From time to time, I'm privy to some of the hi-fi world's great misunderstandings. A common one arises from someone who has looked on the audio market and has a revelatory moment of realisation that there's easy money to be had by creating something that looks the business, so doesn't need the wherewithal to deliver on its visual promise. We've all encountered the concept of 'fresh air engineering', derided by those who can look at a product with plenty of space inside its casework and exclaim 'How much? But there's nothing in it!'. They usually do so without thinking that the design may be thus due to the requirement for the product to match the others in the manufacturer's lineup. Or that there's less 'stuff' inside a network player, for example, than an amplifier. Or that the designer chose to space out the component parts of the product in order to avoid interference.
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