Okay, so here's what I don't get. A new, fully loaded, 2018 Mercedes
E-Class can be purchased for the same price as a 4M set of Odin speaker
cables. Sure, they're the Odin 2, and the Mercedes is only the E-Class,
and not the S-Class, but still...
When you look at the 2 items;
the cost of materials and manufacturing -- and it's not as though
Germans are cheap labor -- how does 12 feet of silver-plated copper wire
with some string and a plastic coating, regardless of precision,
possibly justify its cost compared to the materials and labor that go
into manufacturing a high-end automobile. Simple: it doesn't. Someone
-- or everyone along the "food chain" is making a LOT of money, and
everyone knows it.
I can buy a touch-screen laptop with all the
bells and whistles, B&O sound, blah blah blah, for about $1500.
Some kid who loves his music and his computer is going to look at two
pieces of electronics, both of which give him great pleasure, and see
one that costs $1500, and is considered top-of-the-line, and one that
costs $1500 and is considered entry level, and to achieve truly great,
"gob-smack" sound, it will cost roughly a mortgage on a nice home. I'd
venture to guess that one-in-a million of those kids will ever venture
any further into the high end.
Simple, there's demand for it.
And so it goes. We're getting older and fewer and less willing to buy
new gear in the pursuit of our love of reproduced music. I don't know
where this ends, but if the industry is dying, or being given away to
overseas cheap manufacturing, then something needs to change.
Industry is growing if price is rising. Only dying for ones sitting outside priced out of the market. |
Prices rising doesn't necessarily mean industry is "growing." Clearly there are different ways to make money on goods. One is to treat them as luxury made to order items understanding that the market will be relatively small, the cost of "raw" materials higher than if purchasing in mass quantities and the margin required on each sale much higher due to lower volumes. I believe this is jbomber's point. Of course, as long as a goods company is profitably in business it indicates a marketplace somewhere. But that does not mean the marketplace is expanding. It may, in fact, be contracting. Value is usually measured by two separate markets--the initial marketplace--what are new buyers willing to pay--and the secondary market--what are used buyers willing to pay. In the US, Porsche has robust initial and secondary markets. Maserati does not. Porsche sells more units in the US than Maserati--by a lot. Maserati's are cool but you are going to have a hard time unloading one on the secondary US market. Porsche's are cool too--and have great relative US resale value. I don't know whether Nordost is more like Porsche or Maserati. It seems used Nordost trade thin on Audiogon, but I don't follow them closely. This much is true--the more you charge for your good, the smaller the potential market. But higher prices increase brand eliteness and that is clearly where many hifi companies are aiming their products. Are they doing it because the overall marketplace cannot support a sufficiently large production business model? That I don't know. |
I don't think the audio industry is dying or growing, it is simply changing to reflect the changing economy.
As the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer, there are products made for all the changing economic scales.
Yes, high end audio prices are spiraling to incredible heights, but also inexpensive brands are thriving, brands like Jolida, Vincent, Adcom, NAD, B&K, Inspire, etc.
The audio industry is simply following the market developed by the changing economy.
|
i’m w jbomber. inputs to build and mkt the mercedes aren’t comparable in any way to the high end cable business. i love high end cables but realize the pricing is a farce. it simply has to be purchased used to get some of the fluff out.
im confident that some cable manufacturers are secretly amazed that we audiophiles will pay so much for their magical products. |
well... I don't have Odin's out of my price range right now... but I did buy heimdahl 2's and the difference to me was shocking. So cables do make a difference and whether those cables are overpriced... hmm.. probably... but people are buying them or they would be out of business
And NO Chord can't make enough products to meet demand .. no idea why anyone would think the industry is dying due to a wait list... that means demand can't meet supply... common sense... |
