Where the heck are all these manufacturers coming from!


After being out of the HiFi hobby for about 15 years, covid lock down found me playing with some of my stored equipment. After being in the HiFi business for over 40 years, I though I knew who all the players were. A few forums, such as this, and a subscription to Stereoplile has me scratching my head over the plethora of super highend HiFi manufactures that I've never heard of and the unlimited number of inexpensive Chinese HiFi products. Near every day that I peruse these forums or YouTube channels I'm introduced to yet another amp, preamp, DAC, speaker manufacturer I never heard of.

And the prices.....Folks throw around recommendations for $10,000 and much more products with abandon. I just recently saw a 3.5" jumper cable for $39,000 and an 8' piece of speaker wire for $59,000.........I guess I should have stayed in the business instead of retiring!

rbertalotto

Well I guess it's great that we have so many new companies in hi end audio but the only thing that haven't change is the human ears ( hearing ) with that said what happened to the good old days when things were so simple in buying fantastic sounding audio equipment. Example  pair of jbl -100 pioneer hpm 100 or advent speakers.  Hafler amps and preamps. Audio cables cost more than my damm chevy high country 6.2.  Unbelievable.  Even if I had Michael Jordan money it's no way in hell I would spend 40.000 thousand on cables. I'm scared as hell how much money I would need to spend on the rest of my audio gear to complete my system 😫 😩 😪 

@rbertalotto,


Lots of people with money, but not a lot of people with happiness. Companies selling $59,000 cables, are not selling audio products, no matter what they may convince an audio magazine / reviewer to say about them. They are selling the promise of happiness. It does not take much time on an audio forum to realize that the happiness is at best short lived.

Its "just" supply and demand, and whatever that causes by way of consequences. In this particular case, the cycle of diversity might be at play.

Although, anecdotal evidence would suggest that this is nothing particularly novel in the audio landscape.

Prices are all relative to general price levels and peoples incomes and wealth. A reasonably affordable yet kinda swish Sansui amp in about 1972 (when the Dow Jones was about 900) was perhaps a few hundred bucks.

How does that translate to today’s environment?

 

@oldhvymec - if some of your hundred of pounds of coins are indeed rare you may actually be making money by holding on to them and not losing out to inflation.

I would recommend going through them to pick out the potentially valuable ones and bring them to a coin dealer. The "regular" ones are costing you to hold them every day. Even if you don't care about money, you must have heirs or a charity you can give it to. 

I hate wasting money, but love enjoying it. As I get older, there are less things I like or like to do or need, so I just figure my kids will get it when they like more things than I do now. My stereo investing is very sensitive to the law of diminishing returns. The $59,000 cable buyers are living in a Monopoly money world. There has got to be better uses of $59K in the world than buying some cable. The law of diminishing returns was true for that many many thousands of dollars ago regardless of how great sounding a system is.