Having recently actually bought some new (not used, not my own design, and relatively expensive) audio gear, and from 47 Labs no less, the following question has been occupying my thoughts of late:

How much would you pay to not have a component installed in the audio equipment you buy?

The traditional price scheme for audio equipment is [BOM-times-X], where BOM is the cost of the parts used to make it, and X is a multiple to cover fabrication and distribution costs, as well as profit for the various parties involved. My understanding is that for consumer audio "X" is about 4, though companies with strong brand recognition can get away with higher multiples. And do.

The basic problem is this: how much it costs to build and how good it sounds are not the same thing. There is some correlation: a large, high quality transformer is pretty much guaranteed to improve the sound quality, but for the rest, stuffing a pretty box with many cheap...