Interesting - that driver looks to be the one I currently have in the two-ways in my system. The retail there is $22.36+VAT. Is VAT 20% now? If so that would make a pair of drivers come to almost 34UKP. My pair of speakers cost me around 58UKP, deliveredThe retail margins must still be appreciable.
<edit> To get back on-topic, the original is about Ashley James of AVI - he does look to me to be a pot calling other kettles black - his website shows a floor stander with just the two drivers in going for roughly double the above speaker.
Ashley James is in it to make money like all the rest of them. Why does the article remove some manufacturer names and leve others in? Bias all over the place.
Well, I used to be convinced it is not ethical. But after 10+ years on this forum, I think it is more subtle than that.
I have spend many, many hours here trying to explain that a $ 250 cap, on itself, cannot ever make such a difference that it 'transforms your system'. And I've tried to back that up by facts and figures, from stressing that it is only ONE component in a long chain to the speaker and your ears, to explaning psycho-acoustic principles, perception, and biasing. Asking for some type of controlled testing to back up their claim, I had the nerve!
What I got for my efforts was mostly along the lines that I was a stone-deaf meter reader who never listens to music anyway, to far worse than that. Look at the comment I got above.
What that taught me was that people know that an expensive and/or hyped component sounds better, and no amount of reasoning can change their opinion.
John Curl has been very honest about this: he has stated that he can easily hear which amp sounds best from a pair as long as he can see them and knows which one is playing at the time! (my italics). Well, duh! I don't even have to listen to do that, just need keen eyesight.
I am sure that people who shell out say $ 15k for a Blowtorch are very happy with their purchase. Yet, if I build identical copies of a Blowtorch and brand it 'designed by Phil Spectre' and price it at $ 999 suggested retail, how many do you think I would sell?
So you see, I'm no longer sure where ethics figure in all this.
jan
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Hello, John. We were expecting you.
That explains why the cost of parts for those Bybee products is only a small part of the final cost...
That explains why the cost of parts for those Bybee products is only a small part of the final cost...
I don't see it as being any different to "high end" handbags... Why would a woman spend $3000 on a hand bag (with a designer name) when she can buy one that is significantly better quality (and in my oppinion more stylish) for perhaps 1/10 the cost.
Quality costs (and I'm a firm believer in that) but only up to a point. At some point it is all about the prestige, and quality has very little to do with anything.
I tend to view it the same way as Jan. If the person buying it can afford it, and it makes them happy, then what is the problem? Does it matter if it really doesn't make any difference provided they believe that it does and are happy? Who are we to tell people what should make them happy??
Tony.
Quality costs (and I'm a firm believer in that) but only up to a point. At some point it is all about the prestige, and quality has very little to do with anything.
I tend to view it the same way as Jan. If the person buying it can afford it, and it makes them happy, then what is the problem? Does it matter if it really doesn't make any difference provided they believe that it does and are happy? Who are we to tell people what should make them happy??
Tony.
People seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that humans are rational, logical folk. Not so. The evidence suggest we much prefer a good story. Look at cosmetics, wars, shoes, politics, cars, religion, sport, etc. etc...
And we can even be two faced. Ask a hi-fi rationalist about his favourite football team, and all logical thought is abandoned...
And we can even be two faced. Ask a hi-fi rationalist about his favourite football team, and all logical thought is abandoned...
Ashley James is just a marketing guy from a small hifi company trying to sell people a hook so they buy his vastly over-priced desktop computer speakers. The redacted brand name from the article is Naim Audio. Naim have never made a product like he described, the closest they come to a product like he described was the Flatcap, which was £400 not £4000. Their £4000 product is actually £3500 and it looks like this inside,
Ashley James is a notorious bullshitter and he has been banned from almost all the UK forums for his repeated spamming and inaccuracies.
he has made wild claims for the power output of his own active speakers, you just have to look inside one to see it's class A/B and that the tranny is good for maybe 125 watts not the 300+ he claims.
Ashley James is a notorious bullshitter and he has been banned from almost all the UK forums for his repeated spamming and inaccuracies.
he has made wild claims for the power output of his own active speakers, you just have to look inside one to see it's class A/B and that the tranny is good for maybe 125 watts not the 300+ he claims.
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So, what he says is thue then, and he even does it himself.
Interesting tactic: accuse others of overpricing their stuff, thereby implying that HIS stuff is worth every penny, and then make a killing...
jan
Exactly. That's why I always call it what it is, "fashion" audio. It's not the performance, it's the fantasy, the entertainment.
having worked in a semicon assembly plant for years, i know for a fact that we as a plant try to achieve a certain "unit cost figure", the is the cost of making a single piece of products we make.....
it may surprise you to know that the ratio of retail price of a chip vs. unit cost is indeed very very high, that is so the plant can be viable and earn profits....
i can definitely say that the same happens with audio amplifiers and other products for sale or offered commercially.....it is all about business...law of supply and demand...
after all a fair price is the price the costumer is willing to buy and the seller is willing to sell....
that is why i am in DIY and diy forum such as this.....diy'ers are not constrained by profit considerations....he is in it for the love of it and lot's of fun....
it may surprise you to know that the ratio of retail price of a chip vs. unit cost is indeed very very high, that is so the plant can be viable and earn profits....
i can definitely say that the same happens with audio amplifiers and other products for sale or offered commercially.....it is all about business...law of supply and demand...
after all a fair price is the price the costumer is willing to buy and the seller is willing to sell....
that is why i am in DIY and diy forum such as this.....diy'ers are not constrained by profit considerations....he is in it for the love of it and lot's of fun....
There has to be a full cost exercise to establish a base line product concept to boxes on the shelves unit cost.
The DIYer buys components, may pay for stock enclosures or make his own. He does not count into his costs his time, work-space, any test instruments he may have, design and development costs are often carried by the likes of Mr Pass - advertising [one full colour page can cost many times the sum we spend on a whole amp!], time and costs of exhibiting at trade shows, brochure writing and printing, cost recovery on still born/aborted projects....the list goes on and on. IF we are considering a very top shelf product we are talking of very limited production runs and, thus, very high unit production cost. These guys have to make a profit too just to survive! Some people do buy more readily if the price tag is very high...but there are not enough of them to guarantee that a product in this catagory is commercially viable!
We get it cheap at the cost of a hobby which can be an end in itself.
Tony I don't think anyone is saying people shouldn't make a living from their efforts, a 10x multiplier from cost to retail price is largely the norm in this market. Much greater markups exist for products that require significant hardware investment for R&D and production, silicon and medicines for example.
I don't even begrudge Bybee a living.
I don't even begrudge Bybee a living.
sorry to be boring, but
X3
I have made almost identical posts in discussions with the extremes of the Objective 2 headphone amp Borg, that have been brainwashed to remove all of these considerations, let alone any considerations of artisan short run hand made construction, that may not expend its effort and resources in the name of better measurements, but rather just doing things properly, using highly skilled and rare techniques/materials, special transformer winding, cores etc. beautiful CNC or handmade enclosures.
That may not be the norm, may be very high priced, may measure rather badly by your/my metric, but the object itself brings joy to the buyer and pride of ownership, who are we to argue with an individuals own measure of value? Who are we to decide he has been taken advantage of? What business of ours is any of that? there was a while where these guys would rome threads looking to kill peoples satisfaction and that annoyed me a great deal.
Pretending that it is a solemn duty to protect these 'weak of mind' (not my words or opinions) from evil and themselves is pure conceit. if you had the power to replace it with something that you consider to be superior, it would be quite possible they would hate it, then what? judge their taste to be foolish too?
I have a pet hate of when flawed designs are claimed to be technically superior too in some fringe/dubious or imaginary measure. the whole have your cake and eat it too thing gets to me and I dig my heals in, but if its simply enjoyment/happiness let them have it, whether it has technical basis in reality or not. Who is to judge whos experience of 'reality' is more valid?
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It's interesting that business overheads (marketing, distribution, premises etc.) are seen as a justification for speakers based on <16 GBP drivers being sold for 1500 GBP, and that it's just naive idiots who know nothing about business who can't see it; that sure, you can build your own speakers for less, but you don't have the terrible costs that a business has to bear.
This seems to be an inversion of the whole idea of being in business. The point of specialised businesses is that they do things cheaper and better than the man in his garage can. The overheads are merely the incidental costs of buying economies of scale and efficiency. The man in his garage, on the other hand, gets no economies of scale when he buys his components in small quantities and drives everywhere in his own vehicle to pick up tools and materials. In doing so he is more than covering the overheads of the businesses who manufacture and supply his materials. Yet, he could buy all the necessary materials and tools to build just a single pair of speakers for less than the retail price of similar commercial speakers.
Edit: Speakers are perhaps the worst example, as there is some actual effort involved in making them. Something I know more about is the manufacture of electronic circuits comprising surface mount components on PCBs. Even if manufacturing one-offs in the developed world, the costs of this are so low, that charging >1000GBP for a 'DAC' is a fantasy markup for the lucky company raking the money in. But what about the design costs, and the alchemy that the company imbues the product with? Nah. The really clever bit is the DAC chip designed by properly clever people in a huge corporation, then churned out by the million for pence. Follow the data sheet and you're almost all the way there. Add on a few fancy 'audiophile' capacitors and you've done it. Cynical, moi?
This seems to be an inversion of the whole idea of being in business. The point of specialised businesses is that they do things cheaper and better than the man in his garage can. The overheads are merely the incidental costs of buying economies of scale and efficiency. The man in his garage, on the other hand, gets no economies of scale when he buys his components in small quantities and drives everywhere in his own vehicle to pick up tools and materials. In doing so he is more than covering the overheads of the businesses who manufacture and supply his materials. Yet, he could buy all the necessary materials and tools to build just a single pair of speakers for less than the retail price of similar commercial speakers.
Edit: Speakers are perhaps the worst example, as there is some actual effort involved in making them. Something I know more about is the manufacture of electronic circuits comprising surface mount components on PCBs. Even if manufacturing one-offs in the developed world, the costs of this are so low, that charging >1000GBP for a 'DAC' is a fantasy markup for the lucky company raking the money in. But what about the design costs, and the alchemy that the company imbues the product with? Nah. The really clever bit is the DAC chip designed by properly clever people in a huge corporation, then churned out by the million for pence. Follow the data sheet and you're almost all the way there. Add on a few fancy 'audiophile' capacitors and you've done it. Cynical, moi?
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Jan Didden, you have gotten my input wrong. Please listen up.
I do NOT have to know WHICH SOURCE I am listening to, in advance. ONLY, that when I listen, I know that one is X and the other is Y. Arbitrary assignments to two different sound sources. Then I can tell you which sounds best: X or Y
Please, do not continue to compromise me with your version of how you think I listen.
I do NOT have to know WHICH SOURCE I am listening to, in advance. ONLY, that when I listen, I know that one is X and the other is Y. Arbitrary assignments to two different sound sources. Then I can tell you which sounds best: X or Y
Please, do not continue to compromise me with your version of how you think I listen.
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