Stuff is definitely getting more expensive, I was the lucky guy who left the hobby, decided to come back AFTER all the brands I wanted raising their prices one month prior to my return to the hobby. Antipodes, XI Eleven Audio being the two brands that raised their prices..... My timing is just awesome. |
I hear you @mahgister the meek shall inherit the earth but never forget that someone else will retain the mineral rights. |
Monetary concept is so complex that Joseph Schumpeter says that he had great pain to understand it... Then i dont pretend to understand myself... but if what you just say is right, and it is right, what i spoke about above has nothing to do with it...Inflation is a "normal" process in the past monetary system or in our actual one, which is in his last years, like you rightfully remarked... A world wide change nowadays of the money units and systems and their basis is not caused necessarily nor is not necessarily the cause of an inflation increase... This world wide change are geopolitical in part and technological, also not only intinsically economical ...Even Nature plays a role... The hyperinflation that comes will be caused more by stupidity and greed than by necessary change...But a new monetary world is coming...A new geopolitical map too...A new technological paradise or /and hell also.... Personally i put my trust in spirituality and in nature... There is no doubts in my mind that for those who can afford to buy them there will be great deal with costly piece of gear soon... 😁 We are in the midst of a financial crisis visible for everyone after 2008, a technological digital revolution, a geopolitical earthquake, now a war, and after this pandemy an another one... I cannot imagine that the globalist heaven of an economy which is very dependant on any other part of the world will not be shattered by pandemy, wars, and climate changes...... i hope i am only one of the alleged stupid Cassendra haunting the fringe and waiting for the end of the world... But i dont think so... Then what do we do? I dont give a damn about audio gear bargain deal to come soon for sure...
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You know you are one of my favorites guys but inflation still trails historical averages. Rates have been so low for so long..it was like a coiled spring finally free from restraint. I’m not saying it isnt painful to those who are having a tough time. Monetary policy is kindof complicated wouldnt you agree? |
It was because they were thinking about an inevitable crisis everyone think about but they were predicting the wrong thing: inflation increase... Inflation is linked to the actual monetary system.. it is part of his normal life so to speak... What is coming is not inflation but the end, accelerated by Biden and some other players , of the actual monetary system... i hope i am wrong but who knows what is better or not for humankind ?
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Today, in between Teams calls with folks around the world, I streamed a wide variety of the sweetest, most crystal clear music, much from Lee Ritenauer (sp). Possibly a master plot to control my destiny is underway, but I am going to focus on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If it all goes to hell, I can grow vegetables and fish in my lake for food- but I will sure miss that music. Chin up my friends; we are all going to be ok. |
First: i know someone of my age that never owned a computer and trust only official TV news... He is so lost about anything that it is impossible to discuss with him about what occur in the world... He cannot BELIEVE anything because the reality is so much incredible, that the sanitized version of event and the superficial one ONLY appear rational and not too frigthening for him... I understand that myself because what i learned is so disturbing even for me...
I know couple of people like this too. One of them seems to be stuck in the 1980s, albeit an informed 1980s, but in the face of all this bewildering change his main response has been a deep longing for nostalgia. The problem is, and I guess it always has been, is that once you get left behind by change and technology, it can be difficult to catch up again. The sheer speed of recent change has been disorientating for many, to say the least, and comfortable certainty (community, employment, and finances etc) seems to be thing of the past. Perhaps we all got just a little too complacent somewhere down the line? Thankfully, many, many people, thanks largely to the internet, have to take control over their own health, finances and employment choices. Reliance and trust in government, MSM and big pharma does seem to be gradually eroding. Amen to that.
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My eight year old Marantz integrated cost me $2500. Manufacturers are always aware of demographics and keep gear priced accordingly so I'd say that the price has not gotten out of hand, unless one is envious of and covets what others have and just can't afford it, for reasons they should discard. Be the fox with the sour grapes and enjoy what you have. 👍 All the best, |
@agisthos You may be right about new hifi brands-- I'm most certainly no expert. You neglect to define what you mean by "normal" but it is still possible to buy gear from established companies (Marantz, Creek, Rega, Cambridge, for example) that is better than "consumer audio" but is not ultra expensive like Boulder, Gryphon, etc.
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i think you are right...
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Hi-fi products have not really risen more in price, there has simply been a general collapse in the normal midrange segment of high end audio. Now all new hifi companies are either doing direct sales cheaper products like DAC’s and headphones, USB e.t.c or they are doing 20-30k SOTA amps and speakers. There is less and less in between. The high priced SOTA stuff has always been there, and always been priced like that. It just seems that’s where the focus is. This is a striver class Baby Boomer hobby and the industry is now catering to retiring boomers spending their pension funds. A similar thing is occurring in other Baby Boomer hobbies like classic cars from the 60-70’s. |
@ejr1953 +1 |
Too many dollars chasing too few products and services? Certainly companies are able to raise prices, because they can, and people will pay those inflated prices. Our Netflix membership price increased again, as it increased just a few months ago. Did Netflix bear increased cost...not a chance; they raised prices because they could. Inflation in the basics that people of all income levels is definitely a concern, as groceries, food, gas and other basics effect most people. But with increases in high end audio equipment prices. I can't get all teary eyed about those inflation numbers. |
"Has the cost of HiFi gotten a bit too much." That's a question of opinion. Certainly, the audio market tracks closely to other luxury goods markets. I'm a bit amazed you can spend 100K on a watch or any number of things, like an amplifier. But is it too much? I suppose it's not because the high end exists because there are people at the top of the pyramid that can afford to pay just about anything, for anything. The second part of the question -- "it seems like high-end components prices have really risen more than inflation" -- is something we could find out, if someone was enterprising enough to look at the data. My guess is that prices have exceeded inflation adjusted pricing. But, the quality of materials, design and build, etc. are truly extraordinary these days--and that does cost something to achieve. Now, do I feel a bit of shock at that $145K TechDAS Air Force One Premium turntable? [Falls out of chair.] |
If you look at the cost computer, it has actually gone down in price. But not for high end hifi gears. Something like this costs 30K brand new. It does not seem to make sense. https://www.audiogon.com/listings/lisag1be-allnic-audio-l10000-tube |
They are not at a disadvantage, in many case, it is worst they are lost... Without spiritual intuition protection, the falseties in society kill the freedom of the mind...Save for some already very strong spiritual person... In the same way before this information age we were most of us lost and more easily prey to all religious and political and economical powers ploys and manipulations ...
First: i know someone of my age that never owned a computer and trust only official TV news... He is so lost about anything that it is impossible to discuss with him about what occur in the world... He cannot BELIEVE anything because the reality is so much incredible, that the sanitized version of event and the superficial one ONLY appear rational and not too frigthening for him... I understand that myself because what i learned is so disturbing even for me... Second point... Even in this forum where most people, if not all, enjoy an internet connection the level of brainwashing expressed through these threads is so great , even among intelligent people furthermore, that i think the access to some truth is not enough... We must search for the truth, in spite and over of our own ready made opinions, to accept it .. And very few people are ready to loose their past politicial, social, psychological, economical philosophical illusions and paid the price to pay to discover and admit the truth... Truth is without mercy and it is not surprizing because truth is already silent justice in the working bench ... If justice seems absent around us, it is an illusion, truth is working already from the beginning and you can turn your back on truth but nobody has ever been able to bury it, truth ressuscitate always... Hindus called it karma...It is for me for "mathematical" reason that i believe in Christ resurrection and in our own resurrection ...The distribution of prime numbers contain all perspectival truths from the beginning to the end... It is the skeletal appearence of a universal "memory" working in and out of time....But this is another matter i will not enter into here .... 😁😊 No justice exist without truth.... And truth is eternal... The ultimate truth is love... And we are ourselves the balance between justice and love...
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The pursuit of fine audio like so many of the other fine things in life depends upon the amount of disposable income one has. In fact quite a lot of happiness depends upon this. Therefore it's of paramount importance that our governments actually work for us and not for corporate interests.
It was an eye opener for me to discover that so many of the so called bitter rivalries such as Microsoft v Apple, McDonald's v KFC, and of course Pepsi v Coke weren't really such bitter rivalries after all. At least not when the owning parent companies such as the above mentioned BlackRock and Vanguard were often one and the same. Whatever happened to the monopolies commission? Or don't they bother to look beyond the brand name anymore? Thankfully, this is the age of the internet - the real information age. People can nowadays access business data much more freely, at least up to a certain point, and then make up their own minds on how things are really being run. Or if they prefer, they can stick to the old hegemony handed down for generations. The real point is that things are changing fast, maybe faster than ever before in our history, and that's something that might need to be understood. It is surely no exaggeration to say that those who do not have access to online information are now at a serious disadvantage, is it? |
Yes they matter indeed... But the conceptual dymanic behind interpretation of numbers matter more... The control imposed on humanity is not well understood by the Piketty numbers only : «The richest 10% of the population now takes 52% of global income and the poorest half just 8%, it said.» It is way clearer if we put all this on a graph trees analysis... Because at the end ONLY three ou 4 nodes at the pyramidal peak control all the rest directly or indirectly...the powerful people DONT NEED TO OWN EVERYTHING nor to be the richest...Only idiots or narcissist superficial personality want to be known all around the world...Powerful man search for power not for celebrity...Their ego dont need to be assured by others at all ... Then it is worst situation than the situation depicted by Picketty in a simple linear way... All humanity is controlled by few people, an oligarchic class that cannot be reduced to wealth at all... One of the most powerful man in the planet is the technocrat director of the B.I.S. for example who is very poor compared to Gates but not less powerful and not known , ask his name even to Biden, he will stay mute...... The Blackrock investment fund financial director Larry Fink has more power than Bill Gates and he is very "poor" compared to him... «The world’s three largest asset managers (BlackRock, Vanguard, and UBS) alone control $21 trillion, roughly equivalent to the entire U.S. economy in 2017 and nearly twice as much as the entire world’s hedge fund, private equity, and venture capital industries combined.» People who think they are free now in Canada or US read comic books...We mimic marxist China social control method now , methods which were invented in the British empire anyway, and the Chinese surpassing us here nowaydays appeared to be our master in the covid crisis social control... We then imitated them or our governments under the heavy fist of the corporate lobbys imitated them and cannot wait to geolocalize our body information... Ask our friend Bill Gates...For our benefit for sure, think the comic book reader of captain America...
"Brave new world" Aldous Huxley
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I take few minutes to wrote the post... This information is everywhere... And i dont like when another people call someone i know "conspirationist"... I like posting some arguments...If you prefer to call an argumewnt an exercise it is ok... If you dont like "arguments" simple one, in this case simple graphs, and the meaning of their few end nodes i apologize... But for each one his plate...I must answer sometimes to someone insulting me or another one... with no insults and WITH ARGUMENTS... If you have a counter argument in this discussion or "exercise" i will welcome it and answer it...But i answer to insult also in some case....In other case silence is the best politic... By the way i am retired and i had taken my journey in audio with passion, i made many discoveries...Acoustic being the most important one for the last 2 years...With plenty of time i answer to some here...You cannot reproach me that, i try to stay polite with humor but i am a bit heavy in english prose, i never spoke a word of english here , and i never travel a lot . Reading and music keep me glued on my seat...😁😊 My best to you...
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i like your answering humor... Thanks... But once this is said it dont takes many second of search around the net to discover a simple truth: the vast majority of all ressources on earth are controlled by few... The exact numbers dont matter... for example and i dont think that drawing graphs maps are being a nut or a Q disciple : now i will help your thinking process to reduce the complexity of this map to three single point... Who do you think control the vast majority of these 10 companies who control almost all food distribution and production on earth? i will help you here.... Three major investment funds: Blackrock, Vanguard and i will let you discover the third... You must work also...And perhaps with this little exercise you will discover that all "conspiration" or all maps dont come from the imagination of Q...other nut people exist like me... 😁😊 Now to finish the demonstration... for example who control the medias in the world or the agro business or big pharmas...Ask for the maps graph on the internet...you know how to search isn't it ? Look for each maps... And at the end ask yourself what are the three big corparate financial investment tcorporations that control all of them... Answer: Blackrock, Vanguard, and i dont remember the third one and it change place each 6 months with the fourth one in controlling power anyway... Now ask yourself who owns the greatest money control part over Blackerock and Vanguard and the few others big mammoths... Very few people, so few, the list will amount to couple of hundred... They all know each other, it is not a conspiration, it is like a very friendly cartel of people, they all go to the same Swiss resort and are all invited in the same lunch after each Davos summit...You know what people organize this Davos "vacation" each year no? A clue: they are not elected people... Is it a conspiration obsession of my part in my head ? No... It is a FACT... If you think they speak about their wife and their hobby and thats all, you can...i think otherwise... I think they take our happiness at heart and dont sleep because we have all of us so big problems they can solve for us...Hyperinflation for example... For exemple a pandemy ... 😁😊 I will stop here because i dont know if you can add 1 and one equal two.... Feel free to call me a nut...I like your humor anyway ...
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Philanthropy is not a solution ...Half the time philantropy is not giving but another way to takes control... Guillotine solve nothing... This is not a justice question so much ( Gates is not a monster but an intelligent egotistical idiot sorry ) than a question about education and FREEDOM of speech and PRESS and freedom of the medias from corporate censorship first ... There exist only 2 problems on earth... No it is not demography and climate change first ...For sure these 2 problems are BIG real problems.. But they could be solved "easily" by EDUCATION and FREEDOM of information if people on earth can drink clean water and eat bread and after that THINK freely ... Then the body being healthy, the mind free by education, the human consciousness can work freely to solve the problems together...
Simple to understand , hard to implement now... Why? Because 90% of the ressources are in the hand of a few people yes... But it is not the worst... The worst is these few control ALL education, all news, all medecine and agricultural method, and many people are so ignorant they negate this simple facts and call that conspirationism...And after that goes on sleeping and repeating the propaganda in their dreams.... This is the problem...Spiritual awakening and study and meditation are the ONLY solutions.. For sure If we can drink water and eat bread without a programmed world war above our head like some want to have one right now... The biggest problem at the end is that we lack the TIME to do this .... Climate changes and wars will took us away from the necessary freedom to think about solutions... My optimism then is for the very long term .... 😞
But we must stay optimist, soon people will sell their gear for peanuts to eat... 😁😊 Hyperinflation is at the corner...
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"Gates think we are too much people, i think that the disparity between poor and rich is the world problem, not demography itself... With education demography is no more a problem....Then instead of global vaccination it is perhaps better to pay for bread and water and education...But it does not give any return profit for sure to the "benefactor"... I am optimist for AFTER this passing testing crisis for humanity....I am not optimist for now...."
Me too. The people have to find a way to reverse the decades old trend of ever increasing amounts of money ending up in the hands of an ever decreasing amount of people. Just today I saw a blurb highlighting the fact that 93% of the world’s wealth currently was in the hands of just 8 families. 8 families? Even if that’s only half true, it’s a deplorable situation. How have we managed to end up back in modern day feudalism? Perhaps we can convince them of the virtues of philanthropism as practiced by some of their predecessors such as Andrew Carnegie in the last century, and Warren Buffet in this? Or perhaps it’s time to bring back the guillotine?
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The price is gonna go up as long as there are people willing (and looking forward to) paying more. Simple as that. Time for the Green Eyed Monster to take a walk. All the best, |
I think the upper end of the high end maybe even the “vanilla” version of the high end has gotten stupid expensive. But at the same time one can assemble a great system for not too much of a cost nowadays, as well. What’s really crazy is you can connect a pair of inexpensive IEMs ($200-$300) to your phone and get absolutely mind-boggling good sound! |
Not if you go about it in a smart and cost conscience manner and filter out the hype. As an experiment, I just successfully replaced gear that sold for 9k about 12 years ago with a new unit that cost only 3K. Just be aware of all the options out there. If you rely on this site only, chances are whatever sound you end up with may cost more. Plenty of affordable gear out there these days that can deliver sound worthy of the label “high end”. |
+1 @rbstehno I suppose thats why Revel stopped producing the 2’s. You can’t sell anything that good for such a low price today. The audiophile community demand higher prices.
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So we know that there is minimal demand for "hi end" audio among the masses. It seems demand will remain low until someone manufactures an audio system that truly creates a live and or holographic experience that any person can just plug in with little to no special set up (speaker placement, large/intrusive speakers, acoustic treatment, special cables, etc.). To the extent that there are an excessive # of manufactures and retailers that sell products at excessive prices that are not truly "luxury" items, high prices will remain artificially high. Whereas, I have no doubt that the Porsche Cayenne exceedingly out performs my Ford Edge. However, I suspect that if everyone needed the full performance capability of the Cayenne to get to work or drive to the grocery store, the Cayenne might be a bit more affordable. Hence, I can save a ton of money by utilizing sufficiently high performance equipment that is cost effective relative to my 210 square foot listening environment. When I buy my mansion with an acoustically engineered small auditorium, I'll purchase a system that can push 2500 square feet of air at concert volume levels while maintaining near perfect frequency response and delivering hyper details (that I could not hear if I we're at a live concert because I don't naturally hear in "high definition" or because the room acoustics of the venue prevent me from hearing the sound of Diana Krall's eyes blinking as she sings.).
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I think the general offer of new tech or different designs increase with an increase in price at new pricier level never seen before for sure , but the possibility of buying a very good system with a better S.Q./price ratio is better than it ever was in the past... With each passing decades more new products are becoming more than ever a new vintage purchase possibilities for example, then even if the higher high-end products increase in price we are luckier than ever for possible buying choices of great sound at low cost... I paid 50 dollars my used Mission Cyrus box speakers...They had insanely good potential for their original mid-fi level....It is not a Fritz speakers for sure but not so far behind i am sure... I dream to buy Fritz speakers but i will live with my 50 bucks used marvel with clear bass i can feel all over the room...I cannot fault them even if better speakers exist like my past Tannoy dual gold concentric... My 400 bucks Tannoy of 1976 will be priced how much today with inflation? 2,000 bucks... It is the price of the Fritz speakers or near it... But there exist nowadays over 100,000 bucks priced models with way less equivalent products offered at a comparable stratospheric price level in the past , the audiophiles basin was not the same anyway in numbers across the world nor the audiophiles were the same species either...It is a darwinian evolution of the customers basin with time and the environmental technology pressure on him...
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@ghasley : clearly, you are unable to appreciate dark sardonic humor.
I also posted it as a way of protesting how off the rails off topic this thread became. |
Adjusted for inflation I don't think HiFi is any more expensive that it was in the 70s. I remember paying over $450 for a Pioneer CTF-950 cassette deck in 1979. In today's dollars that's $1400. And I bought this while working as a stock boy in a grocery store. The big difference is I didn't have hundreds of entertainment devices competing for my money. No $1500 laptops, $1000 cell phones, $100 a month cell phone bill, $500 game consoles, $80 games, $300 concert tickets, etc. It wasn't uncommon for the average college student to assemble a setup that in today's dollars would be several grand. Sure we had to scrimp and save, but we just had different priorities. |
