A good sticky idea???

[Villainstone 10+ year member]

I was thinking. One of the greatest issues I personally have run into when it came to buying audio gear is brand quality. I can look at specs and tell if product is better than another. I know the higher the RMS the better, and I learned to look at the voltage that the item was tested at to get that spec. So specs are fairly easy to read in determining which product is better, or more appropriate. The one thing that I seem to always run into is if the product is a good quality brand or not. I have learned what some good brands are and what brands to avoid completely. But I am still such a noob and am restricted only to the brands I know are good.

So here is the suggestion for sticky. I suppose it would need to be updated regularly as brands are bought out or change marketing strategies. I am also aware that what one guy things is a good brand others might not have the same opinion. But we all know that some brands have a very good reputation and have seated themselves with a seal of quality. I think it would be great idea for someone or a few ppl to get together and make a list of quality brands for low end, entry level, high end, and I suppose competition. Any more input?

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[brynm 10+ year member]

Way to subjective a topic.

 

[whitedragon551 5,000+ posts]

High RMS doesnt make a product better and the voltage they "test" at can be faked.

There are a few issues I can think of. First issue with this is brands. Every brand has a low, mid, and high level of quality. For example Lanzar. They have they generic junk like the Lanzar Heritage series. But they also have some very nice mid-high level stuff like their Opti line. So the same company could/will be listed in multiple places. It will be hard to determine which lines of each brand will fall into each category.

Second is what are the requirements for each level (low, mid, high quality)? Will they be based on THD, SN Ratio, if they do rated power or not, internal components, etc? Alot of those numeric specs can be faked in testing to make them appear better on paper than they actually are.

 

[cyn 10+ year member]

so basically to find out if something is junk or not... test it... clamp it.. see what kind of real numbers you get...

would need to have manufacturers supply someone that can clamp and test the product to post into real world situations with stock electrical / upgraded electrical and so forth... something that manufacturers won't do, and would be a big time consuming project for people to do also... if you want to know.. ask someone about a product a lot of people on here have tested some stuff out and so forth ... just my .02

 

[Villainstone 10+ year member]

Well then how would one know what brands are good and what ones to avoid without risking their hard earned money learning the hard way?

 

[whitedragon551 5,000+ posts]

Well then how would one know what brands are good and what ones to avoid without risking their hard earned money learning the hard way?

Asking. A general rule of thumb is to look at fuse rating. If an amp claims it can do 5000wrms, but only has 40a of fusing chances are it wont do 5000wrms if its hit by lightning.

 

[wenn_du_weinst 10+ year member]

This would be a huge (that is putting it lightly) disaster as soon as a fan boy saw another brand put higher then their brand.

The only way to avoid buying garbage is to do a ton of research before purchasing

 

[sacsking916 5,000+ posts]

A thread about a thread. Good idea but would cost too much to have the same person test them all.

 

[kramer_212 10+ year member]

A thread about a thread. Good idea but would cost too much to have the same person test them all.

lolz

 

[martiandancer31 10+ year member]

This would be a huge (that is putting it lightly) disaster as soon as a fan boy saw another brand put higher then their brand. The only way to avoid buying garbage is to do a ton of research before purchasing

like, for example, if somebody suggested that a $50 selenium PA driver could sound better than some high-end focal thing under certain circumstances, somebody would probably get angry about that.

 

[Villainstone 10+ year member]

Well I thought it would be a good idea. I mean its not like anyone would be forced into anything. I was just thinking that it would be a helpful idea. I know that when I was starting my research I didnt know what to look for accept the name brands which I founded weren't all that great. Now I have a solid budget build and its with brands I never even heard of lol. So it made sense to me for an experienced builder to make a nice list of brands and series that are worth buying. Oh well just a thought.

 

[675R 10+ year member]

I had no idea also. But I also knew not to buy the cheapo stuff. 5 minutes of research on a manufacturer's website will reveal they have entry level, mid level, and expert level audio equipment. Generally, I knew that mid levels from reputable brands would be all I would need. All a matter of a little research.

 

[i2ain2thunder 10+ year member]

Audio equipment beyond the specs which you mentioned you already know how to read, are highly objective. It isn't as simple as the specs otherwise we would know the top equipment. There are brands that are more well known as producing equipment people generally like, but that's about as good as it gets, even still though you have enough people that think those brands or equipment are trash.

We all do the same things, talk and talk and talk and talk to people, look at specs, watch videos, go to comps and listen to things, then make up our own minds to try something that is in our budget, even with all that I'm sure almost all of us have bought equipment that were disappointing to them. There is no perfect safegaurd against spending your money on something you actually will end up not liking. But there are always return policies //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif I buy stuff all the time, try it out and return it.

The only way to do something good enough online would be to have someone with adequate recording gear record the sounds of different equipment with different music in different vehicles.....and as someone has already mentioned that would cost WAYYYY too much.

Some people are so afraid of buying something they've never heard that they always get their products from shops where they can listen to it first....that's always an option if you're that afraid.

 

[audioholic 5,000+ posts]

This has been tried before. Not as a sticky that I remember, but making such a list up. It was a train wreck, for many of the reasons other people have already mentioned here.

 

[murph 10+ year member]

I mentioned making a thread listing all subwoofer brands and their subwoofers. Each subwoofer would state "real" power handling and if it was even worth buying. This would help with brand perception so people can realize some "bad" brands have a few good subs in their line up