Price Increases

That is the direction the market has been headed for about 6-8 years now. I've noticed that just about every manufacturer has come out with a new top of the line product in the last 6-8 years that is double the price of what their old top of the line was listing for. High end audio simply mirrors the economy, where the middle class is getting squeezed, and the money is flowing upward. Most other hobbies are experiencing the same dilemma.

As for prices rising on the same item, that is just the start of the devaluation of the US dollar that the Fed started early in 2012. We can lower unemployment when you devalue the dollar, the flip side is that retail prices will increase just to stay the same in value.

Jmcgrogan2- You are correct, but I fear that this discussion is about to go seriously off the rails!

Yes. Price inflation is everywhere and always a monetary phenomenom. Thank Ben for this round. Seen the price of art? big city real estate? farmland? Our money (future debt at least) is flowing upward.

There is, supposedly, an economic recovery on the way. Which may be part of the reason. I think the main one, is that HiFi is becoming more of a cottage industry. The ultra High End, hand building Audio Bling for Hedge fund managers, seems to be doing ok. The large manufacturers feeding in lower down the scale, I suspect are doing less well. I would be interested to know how sales are going with ARC, CJ, Macintosh and the like. I doubt if they are growing. There can not be the economies of scale that there were in the Golden age of Audio in the 70's, when everyone aspired to a "HiFi System"

Another factor must be costs in China. As you know, wage rates are shooting up there, even if it is from 1 to 2 handfuls of rice a day. It is ironic, that countries like Vietnam are undercutting Chinese wage costs at the moment.

The challenge is to find, say, the $10K speaker that sounds like those $100K "high-end" ones, instead of spending $100K to get something that sounds like a $10K speaker.