When a company like B&O wants to make a product they start with the industrial design first: the look has to be just right. The sound, the performance, comes later, hopefully working well within the aesthetic constraints.
When a company like PS Audio wants to make a product we do the opposite: we start with the circuitry, focus on performance, get something that sounds the way we want, then figure out an attractive package to put it in—hopefully the aesthetic serves the performance.
Neither method is better than the other. They're just different—as are the results.
As one might imagine the intent, the focus, of where you start determines a great deal of how the end product comes out.
Figuring out a company's core intent is part of the challenge behind a customer's decision of where to go to get what they want.
