[stereocilia]

Pricing strategy is pretty interesting.  My intuition says that a thing's price should be connected to its cost--"cost plus" pricing.  But, I guess that's really old fashioned.

Hypothetical questions:  if I were a manufacturer with a well-guarded secret way to make a product for $10 that performs better than a $5000 product, should I charge $5100 for it, or am I now a rip-off artist?  Now, if I charged $20 would anybody believe that it actually does outperform the $5000 one?  They would if there were an objective way to prove it.  Even then I bet the ones who already own the $5000 thing would find ways to deny it.  Loudly.

My point is that maybe not everybody who over-charges for their product is trying to rip people off.  Maybe they just have a very unrealistic view of where their product fits into the market, and I could see how that would happen in a market containing horns, electrostats, solid state, tubes, zydeco, and baroque.  It only gets worse when they get reinforced by persuading a few of us that they're right.

[JerryLove]

FTA "bearing in mind that you would need 500 watt peaks for most modern recordings at normal listening levels"

This is an impossible statement to back up. What's the efficiency of the speakers? What's the listening distance? It's clearly false statements of fact like this one that ruin credulity of opinion... when they are right the become right by accident.

I agree with many of his claims; but the above makes me unsympathetic to his opinions that I don't already have a position on.

As to "poor journalism": unless a magazine is paid only by subscription and buys all its own test equipment (the claims of Consumer Reports); it has an obvious fiscal need to write only on what is loaned and write something that will cause companies to advertise.
What are the odds of that being honest?

[Rclark]

Most people don't own super high efficiency speakers. The 500 watt statement is rough, but applicable. A lot of people are clipping out there with puny amps.

[Rclark]

Double post.

[wisnon]

As a follow up to the needed 500WPC, its seems that AVI falls short:

Here are revelations about the author of the article selling  his active speakers 80W amplifiers as 250W ones?

Post by AndyG who measured it:

With a 1kHz continuous sine wave (comparable standard) the amplifier clips at 36V for a peak power capability of 162W and a max average power capability (aka RMS power) of 81W. "
Looking for Macbook-based active X-over (Page 10) - Equipment - AVI HiFi Forum
Post # 232
http://hddaudio.net/viewtopic.php?id=3848&p=10

[smargo]

http://www.techradar.com/news/home-cinema/home-theatre-audio/home-cinema-audio/audio/hi-fi-radio/hi-fi-boss-slams-rip-off-industry-162930

Really - he is not far off in terms of "how do you compare sound quality of a $1000 component vs a $10,000 component

i have often said over the last 25 years of hearing different price points of equipment that "sound quality"  tends to be very overrated - especially the more expensive gear

[JerryLove]

Most people don't own super high efficiency speakers. The 500 watt statement is rough, but applicable. A lot of people are clipping out there with puny amps.

So most people own the *exact same* efficiency as everyone else?

6db more sensitive (say 88 becomes 94) and 500w becomes 125w
Move from a 4m seating position to a 1m seating position and 500w becomes 125w.
Change deadening in the room from -6db to -3 db and then at 4m 500w becomes 125w.

Or maybe some combination of the above.

It is not possible to defend the claim he has made. It's ridiculousnes.

The guy that bought Pioneer a pair fo Pioneeer SP-FS52 towers (87db) at his local BB and sits 4m from them ...
compares notes with his neighbor who bought a pair of Klipsch KF-26 (97db) at his local BB and sits 2m from them.

Neither is exotic. If the first guy needs 500w, the second guy needs 25w for the same volume. Normal speakers, normal room, normal distances, can be gotten at BestBuy.

More of a problem: most people don't have speakers that can handle 500w RMS. I only have 2 pairs that could do that.

[DaveC113]

Paid for by Cambridge Audio.... 

[Stu Pitt]

The price total of the parts isn't the only thing that should get factored into 'fair pricing...'

Labor cost - An assembler making a living wage and benefits in Canada or the US (Bryston, Mcintosh) will make a component more exepensive than the exact same component being made by people in places like China - $30/day for 12 hours x 6 days vs $30/hour for 8 hours x 5 days.  Not to mention benefits and expected production numbers.

A component with a 20 year warranty that's actually honored and not just on paper vs a 3 year warranty with more holes in than a 100 lb block of Swiss cheese doesn't help competitive pricing.

R&D and not stealing intellectual property by reverse engineering a product adds to cost.

I've never heard AVi gear.  Seems very interesting.  I'd like to hear their active and DAC'ed speakers.  I think they'd be very cool to have as living room speakers - self contained system that could be used for music and video.

Poking around the net and the HDD forum, it becomes very obvious that the company he's referring to is Naim.  I've seen, heard and held Naim gear.  It's definitely not a few components in a cheap box being sold for absurd amounts.  It's definitely not crappy sounding.  Anyone who's heard Naim gear and knows anything about this hobby will respect it; they may hate the presentation, but there's no denying the quality of the gear.  Well, at least if you're honest and don't have a hidden agenda anyway.

The AVi guys more or less sound like they're right and everyone else is wrong.  They're the enlightened ones, and the rest of us are blind and deaf.  The whole world is out to get them.  The hifi industry as a whole wants to get rid of them because they know things that no one else can figure out and are therefore jealous.

Since they're British, I'll put it in British terms - it's a load of bollocks.

There's no one right way to make or sell anything. 

[kevin360]

Stu - in fighter jet pilot terms, shack! Well said, spot on, and so forth...

In fact, I'm happy to pay more for some things - for reasons you mentioned and a few you didn't.

There are many paths to happiness. There should be more tolerance in this hobby.

[JerryLove]

My protests aside: I do think there are a lot of rip-offs in the audio world. I do think there are a lot of $50 items marked up to $500 for no reason other than "they could sell them". Indeed: there are a couple of cases of a company selling product A that was simply someone else's much less expensive product B with the cover plate changed so you wouldn't know.

OTOH: That's not just a problem in audio.

[JLM]

And as we all know, not all 500 watts are created equal.  Some are measured under ideal, steady state, easy impedance loads at 1,000 Hz and have no reserve for peaks of any kind while others are the complete opposite.  Secondly watts in active designs go further as they're "seeing" the simpler load much better and can respond to it without going through a crossover that robs power.  So I can easily accept that his 330 watts worth of amps (250 watts for the woofer plus 80 watts for the tweeter) in one of his ADM-9T active speakers are easily equal to 500 watts feeding a passive speaker.  Besides 330 watts versus 500 watts (if comparing everything on equal terms) would only be 2 dB difference.

Stu: I agree, more to fair pricing than just content.

Jerry:  I agree, many factors go into the wattage needed.  IMO the downfall of Klipsch was the invention of solid state (big amps that sound good at 10 watts output) that were ill suited for high efficiency speakers.

Value of a product also has as much to do with proper matching plus the incalculable system synergy, so a 1:10 difference in price can be negated.

If we could agree with the peak spls we experience at home (I've seen estimates up to 133 dB but most peg it around 110 dB) we could come up with a good estimate of the amount of power needed for a given room size.  But this 23 dB difference equates to a 200 fold difference in wattage.  If you use 110 dB as the peak and assume 90 dB/w/m speakers in a "typical" room (roughly 12 ft x 20 ft x 8 ft) you'd need 100 wpc.

Some products are easier to intelligently shop for than others.  Speakers (to be properly shopped for) need to be heard with the intended/associated room/equipment.

[wisnon]

JLM,

They are saying that the 250W is really 75wpc...even 81wpc RMS is a stretch.

So the woofer amp is 75wpc in the ADM-9T.

[JLM]

JLM,

They are saying that the 250W is really 75wpc...even 81wpc RMS is a stretch.

So the woofer amp is 75wpc in the ADM-9T.

wisnon,

Who are "they"?  Manufacturer's site and both available on-line reviews state 250 watt (500 watt peak) amp/woofer and 100 watt amp/tweeter.  And again, since this is an active design significantly less power is required compared to a passive speaker with separate amp.

http://www.avihifi.co.uk/adm9.html
http://www.avihifi.co.uk/adm9_hifichoice_review.html
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb08/articles/aviadm9.htm

[Rclark]

a lem: most people don't have speakers that can handle 500w RMS. I only have 2 pairs that could do that.

Transient headroom and distortion, not just volume per knob setting. It's not about listening at 500 watts unless you're having a party.

25 watts is not enough for most speakers in every situation, maybe mellow listening, sure. 25 is just enough to get my monitors to fill the room. I'd much rather have headroom and low distortion from the larger amp.

[werd]

I am not sure what the point is when is has a pair 8k floors standers 2 way on his site. Is he guilty of his own complaint? idk

[JerryLove]

25 watts is not enough for most speakers in every situation, maybe mellow listening, sure. 25 is just enough to get my monitors to fill the room. I'd much rather have headroom and low distortion from the larger amp.

25w on the listed Klipsch speakers (available at best buy) when listening from 2m away is *exactly the same* as 500w on the listed Pioneers (also from best buy) at 4m... well, except that the Pioneers would burn out.

I had assumed that 500w included "headroom". If not: you have a different bone to pick with the article.

OTOH: if the Klipsch owner needs 500W, then the Pioneer owner is going to need 10,000W to do the same thing. So the article is *still* wrong.

You cannot state what needed wattage is without first knowing the speaker sensitivity, the listening distance, the spl loss per doubling of distance, and the desired listening level. Only the last one can you even hope to guess (by using reference level).

[James Romeyn]

VW-Audio Corporation: Audi (notice what word is spelled if you add an "a"  ) is 10% of unit sales, yet contributes 40% of profits.  So that apparently means Audi's profit margin is 400% higher than VW's. 

Does that necessarily mean Audi is bad value?  I really don't know. 

I have no regular/cable/satellite TV but did watch some football play offs. Audi advertised A8 lease is $1k/mo (missed the down payment).  If I was interested in leasing an A8 (never in a million years, I have a six year old HHR) I'd offer the dealer $800/mo and tell him to mark his watch because I would make a phone call and leave immediately when the call ended (whether or not he returned with reply in time...ps: I buy only used vehicles).

BTW, I heard an FBI negotiator say he successfully used the following final reply in car purchase negotiation, and just kept repeating it: Dealer: "'We're really close but this really is the absolutely best we can do.....$X." or "Congratulations, you've stolen the car from us, we can do it for only $X."  Reply: "That is a really good offer, but unfortunately I just can not afford that." 

On a different note.  A dealer for our MI gizmo that seasons wood on guitars and violins recently spent about low-$3k range for a Taylor guitar built by a robot.  He's a dealer, he custom ordered it, it's about $6k list, tons of inlay, what most would say is gorgeous.  Probably everything is within  .0001" tolerance.  I played it.  It plays pretty darn good, it sounds OK to above average, I don't know, this stuff is all silly at a certain point including MI and audio...we all take it a little too seriously.  But my point is I was actually somehow repulsed by this "beautiful" guitar built by a robot.  I just can not imagine spending any serious money on an instrument built by a robot.  He is happy as he can be with it.  I'm happy he's happy.  I just have no interest in robot-built guitars. 

[rkadams]

I was hopeful that this thread would get at the hart of "cheap and cheerful." Seems to have moved miles from it.
Behind the inability to resolve the issue in our minds is the glitter and flash problem. What the sales and marketing department at a manufacturer I worked for called "perceived value." Needless to say their products "perceived value" didn't keep up with the times and this firm is no longer in business. A lot of this had to do with changing demographics. As was pointed out in an earlier post, there are now many who can't afford the big ticket items, no matter how well they perform yet a few that have seemingly endless amounts they can spend. Five or even fifty thousand dollars is pocket change--the price of a candy bar.
This is where we are and the DIY thing will never be for everyone. Be grateful. If you want to damage your hearing and don't want to spend the big bucks to do it put your HiFi in your closet. Six watts goes a long way in my eight by ten foot bedroom when driving speakers with 92db/watt/meter SPL.
Quarter inch etched and polished face plates and gold plated knobs add nothing to the sound and if you buy this aesthetic you are going to pay dearly for it. Some of the packaging for the high end stuff looks to me like it costs many times what is in the package. This is the same as buying fancy chocolates. A hunk of first class milk chocolate in a paper bag may not look as nice but it will taste just as good if consumed with an open mind.