Do a search one million dollar speakers, there’s a bunch of them! Over priced? Well they are for me, but…
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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IMHO, once you have established what the law of diminishing returns is on a piece of audio equipment, any money spent above that price becomes questionable. Of course, I am basing this on common sense. For instance, does a $200,000 audio system sound ten times better than a $20,000 system? For that matter, does a $20,000 system sound 10 times better than a $2000 system? It's all relative to how much money you have to spend and how good your hearing is.
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@hilde45 +1!
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There are no laws for pricing products. Manufacturers must establish what they think they need to run the business, and then what kind of profit the product might drive. Do these products have some type of exclusive patented technology? Maybe sometimes? Hype? Bet your life on it. There is always a market for products marketed toward super high-end customers who have so much money that the price is irrelevant and those same customers are the least likely to be customers who do a lot of technical research or get too deep into learning the nuances of a hobby such as audio. It might be a hard pill to swallow but in many cases all that matters to this demographic is that they have something extremely rare and expensive, no matter what the thing in question might be, and that they can show it off simply for the fact that it costs an obscene amount of money. Price is not always a great measure of performance or quality, especially when you leave the reasonable bounds of high-end-high-quality to the level of ridiculous-price-no-added-performance. |
It's also possible for a manufacturer to under price a product. If someone were to manufacture a power amplifier and sell it for a profit at $1,500 no audiophile putting together an upscale system would buy it, regardless of how it sounds. Too much cognitive dissonance to match that with a $20k plus loudspeaker. If you doubt me, consider how most audiophiles view powered loudspeakers. |
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