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I was reading one commercial audio site where it was said:  “….each MAS product is totally assembled and tested by one of our trained technicians who sign his name on the finished product. “ I wonder - why it is not a normal practice in high-end audio?

What we buy a high-end audio we do not buy a set technical specifications but we but a hope for certain sound. OK, most audio folks do not buy the “hope for certain sound” but rather they fulfill their ceaseless need for audio-neuroticisms but let leave them aside. So, if we perchance the “promise for certain sound” then we all need to clearly realize that sound might be moderated by manufacturing efforts.

We are kind of under impression in Hi-Fi that a brand and a model of hi-fi devise are some kind of assurance or identifier of a certain level of audio quality. However, in reality it might be very much far from truth. Gould recorded his second Goldberg Variations in 1981 on regular mass-production Yamaha but in reality that mass-production Yamaha was one of thousands Yamahas and had very different sound that might be expected from this brand.    

We, know that most of the high-end audio companies are small manufactures and they do recursive productions runs. Many of the production runs sources components from different vendors, different people assemble and calibrate units, manufactures frequently even change the products core functionally without even notifying public. I did not see it myself but I was told by a relatively reliable source that one very famous UK company in past manufactured one amplifier model that was initially introduced as SET and then “clandestinely” turned to be PP. I personally spoke with a famous manufacture of very expense audio cables and asked him why so many of his identical cables sound slightly different. He admitted that he knows about it and he felt that it is because different employees of his company have different soldering habits. I spoke once with a manufacturer of good phonostage and was wondering why one of my friends bought one and it was sounded like shit. The manufacturer explained to me that the production run the phonostage was from was made just before the company was closed down to a month–long vacation and the people did not really care what they do the last few days.  I know one famous manufacturer of good amplifiers who wanted to kiss ass of an audio reviewer and who made for the reviewer one of the unit of his production run “slightly different”. I heard that “different amp” and it was light years away from the rest of amps in regular production run. I can bring many other examples and illustrations from my personal experience and all of them would be indicative to the fact that brand and model in many cases dose not described what the audio product does. So, welcome to the world of vintaging and conditioning of audio brands/models.

When we by a car we might care if this particular model was assembled in Tennessee of in Tokyo. We do care about the vintage of wine and about the vintage of boats. We know what boats manufacture have what kind period and we know what year better to do not touch and which is well worthy. We do the same with pianos and other musical instruments; we know for instance what years of Steinways need to be avoided.  We do the same with machinery tools. We use the very same approach with tubes and musicians and we know that BSO vintage 1949 is not the BSO of vintage 1999 and that Heifetz in 1927 was not the same as he was in 1950s. Why we do not do the same with hi-fi audio gear if there are all conditions indicating that it would serve a lot of sense. After all some of hi-fi components we use cost more than wine, Steinways or boats… and in many instances have much more complicated functional duty.

So, I think that serious high-end audio components must have a day and month when they were made and the applicable conditions under which they were made under. I know for some it might sound residuals but I very much be would be welcomed to this habit/tradition.

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