How Is Audio Equipment Valued In Money?

Who Out There With Out Bias Can Clarifie That The Price On Hi-fi Is Worth The Sound Of Any Make! Or Are We More Interested On Bias Towards Certain Bosses Who Own Those Company's ? Show Me One Who Is Not Onto Avarice And One Who You Are Happy That Gives Sound For Pound;#
Nando.

 

P.s. Hasm & Co Do Not Forget I Was In Manufacturing, And No I Do Not Like A.m.
Nando

 

Seems to me that the pricing of high end hifi is largely relative rather than absolute. A piece of equipment is priced based on its performance relative to its peers and to its stablemates. Some brands do this spectacularly well (Lamm, Wavac for example) whereas others seem to do it spectacularly badly (MF for example).

If you're after the best sound for pound then look no further than Argos in my view. Beyond that, value for money is quickly lost.

 

beg to differ, as in the earlies 70's we as young were always as you would in to wonderfull electronic pieces of equipment, reeardless of make, at that time ROTEL, TECHNICS, JVC ,LEAK, J.R. TANNOY, RULED AMONGST OTHERS, EVERYBODY CONBINED RUTHER THEN DIVIDE, NOW IT IS I BELIEVE, VERY CINICAL AND POLITICAL, M.F. I THINK THAT THEIR PRODUCTS ARE GREAT ALSO ALMOST OF ALL BRITISH MANUFACTURERS, I DO AGREE THAT THE PRICE STRACTURE MUST BE JUSTIFIED, HOW MUCH ALSO IN QUESTIONIS COST BASED ON R&D?
NANDO

 

Yes

 

I've just bought some brand new (from a dealer, but via fleabay) speakers that RRP'd at 1k - I paid 375 and the dealer still would have made a profit!

mind, I'm not complaining!

 

Nando Are You Writing In some Sort Of Code? Why Does Every Word Start With A Capital Letter?

Anyway, aren't you supposed to be a ruddy hi-fi dealer? If you don't think it offers value for money you can hardly be surprised if your customers don't either (sorry, I couldn't be bothered to start every word with a capital letter - hope that is OK).

I ANSWER SUSPECT THE LOKKING FOR ONE ONCE IS ORANGE

 

Glasshouse 300B. I do know the manufacturer, own the amp, and rate it very highly.

A 300B SET amp of this quality for under £1,000 represents fabulous value for money.

 

Hi fi equipment is a ferociously competitive market. There is an enormous amount of S/H equipment, all the more so thanks to eBay. Products that get bad reviews are often quickly pulled from production and replaced with upgraded models.

Most equipment is based on well-established scientific/engineering principles and so the costs are much lower relatively compared to 50 years ago. The biggest savings are visible at the bottom end. Very decent products (perhaps excluding turntables and cartridges) can be made at very very low prices indeed. A £100 all-in-1 system will play, over 90% of what we want to hear (please don't quibble - it's obviously an arbitrary number but you get the point). But for many of us we want more. Improvements on that can be expensive because more expensive parts are involved (in which case the costs can seem relatively good value for money, even if they are expensive). Upgrades such as this tend to create the price-point tiers that we are familiar with.

But other improvements require a lot more than that in terms of design work and R&D, all of which require significant labour expenditure. By contrast to the past, labour is now the most expensive component in most things we buy. So a new piece of hi-fi equipment that has a nice design and that has gone through testing, finessing etc to produce a slightly better product will be significantly more expensive. That is why they seem like poor value for money.

But those of us who value a better product will pay a disproportionate amount of money for the difference between 98% performance and 99.5% performance (imagining for a second that performance can be measured in single percentile figures like that).

Most things you buy include the profits that various people in the supply chain hope to make but it seems to me there are a lot of factors that make hi-fi prices quite reasonable indeed.

The two things that tend to make the biggest distortions in a market (and hence genuinely poor "value for money") are a lack of competition and a grossly distorted level of knowledge between buyers and sellers. Hi-fi buyers are exceedingly well-informed and the market is very competitive.

If value for money is poor, it's because the buyers are a little insane and willing to pay lots for tiny improvements in quality. I doubt anyone will disagree with that.

 

As for "show me one that is not into avarice" - this seems to me like a standard consumer resentment that the people we buy from hope to make a living from making and selling things that we want. As if we should somehow be able to buy hi-fi equipment at some "pure value", free of mark-ups and profit margins. You don't have to be a conservative capitalist to find this complaint a little unreasonable.

 

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London starts with a cpital letter, so do names,
nando.

 

no, we do not have to go there, we buy what our harts tell us that is what we want and feel that it gives a pleasure to enjoy and own, regardless of make,during the years of the exsintance of this industry we have adored and enjoyed varioous makes and makers of such, but i for one as much as i did not like the attiude of crtain owners of the product they made, i never said to any of my customers a bad thing about their product, however as a personal opinion "witch we are all entitled to" if asked i will give mine.
nando

 

no its definitely code that he is writing in, i have it on good authority thaT Was A coded posT.

 

Hi Nando,

What did you manufacture? Was it over or under priced?

If you don't like AM that much, why are you selling his products?

SCIDB

 

I actually find most all in ones sound pretty damn offence and awful. I think the real value for money is in discontinued lower middle end products. Richersounds are currently doing the Cambridge Azure 640 MK2 for £150. I have the MK1 and its a fantasticly well built piece of kit with design features usualy found in £500 amps. Even the remote control is made out of metal.

I find speakers very poor value for money though. My sister has a pair of Richer's Bush specials I paid £10 a pair and they sound really rather brilliant with her 30 year old Pioneer amp. They do everything right, vocals are nice and open and you can hear the air between vocals and instrunments, bass is fast and not boomy. The big trade off is that treble is a little unrefinded and the bass dosn't go that far deep but it stays well out of the mid range.

I would say they sound as a good as a typical £70 pair of speakers. Why were they so cheap? As much as Bush tried to hit the HIFI seperates market their brand is tainted and they just didn;t sell which is a damn shame.

 

Market forces, the quick guide.....

If too much money being made, lots of new entrants will come into the market, undercut and take sales. This drops prices until it finds the right level.

You cannot judge whether a product offers value just by the base materials. Sometimes more premium materials are used to give the impression of quality more than for any real benefit.

There are lots of other unseen costs.
Most premium makes sell through dealers that will spend time with a customer, set up kit in a listening room, bring you coffee and biscuits, have lots of different music available, and a good range of kit to compare.
R&D - it takes a long time to develop new kit. Also a lot of development never makes it into production, those costs however still need to be recovered.

Nando - you are quite correct in that names (including place names) should have a capital letter. If you look again at the quote that you replied to however, you shall see that Ynmoan was correct, you had a capital letter for every word. Generally the post was confusing to read.

As for your 'avarice' comment, capitalism runs on a basis that people are rewarded for their efforts with profit. Again, see the market forces 'guide' which should (accepting that the perfect market conditions never exist) ensure that 'avarice' if it exists could never do so for long as it would just attract other players.

Those who own the companies have taken risk, often invested their personal money which can be lost. Just check out how many companies make it vs those that go bust.

 

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one differs from liking a owner and product, like one dislike the other, i like the product the other is personal, just as many dealers do not like am, yes my messages are coded, read the C'S
nando

 

What does C'S mean?

What did you make/manufacture?

SCIDB

 

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Capitals, as manufacture of desing of amps in the very early 70's power amps for p.a. use also worked with goodmans parametric eq section,
nando, as others : helped alchemist, tube tech, ear, sonneteer, etc.

 

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i still think your speakers are worth every penny, love them,
nando