I recently saw a McIntosh clock on sale for$1800? This will be made for probably a $100. Is there overpricing, yes. Is it overpriced, well not for the person buying it.
Is it possible for a high end manufacturer to overprice their goods?
Having just read the interesting and hyperbole laden review by RH of the new Rockport Orion speakers in the latest issue of The Absolute Sound, one thing struck me..
is it possible in the high end for a manufacturer to overprice their product ( doesn’t have to be a speaker, but this example comes to mind)? I ask this, as the Orion is priced at $133k! Yes,a price that would probably make 99% of hobbyists squirm. Yet, the speaker now joins a number of competitors that are in the $100k realm.
To that, this particular speaker stands just 50.3” tall and is just 14.3” wide…with one 13” woofer, one 7” midrange and a 1.25” beryllium dome ( which these days is nothing special at all…and could potentially lead to the nasties of beryllium bite).
The question is…given this speakers design and parts, which may or may not be SOTA, is it possible that this is just another overpriced product that will not sell, or is it like others, correctly priced for its target market? Thoughts…
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@henry53 while the example you use is unfamiliar to me, I would not want to be the guy who buys this clock and then needs to re-sell it. Here’s the thing, I don’t think we are actually discussing the value of something to someone, particularly when it comes to some high end gear, more about what is a price that even the most well heeled say… “enough is enough”. Some folks may believe that there is no price that will bring about this reaction, the question in my OP was dealing with that. Certainly, if we are to believe Dan D’Agostino, he has not gotten push back from his customers…yet. But my point is more along the lines of where does that become a problem for these manufacturers…like Rockport and D’Ag, or is it that they can push the prices up to multiples of what they currently are..and still see healthy interest and sales! |
Last fall I went to the audio show in suburban DC, and I enjoy it (although pointing out to my friend who accompanied that audio is an old man’s game). I went into the many hotel rooms where speaker vendors were demonstrating their wares. A lot of fun actually, but what struck me is that with few exceptions that price had nothing to do with the quality of the sound coming from the speakers. Moreover, it was pretty clear that to distinguish themselves, speaker makers resort to outlandish physical designs to stand out in the crowd. And when I say "outlandish", it means "ugly". Finally, my observation is that most of these speaker makers won’t be around in 3-5 years, but more will spring up in their place, as long as people are willing to pay for them. It seems you don’t need a lot of capital to get into the speaker business. |
I am not convinced you always get what you pay for and I am skeptical of extreme prices. In 2005 the WAVAC 833A stereo amplifier was reviewed in Stereoplile magazine. Its price was $350,000. It had the grid of the 833A transformer coupled from a 300B SET. You can build this simple SET circuit yourself for less than $2000, $4000 if you use Western Electric 300B drivers. Hammond makes robust output transformers built the same way with the same materials as the most expensive Japanese transformers, all of which are not rated to carry as much DC current or signal current as the Hammond. You can drive the grids with Lundahl transformers which are arguably the best you can buy, and you can use globe 45 or 245 triodes which are built the same way Western Electric 300B triodes were built and drive them with mu follower directly coupled 6SN7 dual triodes. The power supply can have polypropylene filter capacitors when many $10,000 SET amplifiers use inferior electrolytic filter capacitors in the power supply. There has to be something fishy about selling such an amplifier for $350,000. What about speaker cables costing $27,000 a pair? How far do you have to go before credulity breaks down? Here is another consideration. A sound system will never perfectly reproduce how a live performance sounds. If a $5000 system is 70% accurate by some yet to perfectly define measure, is a system with six figure components that much closer, say $80? |
I have been thinking about the same thing, which is very much like the OPs question, how high they can go with the price? How far they can go with the ugliness that these top of the line products’ design represent? So many are hideous looking, an absolute crime against basic design principles, for the same amount of money and effort they could be just look normal or pleasant - aesthetically.
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