things around on a dime.   I'd say 6-8 weeks is normal, less is desirable and if it is longer than that, there should be good communication with the customer about why it is taking longer.

I would say 6-8 weeks is totally unacceptable.

I've also noted that customers tend to add the shipping time in their equations.   That alters the time drastically because it can be 7-10 working days on both sides of that equation.   

Unless you're talking having to ship freight, 200# speakers across the country, 3-5 days is all it takes from coast to coast shipping UPS.

I've had 2 issues, 1 was my doing and the other the manufacturers. His took a total of 1 week, and the one I caused was 2-1/2 weeks, from/to my front door.

[woodsyi]

Value oriented gears at any level have propensity for malfunction or blemish due to cost cutting measures.  I find most of the manufacturers on AC to offer good value and provide appropriate services (shit happens) when needed.  I just don't try to get riled up over turnaround time.  Months in service time is normal in this industry.  I just send timely reminders if needed but go on with other gears in place.  Music for me is for R&R -- not a stress inducer.   It's my personal Laissez-faire policy regarding audio hobby.  I believe good things happen to guys with good services (like repeat business or even referrals).   

[BrianM]

Manufacturers need to pay a lot more attention to real-world applicability, it seems to me -- starting with voicing their stuff in real-world living rooms and not anechoic chambers, and continuing through some sort of industry standards for amplifier input impedance and sensitivity (one for tube and one for SS?), and proceeding with all due dispatch to a major overhaul of their approach to shielding and power transformation. I mean, really, folks: in what other hobby could you reasonably expect to pay $3500 for a block of metal that can't be guaranteed to work to its own design specifications when it's plugged into your garden-variety wall outlets? It's an outrage that these guys can blame the disappointing behaviour of their temperamental, foofy crap... on YOUR ELECTRICITY. It's an OUTRAGE.

I don't disagree, but this can obviously be spun the other way, too. To borrow (somewhat lamely) from your car analogy, a Porsche GT2 isn't designed for driving around Chicago in early spring. Smooth as glass race tracks are best.  The argument is often made that higher performance gear is, and should be, more sensitive to the so-called quality of your electricity.  Personally I think that's a pretty lame cop-out, and I'm all for whatever the Lexus equivalents in audiophiledom are.  If you're required to buy a half dozen or more "tweaks" -- often cheap, rinky-dink, bizarre ones at that -- to compensate for your very expensive gear's innate shortcomings, it's kinda hard to avoid concluding that that reflects extremely poorly on the state of the art.     It's hard to know where the real truth lies, since obviously not all expensive gear is created equal and some might be better than others at mitigating whatever vaguely defined, location-specific effects of "bad" electricity.  But seriously, it's a wonder that expensive gear makers feel little to no shame about something that could seemingly be designed around easily enough.  If my customer has to go get something for 15 bucks from Herbie to make my thing work better...well, who's crazy here, me or my customer?

However, the proper "voicing" of equipment that you bring up is another can of worms; both the anechoic and the "real-world" approaches are perhaps equally justifiable depending on your priorities.  I'd say it's pretty open-and-shut that the anechoic approach has the greatest potential for realism; it just requires fewer real-world compromises at the user end.

[BrianM]

I'd like to add that I think the state of the art is just fine, and that the festival of tweaks alluded to tends rather to reflect poorly on the state of consumerism...

[dogorman]

I don't disagree systematically with anything you said, and if you find a Lexus front-end, a Lexus amp and preamp, Lexus IC's, power cords, and speaker cables, and Lexus speakers, I hope to be the second person to know about it.

The voicing issue might be an agree-to-disagree, but it does frustrate me when manufacturers chime-in on these discussion forums to say that someone's problem is the result of the fact that he isn't using the stuff properly.

The Porsche analogy is a good one, not just because it makes the counter-argument so articulately, but because it begs the come-back from me, namely that I shouldn't have to try to drive the Porsche in downtown Chicago on a spring day: I should be able to confidently buy gear from which it's reasonable to expect enough flexibility and team-play that it won't embarrass me the second time I have friends over.

...Or did I just give something away, with that last line? 

[BrianM]

I don't disagree systematically with anything you said, and if you find a Lexus front-end, a Lexus amp and preamp, Lexus IC's, power cords, and speaker cables, and Lexus speakers, I hope to be the second person to know about it.

Apart from my own stuff which I'm happy with, Bryston leaps to mind as a historically very reliable and no-nonsense high-performance brand.  I always appreciated their direction to plug your amp directly into the wall socket, for example.  (But they can't possibly know what they're talking about!)  As for cables, the parameters for good reliable operation are well known and measurable.  Belden has been making excellent cables for decades, by which I mean they're extremely good at taking, you know, copper wire, and twisting/braiding/insulating it in a very consistent fashion across whatever length of cable you require; are scrupulous about their cables measuring and performing to spec; understand the issues of L/C/R and publish their specs; and charge what ought to be charged for what is after all copper wire encased in dielectric.  I was taken aback recently that a speaker cable maker, very highly regarded around here, couldn't tell me what the specs of his cables were, as he had never measured them.  That seemed...odd.

The Porsche analogy is a good one, not just because it makes the counter-argument so articulately, but because it begs the come-back from me, namely that I shouldn't have to try to drive the Porsche in downtown Chicago on a spring day: I should be able to confidently buy gear from which it's reasonable to expect enough flexibility and team-play that it won't embarrass me the second time I have friends over.

...Or did I just give something away, with that last line? 

D'oh!

[BobRex]

Last time I checked, the local Lexus dealer still has a large service team and still does repair work on vehicles.  Same as Porsche, same as Chevy....

So getting Lexus quality doesn't mean you won't have service issues - they just treat you better when you do.

[DustyC]

Some of the smaller "cottage" firms may lack the ability to test and weed out the problem samples from their small production runs and rely on the patience of the customer while they get their act together. Over time the product "bugs" are worked out and the product becomes reliable.
I haven't had much trouble with the gear I have. A preamp had to go back for a power supply problem, but that's been it.

[groovybassist]

I must be one lucky person.  In over 20 years of buying lots of high-end gear, I've only had two problems - both with speakers.  One had a partial de-lamination of the woofer's voice-coil, the other had an intermittent buzz at certain frequencies.  Both were from well known companies and were fixed quickly under warranty.  I've been using Naim front end gear for 4 1/2 years without a single glitch - this is the longest I've had any piece of gear!

Of course now that I've said this, everything will blow up tomorrow - oh well.

-Mike

[BrianM]

Last time I checked, the local Lexus dealer still has a large service team and still does repair work on vehicles.  Same as Porsche, same as Chevy....

So getting Lexus quality doesn't mean you won't have service issues - they just treat you better when you do.

No, actually, the point was one of comparison, and Lexus does in fact (or did until recently, I haven't checked) have measurably better reliability than most if not all of its competitors.  And here's where the analogy with cars should end, because regular service of a vehicle is a given, whereas amps and such are generally supposed to play for much longer without needing to be fixed.  Or "tuned" as it were.   

[Wayner]

The Lexus was built on an automated assembly line with thousands of quality checks. The high end piece of audio was built by hand, one at a time. They really can't be compared, though they are both expensive, they are for different reasons.

Wayner

[BobRex]

While driving around deciding what's for lunch I was playing with the Lexus analogy.  Let's see if this makes any sense:

Lexus - Relatively limited production, high percieved value, high resale, high reliability/few mechanical problems, good performer but not the leader in any one aspect (braking, acceleration, top speed...), top of class finish / appearance, sells at or close to list price, brand has a certain "cachet".

Sounds like McIntosh to me.

[BrianM]

Actually though, BobRex, a Lexus is basically a gussied-up Toyota.

[BrianM]

The Lexus was built on an automated assembly line with thousands of quality checks. The high end piece of audio was built by hand, one at a time. They really can't be compared, though they are both expensive, they are for different reasons.

Wayner

Great point, BUT -- we're talking about the design approach first, not so much the assembly.  Is it a reliable design is arguably a separate question from is it well put together.

[BrianM]

Or at least, that's what I thought we were talking about...

[Wayner]

Brian,

I agree, but much of a great design is the execution. Of course many aspects to designing anything. Just imagine if we had all of the parts for a Lexus and tried to put them together in our garage. That maybe is more my point. You would end up with a pile of shi_.

Wayner

[Wayner]

Of course, if you had a Ford Pinto go thru the Lexus assembly line, it would be the best Pinto ever made....but it would still be a pile of shi_!

Wayner  aa

[woodsyi]

From what I remember Pinto wasn't that bad.  I think it was Chevy Vega that was really bad.