Hi-fi boss slams 'rip-off' industry: Article in Techradar

[njgale]

Top thread...

Hi-fi boss pens article slagging off expensive kit and poor journalism from magazines, whilst his company cites crummy article as collateral for extremely reasonably priced product.

Just love the layers of irony here

[madtecchy]

Originally Posted by voxxonline

My background is marketing, so believe me I can see the ways companies position audio equipment.
My decision was to start from the very low end of hi fi just to learn myself such things like cables and interconnects influence on sound quality. And lets see in which camp will I fall - the one claiming they can hear difference in cables, or the ones who do not hear any..

.. Sounding diffrent is the key word. anyone can swap interconnects so the market is aimed mainley at those with no technical skill .. Diffrent cable can sound diffrent .. chances are they will sound diffrent again with diffrent equipment ... Correct cable and connectors for the job and well soldered are fine

[KatieandDad]

It's not only Hi-Fi !!!!!

Rumour has it that the manufacturing cost for Coca-Cola is approximately 4 pence per litre. How come it retails at over £1 a litre.

It costs approximately £8000 to build a Range Rover - they sell for £70 000.

Houses - a similar story.

It's retail for you. People will buy what they need - or think they need - and at any price. It only takes one entrepreneur to break the cycle. Do you remember the bread war when a loaf came down to about 10p. You can buy a tin of baked beans for 17p, but people still pay nearly £1 for Heinz.

[a.wayne]

Originally Posted by qusp

James is a bit of an idiot looking to sell a story, anyone who spends that sort of money without making it their business to know what sort of technology is used, is a fool.

500W peaks needed for normal listening levels? I think its this guy thats uninformed. maybe he means PMPO

there are a lot of charlatans in the industry and many things cost far more than they should, but isnt that for the people that have the money to spend to fix by voting with their dollars? if gullible nincompoops continue to support a market for fairy dust, it will just push the prices further and further up.

but that can be said for many industries. to suggest that its the norm for people to buy 4000 dollar power supplies at all, let alone for it to not be unusual for it to consist of a transformer and chip regulator is just sensationalism.

500 watts is not that far fetched and i have yet to hear a soeaker that did not benefit from more juice ....

[jan.didden]

Originally Posted by KatieandDad

It's not only Hi-Fi !!!!!

Rumour has it that the manufacturing cost for Coca-Cola is approximately 4 pence per litre. How come it retails at over £1 a litre.

It costs approximately £8000 to build a Range Rover - they sell for £70 000.

Houses - a similar story.

It's retail for you. People will buy what they need - or think they need - and at any price. It only takes one entrepreneur to break the cycle. Do you remember the bread war when a loaf came down to about 10p. You can buy a tin of baked beans for 17p, but people still pay nearly £1 for Heinz.

Why do you people think that the parts cost should determine the retail cost??
Coca cola for 4 pc/litre, could be. But who brings it to the stores; do truck drivers work for free? How about that marketing manager from the Coke Headquarters, who pays for his Lexus?? Who pays the stockholders?
And that $ 2million ad during the Sunday game, who pays for that?

It's not dissimilar for audio. A nice stand at THE show will cost you, say, $ 20k. Furniture lease, outfitting, plus flying some people in, hotel and food cost, and before you know it you're looking at $ 50k.
How many 1000 $ retail amps you think you must sell just to pay for this one show? (Hint: a $ 1000 retail amp may bring net gain to the manufacturer of $ 50. If he got his act together). Not to speak of the accountants, the IRS who wants a cut. You get the point.
Parts cost are almost irrelevant except for very low volume products.

jan

[qusp]

Originally Posted by A.Wayne

500 watts is not that far fetched and i have yet to hear a soeaker that did not benefit from more juice ....

Originally Posted by Sy

Suppose your speakers have an efficiency of 87dB/W/1M (a fairly typical number for cones in a box). You sit 3 meters away, so now that watt gives you about 77dB. That's not terribly loud. If you're listening to compressed commercial source material (10dB peak to average), you indeed won't need more than 10-20W to hit the peaks with 77dB average.

If you have dynamic material, more likely you'll need at least another 10-20dB for peaks, possibly more. Being conservative, let's use the 10dB number. So at very moderate volumes with moderately dynamic material, we're up to 100W for peaks. Crank it up a little bit or play some dynamic recordings and that 500W doesn't seem too farfetched. After all, a mere 80dB average SPL with the same moderately dynamic material means you'll need 200W.

We tend to forget the consequences of log relationships!

500W RMS at the speaker terminals? for normal listening levels? hmm that really depends on whether you care about gain structure. hes suggesting thats normal, it isnt normal, its not impossible, maybe not even far fetched with typical inefficient big ported floor-standers with passive crossovers, but its not normal

are you suggesting that properly dynamic program material is the norm? if only that were the case

[buzzforb]

Originally Posted by jan.didden

Why do you people think that the parts cost should determine the retail cost??
Coca cola for 4 pc/litre, could be. But who brings it to the stores; do truck drivers work for free? How about that marketing manager from the Coke Headquarters, who pays for his Lexus?? Who pays the stockholders?
And that $ 2million ad during the Sunday game, who pays for that?

It's not dissimilar for audio. A nice stand at THE show will cost you, say, $ 20k. Furniture lease, outfitting, plus flying some people in, hotel and food cost, and before you know it you're looking at $ 50k.
How many 1000 $ retail amps you think you must sell just to pay for this one show? (Hint: a $ 1000 retail amp may bring net gain to the manufacturer of $ 50. If he got his act together). Not to speak of the accountants, the IRS who wants a cut. You get the point.
Parts cost are almost irrelevant except for very low volume products.

jan

Business has many layers and the cost is of goods is only part of the CODB. Jan is more right than any other comment so far about the expense of hifi. Not defending some of the prices you see, but there are other cost realted to final pricing. With hifi, you also have to consider the time of the designer in developing/tweaking whatever he has brought to the market.

I would argue an alternative position. It is my belief tha peoples unwillingness to pay for anything as being the main killer of economies across the world. WalMart-itis is killing the world. It forces companies to rove the world looking for the cheapest labor they can find, just so they can bring product to market at a profit.

[SY]

Originally Posted by qusp

500W RMS at the speaker terminals?

Reread your post and my analysis. PEAKS.

are you suggesting that properly dynamic program material is the norm?

No, I didn't. Reread what I wrote.

[qusp]

actually buzz I completely agree with you and Jan, for reasonable quality/value products not made in a sweatshop. do remember that the example is not 40 profit though, its total cost of parts (I guess minus chassis) so it can be taken too far.

I think part of the problem is direct selling and actually that makes me part of the problem. people expect a much more direct relationship to parts cost with internet marketed, direct product. that and imported goods, some pirated, with no supprt costs, subsidised shipping etc etc. hardly anyone buys locally for something that doesnt cost the world to ship these days and that is destroying the economy. people forget the costs of supporting and stocking a product, its such a throw away society now that they dont really care so much about support either.

but how do we turn that around? I try to buy local when I can and most of my business is exported top Asia, USA and EU, so i'm doing my bit, but if I were to get any larger scale manufacturing done, I would be silly to not consider getting it done...erm...over there; because its hard to compete with that cost, because nobody wants to pay.

often the middle men are the ones making the most money, not the manufacturer and not the point of sale retailer

[Pano]

Originally Posted by SY

We tend to forget the consequences of log relationships!

Yes, most people do. 500W is only 7dB more than 100W. You'd certainly hear the difference, but not 5X as much.