Funny how electronics are priced. Advancement in technology has allowed computer prices to fall but hi end audio equipment keeps going up, up, up.
I think, one aspect regarding the "electronics" market is that it is not a single market. Even if you look at consumer electronics, there are at least two segments, namely volume vs. high end market.
To play in the volume market, you have to focus on meeting certain price points and your products have to meet certain expectations feature wise. Otherwise you won't be able to reach the economies of scale you need to meet the price points. The volume market is also dominated by the internet and discount stores. They drive prices down so that they majority of consumers believe that one does not need to spend more than a couple of hundred bucks to get a decent x.1 surround sound package. My personal experience with the dropping prices in audio equipment is that there appears to be nothing that you can't make cheaper and an even lower quality. A number of those volume oriented companies barely survived the storm and the formerly strong mid-fi market has thinned.
On the other side of the spectrum, there are the high end companies. They have to survive on lower quantities. Therefore development cost per sold unit cannot be driven down a lot and you have to focus on products, where experience and attention to detail are more important than huge numbers of engineers that tackle the most recent DTS, Dolby, THX, Audyssey or whatever idea to be the first with the new feature, no matter if the feature is worth it. One way to cope with new technology is to outsource things to a supplier that can acchieve the scales needed. Bryston has done so with its surround processors by using the digital audio engines from Momentum Data Systems and having them modified or with the "sound card" in the BDP-1.
Another Bryston specific aspect is they way they build the equipment. Having each component built by hand in Canada doesn't give you the freedom to move from country to country, wherever labor is cheapest.
These might only be a select number of reasons why the price gap between the mass market and high end gear has been increasing over the years and will do so in the future. The price drop in the mass market has all too often been accompanied by a drop of sound quality which isn't an option for Bryston, thank God.
The survival of Bryston in turbulent times shows that their business model works - or would you want a Bryston amp on a single chip...
Cheers
Markus
