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Inflated prices in audio

Not being funny but I put a post into the thread about SME no longer selling tone-arms on their own saying they are not silly priced - I then had to row it back a bit when I saw that the SME V retails at £5500. 110 years ago it was half that price. My salary ain't doubled.

Likewise there are some real silly price audio equipment. If you index link top end audio from the 80's they would still come out significantly cheaper than now.

I'm not convinced that the best high-end from now is necessarily better than the stuff back then - different perhaps.

Is there any logical explanation for this? I think magazines like hi-fi world and what hifi are fairly responsible and do review a lot of real world products, but other publications are fixated with the utterly un-affordable.

What do you 'goners think?
lohanimal
bigkidz
3,403 posts
 
Try to manufacture a quality product for a fair price - what ever that means.  In today's world, how many of them do you think SME sells each year. Cost to manufacturer, dealer mark-up, etc. leaves very little profit margin unless you can get a higher priced product sold. No to mention equipment cost and maintenance, paying people on your staff even when things are not selling that well, competition allover the place, etc.

VPI just came out with their 40th anniversary model at half the price of the one they built a few years back.  Not cheap but that was a big achievement for a manufacturer.


schubert
7,386 posts
 
Her is my take .
I was at the biggest and best Audio Show in the world in Munich , Germany with a good friend who was CEO of a small German audio company .
Couple other "big-shots" wandered up and he introduced me in English .They were talking about this market and that in German and kept mentioning the " sucker market" , I assume they thought I didn’t speak German , which I do , and then quite well .
As they left I asked my buddy whats this sucker market ? He smiled and said the USA .
lohanimal OP
659 posts
 
@clearthink I don't like cables because there are just too damn many - I have tried quite a few (as per my post) and having gone in circles come back to my DNM cables which are as cheap as chips but work very well with my amp/system (which actually love DNM cables). 

People go on about the r&d in cables - well how about the R&D into creating the CD player/Blue Ray/ OLED TV's - now that's research. 

Please note my prejudice is system specific and I am sure that some systems do favour certain cables, and the further caveat that from the Vetere cables I have used they are much better than Lavardins' own interconnects. I just get slightly sick of the claims over cables - that's all
gdnrbob
4,458 posts
 
Well, if a slice of NY pizza can go from 50 cents in the '80's to $3.00 today, I would say the dollar has taken a hit.
B
oregonpapa's avatar
oregonpapa
4,867 posts
 
In 1930 a twenty-dollar gold piece would by a man a nice suit of clothes, a shirt, tie, belt, socks and a nice pair of shoes. Today, that same twenty-dollar gold piece could still buy that same outfit.

Today, a twenty-dollar Federal Reserve Note would buy you a couple pair of nice socks.

That’s the money story in a nutshell.

Frank
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