zactly! GaNFeT amps seem simple - hard to see what another $8-9 grand added to the price will bring, other than a known maker and possibly a better-looking case. that said, value is in the eye of the beholder, and if mytek can sell these at $10k then more power to them. agree that more companies coming to the GaNFet party is not a bad thing, even if their prices are much higher.
Being from an electronics back ground there usually is a good reason why a product is marked higher, parts, cost of design, metal work, time spent developing the product, parts purchased on a smaller scale thus higher costs, dealer mark up which is fair, they have to be in business to make money or why be in business as for the manufacture. Our internal cost for employees to the buy the SCD1 was $2,500 so that was the dealer cost.
Then again, like Sony when I worked for them our 5K SCD1 SACD player was built like no other, look inside it was a work of art. A small boutique high-end company without the vast means and buying parts in small quantities to build them would be charging 4-5 times more. To get that quality Esoteric players at 15-25K would be the asking price today. I do think the at a certain point and seeing the insides of some of these units at 20-100K and lot of money starts going into the exterior design, size of the units, over built parts that might not really improve the sound, but look good and cost a lot to justify prices and scale of small amount of sells. Always keep in mind it was we can hear as humans, could your ear hear, but the parts are the best of the best.
Sony cheap car stereos and not their best would easy sell 50,000 units, walkman millions etc. So when you can sell not just in the USA but world wide scale alone allows you to build superior quality at a lower price.
Can you make something good sounding on the cheap, sure, I have done it with my tube preamp, was it built to the quality of the Mark Levinson preamp, hell no, there alion boards alone cost without parts on it cost more than my preamp.
