Quote Originally Posted by DSJR View Post
You know what I'm going to say if CD impresses less I'm certain it's because of speaker issues (passive crossovers are the absolute pits, even Harbeth ones!!!). Yeah, I know the OC9 is a bit relentless and I remember how much beefier the ancient OC30 was. I could be totally wrong, but I believe the OC30 DNA is now in the 33PTG, but could be totally wrong here. My beef with ZYX is that they seem to have doubled in price? in the last ten years. Ask HiFi Dave, as he knows the ZYX intimately and will always 'look after' AOS members.

That is totally erroneous...plain wrong I'm afraid Dave!

The fact is that they've been at the same price for years up until last year, so have had to go up in price. The issues are very simple: Changes to the design, changes to the range, the falling pound against the dollar have all combined with a need to raise prices to reflect the additional investment that the founders had to make in order to increase production and improve reliability of production and distribution. These things all cost money.

The entry level R-50 Bloom cost £565 for a fair number of years with no price hikes. Now that the pound has fallen against the dollar by 30% (and this matters because the largest ZYX market is the USA so they are priced to export there), then the "old" price would realistically now become about £735. However, they couldn't keep prices as they were and keep the company afloat or improve production or distribution channels, so given the new range, the better availability and the necessary pre-Brexit price hike needed, then the £850 for the all new R-50Mk3 is STILL a very good price compared with just about any equivalent competition. Most of the R-50 competition is above £1000 anyway, and always was in reality. I certainly haven't heard anything this side of £1K to better them.