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Items largely cost what they do due to the huge dealer margins and that is why I largely buy second hand whenever I can. At least that way the margin has been paid by someone else. Also of course it pays to buy second hand face to face and not through a dealer.
A lot of new cars "sold" are in fact leased on PCP contracts. This enables those that could have only afforded a Trabant to buy top of the range cars. They are unlikely to ever own the car as this Telegraph article points out, and they will pay through the nose for the privilege. However it allows them to swank with like minded lemmings for whom being seen to have it all is everything.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/...long-term.html
Surprised no one has done leasing of high end audio.
There is a saying that goes 'people pay for the price', which is especially true in the Far East i.e. monetary value directly associated with performance, how can a £1000 amp possibly sound better than a £10,000 one etc.
Prices go up because there is a demand, also to limit it, but there is another bonus of smaller-scale production i.e. you don't need to sell 10x £200 DACs, 1x £2k DAC will do. Some manufacturers I think are fairer than others, Exposure and Rega spring to mind, but there is also a massive amount of audiophool stuff out there.
Another thing I think is not mentioned enough is craftmanship, especially of the minimal school - the reason some gear sounds good is because of the lack of components, and the talents of the designer to fine-tune and get the most out of very simple circuits, which are much more sensitive to component tuning. All of this takes time and experience! Look inside a 47 Lab component, some LFD gear etc. & price / materials comparison goes out of the window.
There sure is some very expensive gear about, in hifi and in the car world.
Dealer margins? They may seem pretty high, but I don't see that many hifishop owners driving around in Bugattis or Ferraris, so I don't think they're raking it in.
The margins in designer clothes is higher.
To balance that out, you can get easily get a nice system for £1k from new. I don't think thats excessive & even cheaper than that, a small denon dm41 that streams music with a pair of e.g. Q acoustic 3020's can make an enjoyable listen.
I do perceive the income gap between the rich & the poor widening though, but thats a whole different argument.
All the posts here since my last are right, and help us to define the state of affairs and increase our understanding of what I see as a predatory economic paradigm, more concerned with 'churn' than the pursuit of real progress, quality and value for money.
I find this last 'sick' for reasons of morality and destruction of the planet, but at least this form of discussion allows us to understand the attempts at manipulation.
We must seek self possession to live effectively, and the old rule "Possession is nine tenths of the law" is one I modelled a parallel to in the 80s, which is;
Self possession is nine tenths of achievement.
Most Hi-Fi guys care about their equipment, and look after it, this enabling second hand buyers much choice with relatively little concern, and it also will have gone through the first part of the 'washbucket curve' and so be free from manufacturing problems.
More power to authenticity, and the smarmy suited money oriented salesmen (P Floyd) can go and wither.
The selling of 'Hi-Fi jewellery' is well understood now, and much is aimed at multi millionaires who want, well, jewellery to go with their pictures in their great mansions, but the sound quality/money graph is not linear.
The price comparison between music industry pricing and HiFi equipment is just embarrassing for the HiFi industry. I'm using a Berhringer USB 24/192 ADC/DAC with two inputs, high quality microphone preamps, and four DAC outputs, it costs £65 and sounds great!
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Yes, demand is at the heart of the matter. In economics, demand is defined as willingness to pay (wtp) backed by ability to pay (atp). The growing trend towards super expensive hifi is in my view more to do with changes in ability to pay. For any commodity there will be some consumers willing to pay more than others. Producers exploit this by offering differentiated products that allow them to maximise revenues by extracting the maximum that all consumers are willing to pay. In order to sell at the higher price points they need to imbue those products with some exclusive qualities or some attributes that reflect favourably on the purchaser. In the past, expensive hifi was marketed (at a largely male audience) on the basis of sex and aspirational lifestyles. It is a shock even now to look back at some of the marketing examples from the 70's and 80's. Marketing is more subtle and more insidious today and appears to be focused on the exclusiveness of the product and the fact that few can afford it. Adverts emphasize the rarity of the materials used and the fact that production is limited to a few units. Ultimately, this is only possible because of the growth in the numbers of super rich able to support the growth of an elite audiophile market. Yes, there are some "audiophiles" who are not so wealthy but who prioritise elite hifi products over almost all other purchases (e.g. housing, cars, travel etc). Indeed the ability to sell these ultra products is less related to their performance and more to the fact that they are beyond the means of the masses!
Geoff
Fancy hotels and shops being the biggy, and possibly the most vain
With regard to 47 Labs they found that a cheap (around a £fiver)readily available op-amp sounded really good. They teamed it with what was possibly hand-picked components and sold them for a loooot of money. When the secret was out, the hoi polloi were able to build one for themselves for relatively peanuts and so the Gainclone was born. I have made several for around £100 each. Do they sound better or worse than the original?Quote:
Originally Posted by Yomanze