Some conversation about asthetics stirred up after various people looked through the pictures I took at the RMAF. While asthetics are certainly a personal thing and I’m not here to tell people what they should think is pretty, the core question seemed to be: how important should asthetics be in audio?
If we take a look at equipment at the show, we’ll see that in most cases, asthetics plays an important role. Almost every company gives some thought to how visually attractive their products are, although they take it to varying degrees and in different directions. From industrial aluminum enclosures (plenty of those to be seen - no shortage of CNC hours on products at the show) to organic woodwork (again, plenty to be seen, although mostly on speakers) there seemed to be something for almost anyone. One notable exception is in size - there were few small speakers at the show since most companies brought flagship products.
While some folks will tell you that the appearance doesn’t matter at all, it’s only about the sound, I would disagree to an extent. When you spend a good deal of money on any product, you want to feel good about the product. For something that sits in a living space, part of feeling good about it is feeling good about how it looks. Now, if you have a dedicated listening room that no one else enters and is kept dark, then who cares (although it makes me a bit sad to have music not being shared).
I was happy to see a combination of asthetics in speakers at the show including nicely done paint jobs like Eben and Hansen:
And attractive wood including Salk and AV123:
Electronics offered less variety, seeming to be a combination of various flavors of aluminum:
And a few different designs like the gloss black, round Thor equipment and wood-clad Red Rock amps:
So, good asthetic variety in speakers, but less so in electronics. I should point out that you definitely pay for the asthetics much of the time. For many products, I expect that the highly custom enclosures add far more to the price than the high-end contents. Naturally, some of the cost comes from greater build quality in addition to asthetic work.
BTW: I think my personal favorite for most attractive speakers is the Usher Dancer series, but it’s a bit pricey for me. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of the Usher room at the show.
