Wow! My analogy to vintage cars was purely from the pride of ownership perspective. Nevertheless since a couple of folks have responded, let me develop the analogy further, just for fun.
Vintage sports cars for the consumer had significant trickle down technology from the R&D that went into race cars, just think of Aston Martin, Jaguar, MG, Bugatti, Ferrari, Porsche, Mercedes, even Renault and even Honda, Subaru and so on. Of course today F1 relies on technology adaptation and the only thing that trickles down is brand positioning.
If you think about the first real consumer Hi-Fi, most of the offerings were adapted from broadcast and professional requirements to spin records in a consistent fashion in studios and radio stations. The rational for developing the Technics / Matsushita, Sony, Victor, EMT, Garrard consumer decks etc. came from a new market demand. Many of these offerings were rebranded for the newly emerging high end retail market.Consumer Audio developed quickly as the need for high quality home record players developed and some companies such as Dual, AR and later Linn became were really pure play consumer brands (the Dual company history is particularly interesting, but I can't think of a Dual deck that is iconic today) because the price of entry was low, very little Intellectual Property protection, no regulatory requirements / standards and hence no real barriers to entry. Today that whole business model remains alive and well in consumer audio! Most of us have little insight to the PRO business, but some of the best stuff available today for the consumer comes from audio companies supplying the PRO market, such as VTl. Spectron etc. So I don't argue with the previous post that there is trickle down technology coming into retail products.
However, in vintage audio, the trickle down technology for those rim drive and DD decks came from broadcast requirements, not mass consumer product development (which would be trickle up I guess). Tape would be an even better example. So I reject the notion that high end turntables were developed as a by product of mass consumer R&D budgets. Now, today there may exceptions, such as Marantz, but you can't argue with the reality that these vintage tables garnering so much attention here are all iterations of broadcast products. The specialty esoteric products from such companies as Micro-Seiki, Kenwood, Nakamichi, Luxman, and even Pioneer were purely developed for consumer markets and relied on high tolerance engineering and smart circuit design that was very specific to the turntable platform for esoteric products. No different to the fine engineering that went into the real sports cars, Alpha, Allards, Jensen, Austin-Healeys, Studebaker, Triumph, TVR, etc etc.
Now frankly, the sports car market was not a lot different, many brands, no barriers to entry other than money, not sustainable, but still highly desirable to own today. I don't think high end audio is a lot different. Some brands come and go in the night and others such as Linn, Naim, ARC, B&W, Spendor, Quad, Manaplanar, VTL, Martin Logan, McIntosh remain (and some changed hands and got refinanced a couple of times) and lets not forget the Accuphase type of companies - another lust of mine.
So, when you jump into a 1960's E-Type, DB7, Corvette, or 911 it does not really matter if the specs don't meet that latest turbo - it is the whole experience that counts - and that was the point of my analogy and I rest my case.
Steve
