| Editorial April 2005
Price is Irrelevant
In some respects, the price of a
home-theater component is totally irrelevant. But before you send me a barrage of frenzied
e-mails telling me I’ve lost my mind, let me explain.
Price is irrelevant when it comes to a product meeting
the claims made for it by the manufacturer or reseller. Too often, reviewers and
consumers alike give a pass to a component because it has a low price. This is true of all
types of gear, and it has got to stop.
Is it not a given that, when a manufacturer or dealer makes
a claim for a product, it should, at the very least, actually meet that claim? If it is
supposed to output progressive-scan video, it needs to output progressive-scan video. When
the box says that it has a simplified menu system for easy setup, it should be easy to set
up via a simplified menu system. Whatever a subwoofer’s claimed output capability, it
should meet that specification when woofing in your home. Whether we’re talking about
a $199 DVD player or a $7000 surround-sound processor, if it’s being sold with an
advertised set of capabilities, it darn well better be capable of them.
The majority of performance and feature claims are easy
enough to verify by reviewers and consumers. If a receiver is supposed to have built-in
Dolby Pro Logic II decoding, this can be tested for and verified in fairly short order.
With that ease of verification in mind, most of those types of features turn out to be
present as advertised. Items more difficult to assess are acoustical specifications for
speakers and power ratings for amplifiers -- things you would need test gear to verify.
For instance, if a subwoofer is rated by its manufacturer as having an internal 2700W
amplifier, how are you and I to know if it’s true? Are we simply to take it on faith?
Sometimes we must.
But at other times, a single specification can be
crosschecked against real-world conditions to give us a pretty good idea of whether or not
the company is producing what it says it is. For instance, if a receiver is rated to
deliver power into five channels driven continuously into 4 ohms, you can always ask your
dealer to connect a batch of 4-ohm speakers to the bugger and let the volume control fly.
If it doesn’t shut down while reproducing the battle scenes from Master and
Commander: The Far Side of the World, you can be fairly confident you’re getting
what you’re paying for.
This coin has a flip side, however. To be fair to the gear
makers, don’t expect to get anything that’s not advertised, even if the
product is expensive and, in your opinion, should have this or do that. The primary
responsibilities of being a good consumer are: Don’t make assumptions. Read the fine
print. Ask questions. Test things out. But don’t think that because other, similar
products have feature A, or because feature B is becoming de rigueur in this
product genre, your Model 1000 will include it by default.
I think it’s pretty safe to say that 1) when a product
performs as advertised and 2) the consumer thoroughly educates him- or herself about the
product before buying, a happy purchasing decision is likely to be made. When one of the
responsibilities listed above is shirked, however, all bets are off.
At the end of the day, price is irrelevant when it
comes to a manufacturer and/or dealer honestly representing a product and you being happy
with the purchase when you get it home. Whatever you pay for it, it should do what it is
advertised to do, and that’s the bottom line. Your expectations of a product’s
quality are tied to price, as might be support after the sale, long-term
reliability, and a host of other considerations. But hold folks to their word, and make
sure you know what that word is before plunking down your cash at the checkout
line.
...Jeff Fritz
editor@hometheatersound.com |
