17 years ago I was an all-young guy who had his first salary and decided to buy a decent hifi system.
I took the approach that looked right to me: start getting information about different brands, then focusing on some models which were within my budget. Then comparing the features of those models. In principle the strategy looked fine: the model which showed better specs would win, and I would buy it.
So I started going to shops (at the time there was no internet, in case you don't remember). I asked for catalogues of different brands. And I went back home to study and compare. Some of the names that were up in my list were Sony, Pioneer, Technics and stuff like that. Nobody at any of the main shops gave me any advice: just the brochures and that was it.
Then I found, by chance, a little hifi shop in the center of town (I live in a mid town and we have not tons of hifi shops; and besides I live in Spain, which in that respect has nothing to do with, say, the UK, where any small city had at the time a couple at least of good hifi shops). I asked the owner the same: brochures to compare. Curiously enough, he gave me a few brochures and then he looked with a curious face at me and asked: "Excuse me sir, but what do you want to do with that information?". And I explained my strategy. He replied: "If you allow me to tell you, I think you are doing this in the wrong way. If you want to find a good hifi system, brochures and specs won't say you which is the one that fits your taste. You have to LISTEN to the system and compare it with a few others which might be fine for you. Specs won't tell you if it sounds good or bad: distortion or power etc are just numbers, but they won't explain you how the system plays music, which is what actually interests you. If you will, I could prepare a comparison of systems for you. But first I would like to know what kind of music do you usually play".
This conversation with this guy was an eye-opener to me, and it changed upside down my approach to hifi. From that time, I realized that the statements of this guy were true, and that many excellently specced pieces of gear sounded awful; and that some gear whose numbers looked bad sounded, in fact, stunning.
Now I hear you saying "fine, but what in hell has this story to do with Pentax?". Well, I will tell you: I've been following different Pentax forums for months, and lately a see an increasing number of people which got the disease called "acute featuritis", posting lods of times in an honest concern because they feel that Pentax should increase the number of fps, and the number of megapixels, and the number of focusing points, and the number of dSLR models, and the noise at high ISO, and on and on and on...
So I come here, humbly from the world of relatively newcomers, to say that all that are JUST NUMBERS. NOTHING ELSE. If you look at the pictures, THAT is what tells you the real story. And I have been looking for months at the pictures taken with my K10D, then with the K20D and it is just awesome. Further: one of the guys at my favourite photography shop (selling all brands) keeps on telling me that NO OTHER CAMERA focuses like a Pentax: he's trying all kind of stuff, and he tells that the cameras that are consistently shooting with a perfect focus, are the Pentax, not Canikons or any other brand. Which is quite funny, given the number of complaints about the focus in Pentax.
So while we wait what should surface, or not, from Pentax at Photokina, please keep in mind that IT IS ALL ABOUT PHOTOGRAPHY, not about numbers. And once you realize about that, you will be as happy as I have always been with my NAD hifi system, whose specs are rubbish compared with Sony, but whose sound is quantum leaps ahead.
Last edited by Unregistered User 8; 07-08-2017 at 05:57 PM.
Reason: remove swearing