When someone tells you it's a $40,000 amp, does it sound better?

Amortizing R&D cost, marketing cost, etc. is one way to set price, but price can be set on perceived value.  No matter the cost to build, if you make something that you think performs extremely well, you might set your price based on this perceived value; you will get your price if others agree, and if not, it won’t sell.  With high end audio, there are those who are willing to pay a very high premium for the particular sound they are after.  

I suppose there is a price point beyond which any design can be built with a reasonable profit margin. What that is is not so clear.  Some designs can be surprisingly expensive when it comes to parts.  The input and output transformers on my amp are vintage parts that can cost $24,000 for a stereo set.  The 9 tubes can cost more than $16,000.  So, even without the chassis, power transformers, resistors, caps, chokes, etc., the parts alone are at the hypothetical excess level.  Is the amp worth it?  I think so, but such an evaluation is very specific to my taste and system matching.  For one thing the output is something like 5.5 wpc—it would not work at all with some speakers

Ultimately, it is a matter of taste, and it is entirely possible for a much cheaper amp to fit one’s taste better than an expensive amp and that is not a knock on the expensive amp.  This Saturday I talked with a shop owner who just completed a sale after a customer auditioned various amps and speakers.  It came down to a comparison of two amps, and the customer preferred one integrated over the other.  Throughout the audition, the customer did not know prices.  The amp he outright preferred cost something like $9,000.  The “competition”? That amp costs $60,000. The dealer was not surprised by the preference, although he did think a different set of tubes might have flipped the preference.

I don’t think it takes months of break in, and any decent dealer will make sure things are properly set up and functioning and not use break in as an excuse.  It is true that it is hard to do meaningful auditions; to some extent experience helps in extrapolating and getting meaningful information from an audition.  If something sounds good in a particular system, you know it is possible to get sound from your target gear; if the audition goes poorly, you cannot rule out the component because it may not be at fault.  This is admittedly complicated, but, in time you will get better at finding what will suit your taste and system.

It doesn't matter what price point one picks, there is simply no amp that can do it all, be the best under all circumstances and please everyone's taste.  Yes, expensive, high-powered amps may be for some people, but, there are a few examples of breathtakingly expensive amps that are quite low in power.  What some of these can do for higher efficiency speakers is amazing.  I've heard the Audio Note Gaku-on on a number of systems and it never disappointed me (it better be good at a quarter of a million dollars).  My own $40k ish amp; sounds great to me, and it works with my 99 db/w speakers, but, it would probably be not so great with something less efficient (it is sort of rated at 5.5 wpc). 

A great amp will shine even with modest speakers.  A friend told me about the day he was working at an audio shop where they used a really good amp with a range of lower priced speakers, including a pair of old and battered Polk speakers, and every speaker sounded amazingly good.  That was when he became convinced about how extremely important amps are to the sound.

The price of top end gear does not bear that tight a relationship to the cost of the parts.  The pricing is value-based.  The builder compares the performance of the gear to other gear on the market and sets the price based on how it sounds as compared to the competition.  Of course audio is something that not everyone agrees on what sounds good, so something priced way up in price might still not fit one's taste.  But, that price is aimed at someone who likes this particular sound and is comparing the product to other like sounding gear.  

Because potential buyers have limited ability to hear a wide range of gear, particularly to hear the gear in their own system, most do not even know of the range of possible sonic alternatives.  A local dealer in my area that sells only tube amplification gear, almost all of it of the low-power type, often gets in customers who have never really heard what low-power tube gear can do with the right speakers.  For many, it is almost a religious experience.  This dealer often has to make odd deals where he is getting in gear for trade that is worth MUCH more than the gear the buyer wants to swap for--meaning the dealer would owe money to the buyer; the arrangement made is usually some kind of consignment sale of the turned in gear.  At this store, it is not at all strange that the customer finds that his $40k and up amps sound much inferior to something around $10k.  But, that is not to say that the $40k stuff is a rip off--it was more of a mismatch to the listener's actual preference, a preference the customer did not even know he had until experiencing the alternative.

A $58 resistor from Vishay—I hope at that price it doesn’t sound like a Vishay.  I saw listings for film caps that cost more than $1,000 each for the second to the top of the line (for a quote on the top line, you have to call).  I have a headphone amp with a nice potentiometer (Alps RK 50).  My friend wanted one for a build he was planning and called a distributor and was told that the price is $850 each with a minimum order of 50 units.  

Vintage parts can be even crazier.  The input transformers on my amp are now being priced at $6800 each and the output transformers are about $5000 each. I have another amp that has output transformers that cost about $22,000 a pair.  I am really happy I purchased these things before the prices were that crazy.