The price is right....or is it?

[Firebottle]

Taking a quote from Nat on another thread:

"Small private sellers do exploit the audiophile market in this way - a small ebay example: tiny bubble levels you can place on tonearms to set azimuth. About 10p each Chinese wholesale, sold on for profit as replacement camera tripod etc bubble levels = £1 (nice profit!). Sold to Audiophiles for turntables: £7 ! (7 times the profit for the same thing? why?).

Kind of like there is no true competition, no-one wants to upset the gravy (apple sauce?) cart - the prices remain high because no-one wants to decrease the potential profiteering opportunities, human beings tend towards unspoken cartels if everyone's interests are the same. Then someone like Beresford comes along and Stockholm syndrome kicks in - audiophiles still enjoy paying high prices, rather than re-assessing the value/prices of the kit they were buying."

After a lot of research into best practice for valve phono stages I came up with the design of my current phono stage.

For a little background I looked at availability of suitable valves at realistic prices, so not following the crowd of using ECC8x paid dividends.
Taking an unusual approach to to the power supply, whilst still providing a regulated supply, has also led to a low cost solution.
Sourcing components from world wide suppliers, particularly critical capacitor types for the EQ and signal path works wonders in reducing costs also.

I've recently had the good fortune to evaluate the Firebottle phono stage in a system totalling £17K, with rather good results.
So the real question is what is the real worth of a high performance valve MC/MM phono stage?

Is there too much hype surrounding valve equipment? Admittedly the quality of design/components/styling has big influences on perceived value, but what do you consider is good value per pound(other currencies also apply)?

Alan

[Gordon Steadman]

I think the main problem nowadays is twofold.

Firstly, the specialist market has shrunk and there are fewer punters to be chased. The second is the cost of running a traditional business. The cost of living in general and the cost of premises in particular means that prices have almost nothing to do with costs any more but with how much can we screw out of this business to survive.

In theory, those working from home should have the advantage.

Not everybody charges as much as they could of course

PS I don't believe there is too much hype around valves. They are as good as any other way of making noises as far as I can see. I'm quite sure you could design a brilliant SS phono amp too but it wouldn't glow so nicely.

[YNWaN]

I'm not surprised private sellers price audio ephemera sky high - if they see that audiophiles are prepared to pay £500+ for a short length of cable...

[Effem]

The vendor/consumer interface has always been this way, especially with luxury goods.

Pile it high and sell it cheap, or have a rare or bespoke product to sell, quite possibly fuelled by illogical desires. Fashion is a good example of that model where a designer label handbag costing many thousands is still only a handbag, the same FUNCTIONAL item you could buy in a pound shop. I was watching a recording of some pawn business last night that specialises in loans for luxury goods like cars, boats, jewellery and works of art. Man paid close on £200,000 for a Ferrari and the pawn business was prepared to advance him a loan of up to £100,000 or thereabouts. That Ferrari wouldn't entice me to buy it even if I won the lotty and all it's claimed performance figures mean SFA when it's at a standstill behind me in a traffic jam. Now if some wings extended and it flew . . . . . . .

Anything is only worth what someone is prepared to pay for it at the end of the day. Some ebay sellers with their ambitious pricing could learn something from that sage advice

[nat8808]

OMG ! A thread started by quoting one of my cynical ramblings! I've never been so faux-horrified in my life.

[nat8808]

It depends what we're talking of here .

Things made from materials from other industries and then sold to audiophools touted as being an amazing new material (some vibration supports spring to mind - can't remember their name - and Torlite too! ) are a definate con VFM wise, they may well make sonic differences of course.

Things which are definately made for other industries but then sold to audiophools with a pumped up price - like those bubble levels, digital scales - are a con VFM wise.

Then we have the catagory of things which are very cheap to make but the construction is a secret or sealed away somehow can be the biggest cons VFM wise - like some cables or plug-in mains filters (which are just a cheap circuits costing pence to make in bulk but sold at high price to appear special). I've always wanted to know what is inside Black Ravioli isolation for example - I bet it is some regular material from another industry which has been packaged an hidden from view to create a mystical aura around it.

All you need to do when selling the above is to create such an uncertainty in the consumer that the cheap version isn't EXACTLY the same as the audiophool version that they'll give in and just pay the money to be sure! All that requires is to keep shtum and refuse to discuss construction - always a bad signal for a product IMHO ..

It is simply monetizing ignorance..


But, pretty much the hifi industry is a luxury industry which sometimes requires high pricing to give it's performance credibility! That's the fault of the consumer..

To create that brand (even for a single product) you need to create hype and make it appear desirable and you will need a good PR machine or distribution to get it sold all around the world and so show the world that you invented something sonically great. For that sonically beneficial product to get to market, people on the selling side of the industry will need to be financially incentivised by good mark-ups in order to go through that process of making it desirable. You kind of pay the dealer just to bring it to your attention, to make you want it - and if it really is a good cable or whatever then perhaps you just put it down to the way of life, but your system sounds better now.

Then again, in many spheres of life we have a more open-source environment growing with people passing on all sorts of designs and information - it's the internet age phenomenon.
So there ends up a larger and larger disparity and disconnect between the VFM of things people pay through the nose for and the VFM of those which you can make yourself or get someone else to make for you with some cash thrown in to reward for effort of the design, the art of it.

Paying pound per sound is a dead model because of the internet. The internet and availability of information - to those clued up enough to look for it anyway - makes the pound per sound model look more and more like you're being shafted! IMHO obviously..

They are my thoughts anyway..

[Wakefield Turntables]

I'm not surprised private sellers price audio ephemera sky high - if they see that audiophiles are prepared to pay £500+ for a short length of cable...

Mark, your straight to the point comments always make me laugh.

[Effem]

But, pretty much the hifi industry is a luxury industry which sometimes requires high pricing to give it's performance credibility! That's the fault of the consumer..

To create that brand (even for a single product) you need to create hype and make it appear desirable and you will need a good PR machine or distribution to get it sold all around the world and so show the world that you invented something sonically great. For that sonically beneficial product to get to market, people on the selling side of the industry will need to be financially incentivised by good mark-ups in order to go through that process of making it desirable. You kind of pay the dealer just to bring it to your attention, to make you want it - and if it really is a good cable or whatever then perhaps you just put it down to the way of life, but your system sounds better now.

Then again, in many spheres of life we have a more open-source environment growing with people passing on all sorts of designs and information - it's the internet age phenomenon.
So there ends up a larger and larger disparity and disconnect between the VFM of things people pay through the nose for and the VFM of those which you can make yourself or get someone else to make for you with some cash thrown in to reward for effort of the design, the art of it.

Paying pound per sound is a dead model because of the internet. The internet and availability of information - to those clued up enough to look for it anyway - makes the pound per sound model look more and more like you're being shafted! IMHO obviously..

They are my thoughts anyway..

I have been in and out of the industry a few times over the years and have seen changes in the way it operates that people like yourself probably have no experience of.

As you say, it is a luxury market and needs to be treated accordingly. It's market penetration is diminishing for sure and because of that prices have to rise in line with demand. The big supermarkets use the "pile 'em high and sell 'em cheap" model because they have predictable traffic flows through their doors, but the average hi-fi dealer these days is probably looking at an empty shop most of the time, with a goodly percentage that do come through the door have no real intention of buying anything and those that do, want a home dem delivered and installed usually by the dealer. That stock gets even a small scratch and that's their profit down the drain.

I disagree that high pricing will generate any credibility, nor is hype and desirability essential for any hi-fi product. You can hype away until the cows come home, but the internet effectively sees to it that any product that does not live up to the hype soon becomes highly undesirable when the smoke and mirrors is blown away. Before the advent of the internet good or bad news could not travel quickly enough because there was only the magazines as a central focus point of contact. It could take months or even years for that bubble to burst and a lot of people lost a lot of money because of it.

It's all well and good having an "open source" of information, BUT, that is an entirely selfish viewpoint and I would ask you to turn the tables to imagine that it was YOU that spent many years and every spare penny you had creating a new innovative product, only to chuck it out on the internet FOR FREE and let the vultures descend on it? I think not somehow.

[Techno Commander]

Hence why I look to the pro audio industry for inspiration and equipment.

[Mr Kipling]

I've always wanted to know what is inside Black Ravioli isolation for example - I bet it is some regular material from another industry…

My guess Nat would be a sirloin of steak. Or possibly chicken.