why do people feel the need to buy expensive cable
Why do people buy into expensive cables? They do give you more of resolution, frequency extension, etc., but while you get more of this and that, sometimes the balance taken a back seat, but then there is another important reason people feel the urge to buy expensive cables: *Marketing tactics by cable manufacturers* Case in point: The LessLoss C-MARC power cable was press reviewed by 6 moons in May 2017, and by Mono and Stereo in August 2017. Note that in both reviews, the price of the power cords was alleged to the respective reviewers as USD 735 /2m. Shortly after the reviews, the price of the LessLoss C-MARC power cable went up by a significant 56% to USD 1148 /2m within a couple of months. LessLoss’s website has a description of the technologies for making this cable, which is essentially the same as that quoted by Mono and Stereo in its press review, word for word. The external appearance and picture illustration of the cables geometry also seems unchanged between the time the review was published and latest. What is happening, that a 56% price jump shortly after the press reviews? Wouldn’t a reviewer comments have been changed if he knows the product is going to sell at much higher price level, or at least have his enthusiastic tone tempered if he knows this is going to happen? Now here is a new formula for marketing audiophile cables that all audio manufacturers need to acquit themselves of:
The standard reply from a cable manufacturer would goes along the lines like “we introduce some new design elements after the press reviews that makes our cable much better, and we want our customers to have the best, but it also means our production cost runs up as well…”. That may well be true, in some cases. That said, what would be the reasonable level of wages paid by LessLoss to their workers for making these cables? Mercedes-Benz announced some time ago that it already sold more than 2 million units before reaching end of 2017. Our engineering and modernization has reached a point where, with few exceptions, making a cable is pretty much a semi-automated process, however fanciful claim a cable manufacturer may postulate that justify significant jump in price level within a short time. Other than that such self-justifications failed the law of diminishing returns, it begs the question that if it is true the new version is much better than the one submitted to the reviewers, wouldn’t it be sensible to launch to the market and, for that matter, submit to the reviewer the final version rather than some sort of early prototype? Everyone can see it would make more sense to do it the other way around, as all manufacturers would want a rave review of their products in order to sell more, so it would be in their interest to submit to the reviewers the final version, which presumably would be the better product than the prototype – why otherwise would you not launched the original prototype to the market? If LessLoss somehow come up with a new fanciful formula to make a significantly better product within a couple of months, what would be the reason for that seemingly sudden revelation that makes the substantial technology advancement possible? Even if such epiphany from God do happen to LessLoss’s president Louis Motek and his team, you would expect the manufacturer will name the subsequent much better product differently (“performance series”, “signature series,”, etc.). Diligent audio manufactures do this in order to distinguish the performance parameters between different series. Why would a manufacturer stick to the prevailing product name now associated with some rave reviewers, if the new product is really that much better? While I commend LessLoss for its marketing genius, I can see few of their practices as doing service to the audio industry. |
It’s case of small runs of custom and sometimes quite unique manufacturing. You can’t have exclusive impossible to find products (compared to lets say a salt shaker, or keyboard, or coffee table) somehow priced as a mass market item. As well, costs change. They do it all the time. Ie, one batch of raw materials may be twice the cost of the old when the new arrives at the dock. It is not unusual to get a new price sheet from a supplier, where you need to put a seat-belt on your office chair before you open the PDF file...then see the new numbers (50-100-200% increases) and suffer severe shock to the mind and heart all while your orifices contract mightily. This has been the way of the manufacturing world for at least the last decade. Some materials are eliminated and have to be bought on the second hand market, or bought in massive bulk, before they are deleted as a catalogue item. Eg Charles Hansen of Ayre talked about how many transistors they had to buy before a certain item was deleted, and Nelson Pass had to pay a quite serious sum to have a custom run batch of SIT transistors made up for him by southwestern. Seemingly minutes later, southwestern closed their doors (bought out/shut down). Similar thing for many others. In our case, it is a utterly unique (on all fronts) technology that merely looks like an audio cable, as we’ve bent it to that design direction. Different and greater set of benefits and a few new problem areas never before encountered. Cutting edge products appearing in poorly understood areas of science and physics (as applied to human life), are going to be expensive. The end. You are buying products built of exploratory work, in some notable cases. If one wants rubber stamp mainstream pricing on items that are common and not invigorating, go to walmart and buy a $19.99 dvd player, or a $0.50 bar of soap. You are here for quality and cutting edge. Kvetching about the cost of such is not productive and not about to achieve much of anything. The only place it will be effective is if the person involved does not hear the differences (ie, incapable or all the way over to mentally blocked from it) and then writes off the companies that do provide the cutting edge. Like the equivalent of saying that one's own driving skills are in the formula 1 area of driving expertise and that they can out-drive these formula one drivers..while in their Chevy sunfire. Bizarre and, well, illiterate. The only place such a thing gains ground is when talking to people who swim in the same waters... (us vs them mentality of sameness being somehow elevated into a command of all reality form/function) and that's equally unproductive and insular. |
