This subject of prices in High-End Audio is obviously endless. We can complain for years blaming the $80.000 for a pair of amplifiers,  $42.000 for DACs, $29.000 for phonocorrector, 125.000 for pair of loudspeakers,  $17.000 for CD transports, $16.000 for single interconnect, $50.000 turntables or $10.0000 for a cartridge. The most revolting in all that story that all those super expansive items do not deliver any superior result and anyone who have even very remote acquaintance about audio industry knows that there is no relations between the price tags in audio and the benefits that a consumer get from his/her audio equipment.

The myth and the practice of ultra high prices for NOTHING SPECIAL in High-End Audio have own resosns, own history and own rules of the engagement. I would like to initiate this thread and let myself (or whoever wish) to look at the pricing in High-End Audio slightly deeper, objectively and perhaps more realistically then a typical Hi-Fi bitching. I will upload more context in here when I get more time…

Rgs,
Romy the caT

There are few evil things within the mechanism of High-End pricing. I will start form the beginning of my list:

1) Disassociation of manufacturers from consumers

The High-End audio manufacturers do not target their efforts to provide “service” to the consumers. Rather they conceive a notion, concept or more frequently a pile of BS and then they design/manufacture/market “something” (or “anything”) the backups this concept. Theoretically there is nothing wrong in this scenarios but it is only theoretically. In the real world the concepts themselves become the domination forces of the manufacturer’s thinking and perception and this completely arrests/paralyzes the manufacturer’s/designers’, abilities (presumably they had any). As the result a manufactures do not serve the “interest of the results” but she/he concentrates all his/her efforts to support the live-cycle of the concept. The propagation of the concept, it’s ornamentation, embellishment and cashing the concept out become a self-consuming task for the manufactures and their consciousness totally block itself out from the reality of sound reproduction. I have seen it many-many times with all level of manufactures: they are comfortably numb and almost absurdly senseless in their ability to get the imperative and irrelevant aspects of Sound -I do not practically blame them I juts present the facts. Ironically but the manufactures melt with the consumers might bring them back to reality as a reference. Unfortunately it does not exist. The times when you had an “old Jew” on a basement and to whom you might go, talk with him, explain your needs, pay to him and ask him to delivery the result that YOU demand…. are gone. In place of the “old Jew” came a Moron who has no knowledge, not abilities and no even aptitude to differentiate the results. This Moron has a bumper-sticker intelligence and the pop-corn skills, however he visualize himself as a chef -designer of Jet-Propulsion Lab and he feels that he blesses humanity if he decided to manufacture Audio. I mean the person who places himself/herself at the position of providing any professional service for others should have some advance skills or knowledge in the field. So, the tight association between the manufacturers and consumers would help to the consumers to monitor who was that person behind that manufacture curtain.  Yes, in very many cases (my estimate 80%) the individual who market their products / services as “industry professionals” should NOT be there. Therefore, the bringing the spot light back to the person who does audio would let us, the consumers,  to filter out 80% of all audio products …. before even listening to them.

If we Americans nowadays are demanding a mandatory IQ teats for an individual who ran for the office of US President then why we do not demand the Audio IQ test for an individual who make for us our loudspeakers of amplifier taking from us our $70.000?

How all of that relates to the prices? It affects very directly the second reason of Hi-Fi prices absurdly:

2) Deficiency in of real and objective evaluation methods that would objective place the High-End products in a hierarchy of the consumer benefits.


To be continue...
The cat

Today’s prices in Hi-Fi do not base upon any other principle then “whatever market bears”. The luck of objective evaluation methods and the completely un-liberated market of Hi-Fi consumers make the “market bearing” principles being completely not applicable in Hi-Fi. 99.9% of consumers in audio do not make their purchasing decisions based upon the realistic and factual performance of products. Do you want to argue my “foolish accusation”? Over the years, coming to the different listening rooms and listening different quite terrible Sound form those installations I kept asking what motivated those people to buy into one or another hobble performing component or idea. Interestingly that they practically never replied that it was due to their financial considerations but rather due to their compliance or conformation to some specific BS that THEY HEARD ABOUT THE GIVEN PRODUCT.

As the result, Audio form the contest of results got converted into contest of audio propaganda where the most filthy, most greediest, gluttonous, ignorant and the most disqualified representatives of audio industry – the marketing hoodlums, including their clan of the audio-reviewers, run the show in audio and consume the highest percentage of retail price, kipping you - the consumers to pick up the tab and satisfy yours with the residue well-oiled audio commerce.

In this environment the price structuring is not only bogus (as there is no OPEN market to make the “whatever market bears” principle possible) but the price is very much fraudulently deceptive. The prices in Hi-Fi do not relate to ANYTHING valuable or beneficially quantifiable but ON LY to the amount of marketing superstructure that was built around the given product.

Over the years I accumulated many stories illustration how bogus and idiotic the marketing BS might be in audio. For instance a few years ago when Harmonic Technologies Company was juts a green newcomer to the cable world their president (or whoever was at that time in-charge) was trying to convince me to try their cables. He told me (buckle up!!!!) that Bill Gates decided to build his own playback system and the he already spent 1 million dollars and the only thing that hold him is the fact the he frustrated that there is no good sounding cable around (I wonder why it was Bill Gates but not Mahatma Ghandi :-) . Then he told me that all manufactures sent to Bill Gates their cables for evaluation and Bill Gates personally spent night after night to listening them. As the result, he ordered to make his system to be wired explicitly with Harmonic Technologies cables. When I hear THAT BS I did not know if I have to light or to cry… Accidentally or not, but Harmonic Technologies is the cable company that manufactures the most fraudulent sounding cables in audio industry. Another example would be Kharma Loudspeakers from Holland. Years after year Kharma manufacture an army of very expansive but consistently very poor sounding loudspeakers and no one seriously paid attention to their existence. Kharma had a model – Ceramic 3 – that was small 2 ways monitors with a pair of drivers of total cost of $300. They were selling this speaker for ~5.5K with the street price of $3-$4K. No mater how good or bad the Ceramic 3 was but that model was still way better then any other loudspeakers they produce including their $90.000 models and all-toogether it was OK solution for $3K, particularly if one has a very small room and do not listen louder then 80dB.  So, no one was buying the Kharma until the Kharma’s Ceramic 3 made the marketing step up. The new distributors were plugged into the game, the new reviewers were appointed and commanded: “Fetch” and the new marketing BS was speeded across to the Kharma’s polish baffle. The price was multiplied by 4 times (!!!) for the very same loudspeaker and immediately the armies of audio-zombie begin to place that $22.000 audio-disaster in there listing rooms. Stop by in ANY single audio room where any of Kharma products installed, listened THAT  miserable sound and ask the owners what made them to go for THAT sound. You will see and … hear….

Still, what make the consistently horribly performing audio products to have a consistent popularity among the audio consumers-Morons? Everyone knows how objectively bad performing some products are, even the people who manufacture those products are secretly laughing how crappy some of their products are (I’m not kidding), but still, those products are the bestsellers of industry and they keep holding the very high price tags. Any single person who has ears or a brain with IQ higher then a size of his shoe realize how horrible Krell electronics and loudspeakers are and still the dealers move the Krell boxes with the phenomenal speed, like nothing else in the industry. The very same is taking peace with very many others insultingly performing and fundamental faulty elements of high-end audio universe, just to name the few: Conrad-Johnson, Atmosphere and VTL preamplifiers; Clearaudio analog, Boulder, Maks Levinson, Krell, Macintosh and  Linn amplifiers; Kharma, Martin-Logan, Dynaudio and loudspeakers; MIT, Transparent, Nordost cables and many many other names… Do I have to bring up the price tag for those manufactures to make the point or you know the prices?

So, what make this price dissociation form the results so blossoming in audio? I feel that it is about an absent of any civilized objective assessment mechanism and a very none-discriminative or juts plain ultra-low level of demands from the audio consumers. Regarding the last one it is very simple - most of the audio people are very accidental in audio and it is pretty much irrelevant for them: would they “do audio”, sniff cocaine or make up little toy animals from clay. For them Audio - is juts another hobby – another obsession of males lost in the misery of own gender. As far as the first reason – the absent of objective audio assessment mechanisms - it is more complicated and it is kind of not the subject of this thread.

Anyhow, the absurdly high, irrelevant prices in high-end audio do derive from all that was said above. Interesting that there are some very narrow audio fields (drivers market, some separate parts and so on…) that was not yet reaped by audio industry marketing yet and as the result those fields DO follow the “whatever market bears” principle and in there you can observe some relations between the price and the deliverable results.

Yago,

This is your third post at this forum and the third time you only care to yank my tail juts because “something doesn't make sense” to you. I have no problems to chew up to you what I meant but following my pedagogical inclinations I think I’ll let you to learn to accept your own limitations, and to live with them.  If you wish somebody to educate you on the subjects of your interests then try to ignite somebody‘s at least interest. So far you was not successful.

You see, I presume that at this forum each post presents a result of the poster’s thinking or actions. So far none of your post present any thinking or introduction anything of your own on the subjects. How your curiosity about my gender relates to the subject of “Prices in High-End Audio”? Was it all that you got from the posts above?

Anyhow, frankly sparking, so far you sound like the few individuals whom the idiot Eric Brutten “strategically” sent a few month ago to this forum and who desperately wanted to convert this site into a locker room – the intellectual state that fully relates to Eric Brutten persoanlay and the lightweight-cretins with whom he befriended. If it so and if you will not able to post any valuable content then I will leave you where I left all those Ali Hassans and the other Brutten’s aliases….

This is last time I reply to you if your post is not subject-bound.

In the Bidat there was a question about the possible price for off the wall DAC that performs well.

http://www.GoodSoundClub.com/TreeItem.aspx?PostID=7159 

That lead me to think wider – why do not we base our pricing policies and strategies ONLY upon the performance of the audio. It sound ridicules but is it how it must be?

Well, let me introduce you with my own ridicules world. A couple years ago a guy approached me as asked me to sell him my very first original full range Melquiades since I built another one. I felt kind of strange.  I did not needed to sell it but I did not need those amps to collect dust as well, so how much should I ask for it?

I did spend a substantial amount of efforts to convince the guy do not buy Melquiades. The Milq circuitry was public at that time; I told how much the parts cost for that amp and was willing to give him all sources to get them and assist to him or his builders to build a pair of Milqs. The guy refused and he what my specific amp. I was kind of intrigues and it was a nice gratification, so I proposed him to borrow my unused Milqs amps and try it for a few weeks. The guy sopped by, pick them up and in few weeks he told that he would like to keep it. Interning that up to that time we had no definitive conversation about price. They I found a solution. I told him that he need to sell him current SETs and if he feel that my Milqs are better then I should get all money that he will be getting for his current amps.  It was the deal.

Now, that opens a very interesting concussion. The price of high-end equipment shell be: the prices of competitor that the equipment defeat + the extrapolative value of sonic advantages and benefits that the component has over it’s competitor.

I think this is the only way how audio should be priced. What is interning is that using this guidance we would very soon learn that there are very few truly high-end audio performers. If tennis plays have rating that they need constantly support by actual performance on court then why high-end audio equipment can’t compete in the same way for the higher price?

But I thought the entire bassis of Western "Society" is PROFIT?

So, how does "VALUE" fit here, other than percieved?

As it happens, I only buy audio gear that I actually want to hear/use, and I only sell it if I tire of it and/or I want or need the money back.

But I have been known to sell some of the wine I did "well" on at the time I bought it (vis, hindsight).

Maybe hi-fi "reviewers" feel this way? (and maybe they have the added twist of helping to create their own "value" structure?)

But i think the "reviewer" valuations are more like the Stock Market, where "value'" is literally nothing more than whatever people will pay at any given moment.

Paul S

Paul S wrote:

But i think the "reviewer" valuations are more like the Stock Market, where "value'" is literally nothing more than whatever people will pay at any given moment.

The fact that cost in audio does not mean sound quality knows everyone and everyone, particularly whose sell expensive audio, love to pitch it. However, we all understand the cost/sound misbalance but we very seldom take it personally. 

At my site I try to keep cost of audio out of logical language and if I use cost then only as a tool of topological application – like this it that solution is not rational for this or that cost. The method is accurate in my view but it also serves a subliminal purpose associating price with result. So, I asked myself why do not accept the premise of the implication and do not take price of audio very personally. If we drop the fear of associating price with quality and will use ONLY price without any fear then some very interesting horizons will open for us.

The punch to think this way gave me a recent visit of a local friend of my mine. He is not an audio friend, he is a regular civilian who do not know about audio too much. He listened my playback and was very much fascinated by the fact the audio might cost too much. Since he did not know audio he did not understand that my audio is not expensive at all. I use relatively expensive topological methods sometimes but if to project my costs to the cost of many other audio people them my playback is very non-expensive. He did not recognize that and he was very much using ONLY absolute cost as some kind of absolute measurements.

Arguing with him I realized that there is power in this view of his. The power is to reverse the accents, to take the prices personally and to equate price and quality. I think that method is very powerful if to keep the eyes very firmly at the ball.

This week I spoke with a cable manufacture – I do need one good 1M cable. We are accustomed that those audio cables have no sensible cost and that we pay as much for cables as much we can afford. In conversation with the manufacture I reversed the position – I run the price game. This gave me a surprising power. The manufacture said that the cable that he can let me to try will cost $850.  I proposed $1300 and asked him what sonic benefits I will have for extra $500. He said that he has his upper echelon cable that he might sell for $1300. I asked what kind sonic benefits I will have for extra $500. He did give me a standard set of believes why a cable for $500 extra will sound better. I did debate the claim. Further I asked why he feels that the set of alleged “improvements” has $500 price tag and why the same $850 cable shall not have the same set of alleged sonic features. A asked him many other questions. He did felt the he was talking with an idiot and perhaps he was correct. However, there was a brilliant moment in this conversation – he got confused with his own theory that he is in position to stratify quality of sound per cost. As soon his confusion was evident I asked him that I need a cable with defined sonic characteristics, I did explicitly enumerate those characteristics and I asked him to put a price tag on this hypothetical cable of mine. He pretty much sent me to hell, which is fine. We hanged up in firm mutual believe that we were taking with ignorant person.

I however very much like the experience. So, what I am offering to you is trying to think about price in reversed terms. Take a sheet of paper and write down the aspects of your sound that you do not like in your playback – call it The List. Then go to you playback and place a price tags on what you have. Let for instance it will be $30K, then tell to yourself that you do not mind to spend another let say $5K to the cost of your playback. Then give your list to your audio dealer, right with with the set of the improvements that you would like to accomplish. I would like you to see how your audio dealer would price the sonic benefits that you outlined with the need of additional investments. I can give to you 80% change that to get what you would like to hear as a result you would need not to buy audio but to sell your existing audio. Do not buy anything that does not serve The List. Get rid of everything from your playback that does not serve The List. Let the magnitude of price that you pay for your audio to be in direct proportion with fulfillment of your List.

In most cases your manufactures and your deals will not have language to support your attitude. That is fine but for a second imagine yourself that everyone in high-end audio has own List and force the entire industry to work for the benefit of your own List.  Suddenly the empty industry will collapse as it has no mechanism to serve somebody benefits but one it has a mechanism to furnish high price SCUs as a satisfaction of non-exiting or fake concepts.

Yesterday I asked an audio guy that I know what he would do with his playback of he won $20K in lottery and decided to spend all of them on his playback.  The guy was super enthusiastic with the ideas but the more he spoke the more it was obvious to both of us that he has nothing to do with his extra $20K. It is not the he has no wholes to patch in his sound, he does. He however has no price tags to the sonic problems that he acknowledges.

I do challenge this standing and I do feel that audio people need to fight price in audio with using price as a tool of intelligence not a tool of a cow that is being led to a butcher. Remember, the price in audio is something that we, consumers own, not something that the industry imposes to you. If you feel different then you read wrong site.  So, take a $1000, show it to your audio supplier and ask him what he can do for you and for your List for this money. See the result.

Romy the Cat wrote:

You will not frequently find the situation like this anywhere else. Yes, $9 screwdriver might be not as good as $5 screwdriver but I bet   that if you find a $90.000 screwdriver then it will way over perform the cheap one.

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Telus wrote:

I'd take that bet. Too, I'd raise you this--that is the dumbest analogy I've read in the last 365 days.  Congratulations.

Romy the Cat wrote:

Hm,… and how many $90.000 screwdrivers that do not perform as good as $9 screwdrivers you think you will be able to sell? In the audio industry however it works wonderfully. There were many examples when audio products begin to sell ONLY price went up many times over.  So, effectively the audio industry converted high end audio concept into high end price point.  The fact that you find my analogy as dumbest makes me very proud – you have learns something important over the last 365 days of your life.