Oppo on the Inside, Lexicon on the Outside — Reviews and News from Audioholics

So sad...

I would be livid if I got scammed this bad by them.

 

Wow. A $3k premium? Sounds like a law suit coming.

 

The sad thing is they are a good brand that AFAIK do their own stuff, unlike the McIntosh/Denon/Marantz mafia that Josh mentioned before in the thread about the McIntosh Life style.

Sad really that they would stoop this low.

 

pretty funny though; right?

 

Both Harman products. Been doing it for years, but normally they will pull it off the chassis and put it on their own. Pretty damn lazy.

They all share tho. It is cheaper to offer a better quality product under a different name for less money than to develope new and re tool everything for it.

Bryston has always been the exact same amps as Lexicon for 1/3rd the price just to name one example. When you build a system for the most part you should stay with audio products from a audio company and video products from a video company.

There are exceptions to every rule. Meridian has always had their own spin on video and done a great job as has Linn.

 

The jig is up.

 

Lexicon WAS a good brand, now they are just another part of Harman International. Mark Levinson is also a part of that group. Levinson is no where near as good as when they were owned by the man himself and then later Madrigal. Under the Madrigal ownership, they built the 32, 33, 33h, 333 and 336. Some of the most robust high end audio equipment ever made.
McIntosh is part of D&M Holdings which also owns Denon and Marantz. If you were to open up McIntosh's current $5k DVD player, you would find that the internals are nearly indentical to one of Denon's $500 players. The current line of processors, disc and media players from McIntosh are cheap Denon junk. The only products McIntosh sells that still represents the original company are their ampifiers. However, they have a very niche sound that most purists would shy away from.
With the economy continuing to slump, many of the staple high end audio companies are either being bought or shut down. The ones that are being bought, are being overhauled to build inferior mass produced products, like what you see in that link about the Lexicon/Oppo BD player.
There are VERY few true high end audio companies that do their own in house engineering left. The audio industry is in rough shape, and we are about to reach a plateau where (technological advancements aside) all new products are inferior to those made decades ago. Sad.

 

Josh, aint that the truth.

Look at this picture of a 1976 Pioneer SX-1250 receiver that I came across on the Internetz.

Just look at the size of those 4 capacitors and that toroidal transformer!!! That receiver weighs 65 pounds! It was rated at 165W per channel, and I believe it.

Nowadays you have to pay decent money to get something like that.

 

Very interesting. I am a complete neophyte when it comes to audio equipment, so this is all news to me. I visited a Bang & Olufsen studio once - please tell me they are not pulling this crap too!

 

B&O makes Bose look like a great company. The only thing I would ever buy a piece of B&O equipment for is target practice. It is the most overpriced electronic crap (might be a tie with the Vertu phones) made.