Half A Million Hi-Fi?
Posted by: easeback1 on 29 October 2018
Got to hear my first half-million hi-fi system the other day. Half a million British pounds, in case you were wondering. Still not quite sure what to think.
The Naim / Focal dealer in Bangkok invited me to their grand opening. More of a re-opening really: they've been open for a while, but closed for a few days to move some shelves around. It was a chance to pick up my new 250 DR and also get an earful of their unveiling of ND555 / Statement with a pair of Focal Grande Utopia EM Evo.
Total damage for this lot comes in at ~ 21m Thai baht, which translates to not much change out of half a million quid. A fair chunk of that goes to the Thai government in import duties.
The Focal Grande Utopias (265kg apiece) are quite terrifying when wedged into a standard size demo room and that's before playing any music. I calculated the complete system weighed almost a tonne. Probably best installed downstairs in a residential setting, although in fact we were on the second floor. Still, the Bentleys and Range Rovers on sale next door in the Siam Paragon Mall are somewhat heavier, so the floor construction must be solid enough.
Jason from Naim clicked through some demo tracks to a roomful of bemused Thais, many of whom seemed preoccupied recording the event on their mobiles. In between songs, he attempted to enlighten the audience on the joys of discrete regulation and the like, which, even with the benefit of a translator, seemed to get lost somewhere in the inky blackness between the towering speakers.
How to describe the sound? I can't really. Huge. Immense. Awesome. Loud. I think it's partly a scale problem for me. It's so different from how I usually listen to music. Perhaps that's why a simple recording of acoustic guitar plus vocals on the mega-system gave me an odd sense of a 20 foot tall musician playing a Ford Escort-sized guitar.
I sneaked a solo listen the next day when I went to pick up my 250 and got to play some of my own favourites. Yes, absolutely incredible everything etc, but for some reason it didn't make me feel quite as ecstatic as expected for a system that requires you sell your house in order to acquire it. I'm sure I could get used to the scale if I had the money and the space, although walls and a ceiling seem a bit restrictive for the Grande Utopias. A large field might work better.
I cut my listening session short, out of a growing fear that if I spent too long in the Statement stratosphere, my new 250 DR might sound like a transistor radio in comparison. But of course it doesn't. The 250 sounds great with the 272, and is quite big enough for me. For now.
rjstaines posted:So, in the event of a divorce, when SWMBO is looking to strip you of everything you own, how would you value a (for example) 500 series system?
My missus regularly threatens to 'take me to the cleaners' referring specifically to my Naim/ATC stack. I keep telling her it's not worth anything at all, but unfortunately she knows how much it's insured for on our joint contents policy (that's its replacement value).
The result of her promises to liquidate the hifi if I stray from the straight and narrow is that our marriage is one of the most secure I've ever had. I have not looked at another woman in 'that' way for more than ten years now.
Insurance value, which is usually new for old, is of course hugely different from asset (resale) value. The value in terms of divorce settlement is arbitrary, and depends on who has the better lawyer (but is nothing compared to the payment to the lawyer)
Suzy Wong posted:Been there, done that. 34 years on and she’s still here, and we have five active systems and odd bits for another couple
I like unusual euphemisms for kids. 
Let's be honest, when people reach a position in life where they have the sort of disposable funds to afford something like a Statement, there will be some who enjoy spending the money on something of that stature and magnitude as much as they enjoy listening to what it does. That's no criticism; almost all of us do our best to maximise our economic potential and once you're comfortably ahead on the income v basic expenditure graph and are doing the necessary charity funding, self-indulgence has a lot to offer.
Personally I'd find it hard to blow that much on audio unless it really did represent a small part of total funds. It'd be hard to sit in front of half a million quid's worth of stereo when there really is so much more benefit to be derived from that amount of money.
I see footballers like Beckham, Rooney etc as SMEs. Rooney was reportedly on c£200k per week at MU (widely discredited figure btw) but out of that and his other external income streams he'll be paying any number of staff and advisers that make up Wayne Rooney Ltd. It's a good thing anyway, circulating all that money from people willing to pay it to Sky & BT who funnel it through a couple of hundred high profile PL players, functioning as money channels that feed it all back into UK PLC with all the benefits that cash flow brings. We know Rooney had a Bentley & more than one Range Rover so it's not as if he's keeping all that dosh in a box under his bed. Didn't like him as a footballer one jot, but as a cash flow generator he was first rate. I expect some bright sales chap sold him a Statement to match his Bentley audio system. 