The Insane World of High End Audio! Is it All a Scam?

Generally, people are flawed in their thinking that if it costs more it must be better. This bias lives in the imagination of humans and makes it easy for scammers.

Years ago Starbucks coffee was doing poorly. They kept lowering the price to lure customers but it wasn't helping. New management came in and immediatly tripled the price on coffee to change the perception that the cheap price = cheap/crap product. Instead the new higher price gave a new image that this coffee is now improved, higher quality. "it must be better at that price!". Even though the coffee was unchanged, people with money were now lured in due to price.  A smart marketing tool that didn't cost them anything.

Certainly the people with money can see the Emporors new clothes. They also hear the sound improvement from a $2000 box of rocks. (they'd never buy the rocks if they were only $50 )

The difference of buying a Rolex vs. a Timex has NOTHING to do with telling time.

Gosh this sounds familiar:

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I have some gear at different price categories. 

Without A/B-ing such items in the same room, you wouldn't be able to tell what exactly you paid for or not.

The cheapman youtube guy probably doesn't have any point of reference or clue, except catering to his subscribers, i.e., other angry cheapaudiomen who got hyper-capitalism's short end of the stick. 

There's also a lot of junk sold at astronomical prices... that just looks good. Many expensiveaudiomen pay for such looks.

When I first started out in this hobby, I was sure all cables sounded alike and cable marketing was all a scam.  As my ears got better, I could hear the difference and realized it was important to me, so I bought into pricey cables.

And I have never heard two pairs of speakers sound the same -- there's always a difference.

My impression is that cheapaudioman 1) cannot tell the difference in sound at the high end which is convenient because 2) he doesn't have enough money.

He notes the diminishing returns with higher price.  At some price level, he can't tell the difference (or the difference is too small for him to care).  But there are others who hear the difference and do care about it.  When listeners can tell the difference between $60k speakers vs $10k and have the funds, the value proposition makes sense.  That's the market niche.

So with sour grapes, he labels the high end a scam.  May his ears never become educated to appreciate the finer differences in those diminishing returns.