New speakers or new car?
ever notice it’s easier to spend $50,000 on speakers than $50,000 on a new car? Why is that. Is it because my living room is not big enough for a car?
Seriously, I need a new car. So maybe I need to come to terms with that and somehow find a way for it to be easier to spend a lot of money on a new car. Maybe it’s because a speaker doesn’t come with annual recurring costs like insurance and all the gasoline or electricity you gotta put into it.
Or maybe I just do both.
In the coffee line at SWAF I was talking to a friendly female attendee who debating the idea of choosing between a beach house a pair of $500,000 speakers (probably the big YGs on demo there). I said, ’beach house!", but she pushed back thinking speakers would be better overall. I inferred that is partly because the speakers are less maintenance. What one has to do to get their money’s worth from those speakers is a lot, though.
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@jasonbourne71 Nah, low volume speaker sales have to be expensive. Same with low volume cars Most of this from web queries Take Magico. Their production is highly specialized, involving in-house CNC machining of aluminum enclosures, which limits output to a relatively small number of units, focusing on precision over high-volume manufacturing. The company is located in California. Like all speaker companies they have a robust advertising budget. Transportation of product is expensive. And so on, with the usual list. Now take Klipsch. Klipsch sells from low to upper medium priced speakers and they sell tons more than Magico. High-end speakers typically carry a retail gross profit margin of 40-50%, which is significantly higher than the 1%–2% net margin seen in the car industry. While the manufacturer might only spend 10% to 15% of the final retail price on physical components like drivers and cabinets, high margins are necessary to sustain a low-volume business with extreme research and development (R&D) and overhead Porsche Cars North America achieved a new all-time U.S. sales record in 2025 with 76,219 vehicles sold, a slight increase (0.07%) over the previous 2024 record. The Macan was the best-selling model (27,139 units), followed by the Cayenne (20,314) and the 911 (13,574) Ford Motor Company sold 2,204,124 vehicles in the U.S. in 2025, marking a 6% increase over 2024 and the company's highest annual sales year. Toyota Motor North America (TMNA) achieved record U.S. sales in 2025, with total sales reaching 2,518,071 vehicles, an 8% increase over 2024. Electrified vehicles (hybrids, plug-ins, EVs) drove this growth, comprising 47% of total volume with 1,183,248 units sold. The Toyota division alone sold 2,147,811 vehicles, while Lexus posted 370,260 Some things people just want It is estimated that it costs Rolex roughly $500 to $1,250 in materials and labor to manufacture a stainless steel watch, though this can rise to several thousand for precious metals. Marketing, distribution, and research overhead likely add hundreds more per watch, bringing the total cost closer to $1,000–$2,000+ before reaching retailer markup
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do you know what socialism is @mark200mph ? |
