It was more exciting for me than worrying lol, perhaps that’s a problem I should get checked out
I had heard this exact model at a show, but the show conditions were weird, and now after getting it into my own setup it sounds vastly different, but in a good way. I also had a few friends who spoke highly of verity as well.
Well, it can be easy, it just might take time, you will just need to seek down a dealer or go to a show basically. Basically be willing to fly or drive or whatever to hear one. But it’s not something that’s going to be a local affair for most people unless you lucked out and live near somewhere that sells what you are looking for. @Pr3ssAltF4 actually heard verity speakers (potentially this same model among others) at dealer close to him in the past iirc
Likely because you shouldn’t be buying a speaker of this price off reviews. Verity has been somewhat of a sleeper brand, people always seem impressed with them at shows or demos, but they don’t get any coverage or hype at this point
Yep
Yep
Perhaps
In a typical process you’d likely instead get in contact with one of their established dealers and go from there rather than directly with the mfg. At least that’s what I’d think you would do. Not sure because I like to buy things more discreetly from people I know personally if possible, so I take more risk in doing that
I am really happy for you. To see your glowing comments, considering your extensive experience, is very heartwarming. For all the help you have given us this is a reward you truly deserve. Enjoy!!
A lot of dealers when you are looking at this sort of spend will let you trial components in your house, some might requires a BIG deposit though.
But your generally limited in this regard to what local dealers carry, and often not just in terms of brands, but which models they have on hand.
Selling stuff at this level is almost always done through dealers, either as trade ins, or in some cases dealers will take stuff on commission.
For the most part yes, but will still depend on how physically far you are from them, there are cases where they might not purely due to distance (may be speaking from experience here lol)
It’s uncommon to buy anything really really high end direct from mfg, most all are through dealers or other connections, although there are a growing list of exceptions as more companies transition to the direct sale type thing
The reason I was assuming a manufacturer’s component to a sale is the fact that it would take major commitment from a dealer to even have one of these units in stock, let a lone a few in a variety of finishes etc. Is there the usual 40% or so dealer markup at this level of pricing?
I know people value the first hand purchase experience and exclusivity or what have you more than the dealer markup. Someone has to take the retail purchase price devaluation. Then again, anyone spending over $100k to buy new speakers is likely not worried about pricing in the first place.
High end dealers carry a surprising amount of gear at price ranges you’d think the inventory costs would be untenable. Though different finishes would likely require a special order and generally you wouldn’t demo the pair your buying anyway, unless the dealer cut you a deal on that pair.
They stock the really high end stuff in part because they can use it to get people in the door even if a buyer steps down in the product range before they buy, buyers like that often trade up later.
Yes markup is much the same, a dealer might cut you a break if they think they can sell you other things later. It’s generally easier to get a break on higher priced items for obvious reasons.
This is all about relationships, when I was still into guitars, my local guitar shop wouldn’t even pretend sticker price is what I’d pay if they had something interesting in stock.
The few dealers I’ve talked to make a lot of their money off relatively few customers.
It’s an investment in their store and company, to have a proper reference system, it’s also something they use as a learning tool for themselves from what I’ve been told, getting deep experience with a very well put together system gives them further reference of what’s capable, what actually sounds good for the money, and perceived value.
For the dealers I know this is basically the case, they don’t even bother giving me sticker anymore and just straight away tell me the lowest price they can give me, sometimes cutting me a break further. But then again I’m sure I’ve fed enough money back into them to where they aren’t really taking a hit doing that
There will just be those who constantly cycle through and buy the latest and greatest all the time, with almost same frequency that some budget iem buyers have, and those are what really fund things at times
I have a strong relationship w/ my dealer and we speak often, his shop is a tiny hole in the wall, very little square footage. He only has room for very limited supply and still has a bit over $1.5 million invested in inventory out of his own pocket. Any of these items sold off the floor would obviously be an “open box special” where he is lucky to simply get his outlay back and take a complete wash on how much it actually cost him to keep the lights on while that product was on his floor for customers to hear and fondle. He is happy to make 10-20 large sales a year, these sales keep the lights on and everyone basically fed. It’s folks like me who simply make purchases at the low level buying his “buy-backs”, trade-ins, open box specials and whatever other crumbs we can snatch up from the larger clientele that allow him to bring new inventory in to put on the shelves for folks to experience.
The mark-up is large in high end but the sales are also of proportionate value, you have to be able to make enough though to keep the lights on and keep in the game. Same goes for so many businesses based on the same model, every other week could be a potential disaster for many smaller high end shops, it’s a labor of love for the most part.
I adore my buddy, his dedication and great attitude which is why i stay as loyal as possible.
Complete thread derailment but this is very critical. You’d have to think that a lot of these small dealers do it because it’s a way to make a living doing what they love. It’s a business but it’s a passion and hobby for them also
So I got some nicer and more appropriate source gear on loan, a Lamm LL1.1 Signature pre and ML3 Signature power amps, actual worlds difference from the impera ii ref and diana forte, within seconds I knew these were no competition. Unfortunately this also fully exposed the weakness of the kassandra, so I moved my entire digital frontend from my desk to my living room, and boy was that ever an improvement.
Again this is hard to really comment on, but I will say I don’t think I’ve ever been so willing and eager to hand over the cash to own this level of source gear. Now I just need to sell off more stuff so I don’t bankrupt myself lol. At least these have the same pattern as the verity of dropping by at least half when used, and since these are demo units it’s close enough to that to just pay a bit more and not mess around anymore
Also, the preamp fucking sucks in terms of usability, it’s miserable, since it’s a monoblock preamp you control volume on both chassis and have to match it on each channel, of course no remote either. But with this sound I guess I’ll live with it
You also bet your ass I will be plugging both the mysphere and susvara into these to see how it is
It’s a somewhat mix of cables unfortunately, don’t have enough of the same, still sounds awesome though
I’ve somehow ended up with each signal path almost fully isolated even on an electrical level. It’s not fun having every damn component have a separate power supply, I already thought the totaldac system was too many boxes
Also after all this is fucking set up and money is basically going to change hands, it’s mentioned that it gets even better with another pair of ML3 for bi-amping. Sorry but that’s too rich for my blood
After spending some more time with the amps, this is likely the closest thing to true realism I think I’ve ever experienced, the most balance I’ve ever heard in a system period. But if I talk about it further I’d just be gushing and that’s not really helpful lol. I hesitated making a Verity thread and will hesitate on making a Lamm thread, because I think I can’t really say anything that offers any real insight, since I have no real comparisons to make, and imo comparisons are really somewhat necessary to give context to things, but I just haven’t heard many things of this level with enough time and confidence to even attempt to make comparisons lol
I might make a Lamm thread though, because while I think their amps are largely too high for most to consider, their preamps actually are pretty attainable used, they drop a ton on the used market (you can find some under 5k), and are quite excellent (even their lower end ones) to where there a solid value, so I could potentially justify making that thread lol
I’d like to talk about this stuff more, but I just hate talking about stuff that I can’t offer comparisons to, because I don’t feel like it adds value otherwise
Should we tag this post and use it to slap you down the next time you start talking upgrades?
I also was thinking about your situation due to something I ran across online and had a question. Do you think that at that $50K or higher level of gear that DACs are not as impactful an upgrade as say speakers, amps, preamps?
I ask because you pretty much changed your entire 2 ch system and I wonder how you’d reassess the Pacific or even if you’d have gone the Total DAC ecosystem route had you just upgraded your amp/pre/speakers instead? Sounds like from a budget perspective the Total DAC is still the lowest price point in you new chain so it may not really be a cost relevance question but it got me thinking.
Do DACs matter less the higher up you go in at that elite level of gear?
Well I think this is somewhat the end of the line for me when it comes to preamps and power amps, the dac will likely get an upgrade to a mk3 eventually, or potentially swapped to something else, but considering the synergy with this setup, and I can actually say that the next step above (if there is one) is largely unattainable and something that wouldn’t make sense anyways since I’d really focus on the room at that point now that sources are where they should be.
No, I just think that there’s less dac options that can really match the proper performance needed for this system at prices I can afford. Most people at this level don’t even run dacs, most are strictly vinyl because you can continue to go up higher than you can with dacs and there’s more options at this price point and above. I was thinking of upgrading that next, but in terms of moving up, I really don’t have too many options, I think I’ve pretty much almost hit the top of what’s capable in the digital realm from what I’ve already personally heard, there’s only a few other digital solutions that I would expect to be actual upgrades and those would easily cost triple to upgrade that from what I have now. So I think it’s largely more an issue of a void of dacs at the price point I’d want to look in rather than it not mattering (sorta like the void you see from 300 to 700, but from 30k to 70k lol). I also flat out don’t have the money to beef up my dac right now even if there were options lol. I’ve just continued to boost the totaldac with more add on options and extra boxes and that has worked, but I can’t really do that anymore, so I will just stick where I am.
Another thing to consider is when looking at someone’s dac is what it’s being fed with, that’s equally important at this point, so I’d group the entire thing together as the digital frontend. So on it’s own the twelve seems fairly cheap compared to the rest of the gear, but if you factor in all that goes into the digital side of my setup, it’s actually not all that unbalanced
I would be curious, but I just need to not think about it lol. Unless I can convince my friend to bring the lampi I sold to him back over to try (unlikely, and I wouldn’t want to hassle him anyways), I likely won’t know. But I might be able to try a horizon within a year or two, who knows. I think in terms of raw value and bang for the buck for new prices, the totaldac is the best higher end dac I’ve gotten value wise, the kassandra comes in second there. But that being said, for used prices those don’t come down alot, where lampi really do drop a fair bit used esp if they are an older version/generation
No, and I am saying that because of the recent tests I’ve done with the kassandra in the system vs the totaldac, showed me it clearly mattered just as much as any other part in the system
So honestly not really, been very busy, and I haven’t been able to listen as often. And I’ve also had the mysphere hooked up to that chain for far too long hogging speaker time lol. But really though I don’t know how much more I can articulate with anything meaningful since I have no comparisons or reference points to give tbh
