Is it possible for a high end manufacturer to overprice their goods?

As someone with poor taste in general and not the best hearing... Yeah totally.

My opinion is void. But it's not the 20 year olds with prisitine hearing who will buy this high end audio equipment. The prices are too darn high. The 20 yo will likely buy a good set of headphones or IEMs if they care a bit about the sound. The sound quality you can get from $100 IEMs is astounding. You're pretty much overpaying for everything else.

Back to speakers, yeah everything was said. I may add that most people have poorly setup rooms and bookshelf speakers with almost no bass.  

@thyname That's an interesting direction. Only because these forums exist (mostly) to validate your purchases. Heaven forbid you overspend on a piece of equipment. 

From experience (outside of Hi-Fi): high-end = extra hassle and extra costs. The quality of the service and goods seldom meets expectations. 

For example:

- You can buy a sturdy laminate table in a flatpack box and get it shipped in 2 days for a few hundred dollars. Or you can custom order a table, spend thousands and wait months. You may be unlucky and notice that one of the legs isn't fitted properly. Because everything is hand-made and not factory-made with precision machinery. This applies to everything custom made: kitchens, sofas etc... There's a reason IKEA dominates the furniture world: consistency, convenience and price. You get none of that with custom high-end furniture. 

My point: entry-level Hi-Fi from established brands (Yamaha, Polk, Denon, Klipsch etc...) is consistent AF, affordable AF, easy to purchase (no dealers! Yay!) and the customer service puts a lot of high-end manufacturers with shady dealers to shame. You know that Yamaha will still be selling amps for decades to come, it's not certain with smaller boutique manufacturers. 

Mass-produced equipment is the way to go IMHO. I'll happily sacrifice "performance and prestige" for better reliability, service and prices. 

@yesiam_a_pirate You're missing something huge in your argument. Large manufacturers can scale production and outsource it to China in order to save a lot of money on production costs.

Smaller boutique manufacturers can't do that, unless they dropship or buy off-the-shelf modules and do minimal assembly. 

Success in the audio bizz seems to come from marketing, marketing, marketing... The quality of the goods and price seems almost secondary. Just produce something decent and hype it to the max. I'm astounded by the coverage around Schiit and now Gishelli Labs. Everything they release gets hyped up to infinity, as if they're "disrupting the market". They're not.  And these brands are relatively new. 

@cd318 The honesty debacle is hard to tackle, especially in the high-end market. It is kind of implied that you're over-spending on High-End equipment. That stuff is either overpriced, overhyped, over-engineered with exotic hard-to-find parts, or all of the above. Everyone is trying to re-invent the wheel in the high-end market. Because the wheel is too basic, convenient and affordable. You're swimming with the sharks in a high-end market. The sharks are the salesmen. Furthermore, high-end equipment can be experimental and unreliable at times. 

In comparison, the entry-level or midrange feels like a safe ball pit with foam edges. In this environment manufacturers use off-the-shelf parts with tried-and-true methods. There is some trickle-down stuff from the high end. Most of the experimental kinks are addressed. 

My position is: avoid the high end at all costs.

This applies to everything: cars, furniture, homes, clothing, watches etc...

@skinzy You can buy the Polk « R » series (Polk R200) on the Walmart website. But it’s from a third party vendor. That speaker is seriously good. And I know you’re joking but I’m pretty serious. 
 

In hindsight I am going against the Audiogon lifestyle of taking the HiFi hobby to the next level. Whatever that means. But it certainly doesn’t imply buying reasonably priced and unexpectedly good mass-produced entry level speakers. I suppose that you guys value exotic components, craftsmanship and brand heritage more than others. 
 

I suppose that I am providing a baseline for all speaker evaluations. If a high end setup doesn’t outshine a humble Polk R200 powered by a humble Denon amp then it may as well be overpriced junk and you should feel bad about yourself LOL. 
 

This leads to another thought: high end stuff seems to be reviewed in isolation and compared to other high end stuff. It is implied that the high end is far superior than the entry-level. But once in a blue moon you can become annoyed by the unexpected performance of modern entry-level gear if you own high end stuff. It’s all relative of course. And craftsmanship plays a huge part in the price, less so in the performance. 
 

Last point: I envy the people who just spend less than two thousand on a Hi-Fi setup and are completely happy. Just look at the people on the internet who spend tens of thousands on Hi-Fi and are never happy. The simplicity of spending $1.5k on a full system at Walmart is alluring. 

@daveyf Yes, I went off tangent. You are right.

I’ll conclude that the very high end is bogus. The prices are astronomical to inflate the perceived value. You can cite extreme examples with 1 million dollar speakers. Maybe you should define high end in terms of performance. I believe that you can achieve that for tens of thousands of dollars if you’re smart. The very best Yamaha system is « only » $50k. You get all of the electronics (amp, preamp, cd player, turntable, full range speakers). Perhaps I am moving goal posts. I trust Yamaha more than a small boutique manufacturer selling $300k speakers and might go out of business soon. 
 

So yeah, a step below the very high end could be the sweet spot. Going entry level was never your intention. 

@hoodjem I was about to say something similar. Let's face it, the absolute high end doesn't sell many products. Expect a handful of sales every year. 

I truly believe that buyers are clueless and rely on emotion and gut feeling when buying expensive audio equipment. Let me put it this way: in a room full of $100k speakers, the $50k speaker will seem inferior based on price and expected value alone (even if it performs better). 

So manufacturers may by nudging buyers into spending more money that way. Just create a very extensive, overly complicated line of speakers. Make the prices exponential. This is really a car salesman tactic. You expect to spend $20k on a car, you walk out of the dealer with a $35k vehicle because it was on sale and because most other cars in the showroom were around $50k. Your brain accepts higher prices because you perceive higher prices at the dealership. This applies to eveything: furniture, mattresses, kitchens, bikes etc...

It's not unreasonable to assume that flagship products drive up the prices for lower-tiered products by association. In other words, drive up the averages. 

@grislybutter Agreed. There are many bookshelf speakers from boutique brands under 3000€. But we're getting off-topic. Immense competition is obviously good. But it's hard to get your brand out there. US brands have a huge priority above Euro brands. 

I don't know, I would be hesitant to purchase high-end speakers from Wilson Audio, Sonus Faber or Focal. They're obviously putting a lot of their budget into bribing the press and marketing. 

@daveyf This discussion may as well branch out into economics, art, politics and philosophy. 

I mean some artist sold a banana taped to a wall for a $120k. Is it overpriced? No because it's art...

Yeah the adage "something is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it" is always 100% correct until you talk about utilities or medecine... Fortunately, we're talking about non-essential consumer goods here. So you could even argue that everything is under-priced and underrated considering labor costs. Only the high-end is priced 'correctly'. 

At the end of the day you vote with your wallet. The 'overpriced' question is not something for individuals to answer. It's more relevant if you're the seller. Ask the seller, not the buyer. 

@markalarsen The assumption of a fair market is the root of most problems in our world. There is no such thing as a fair market. The values are rigged or influenced by actors in that market. A direct example would be a monopoly, or oligopoly. These things inherently exist in any market, it's just a matter of time. 

Furthermore, the line between non-experts, experts and salesmen is very very thin and blurry. 

The value of Hermes handbags is 90% the brand and the assumption that its value will rise over time (due to limited production run and high demand). The physical object is worthless in comparison. The NAD 3050 LE is making a farce out of us. NAD will no doubt release a dozen similar amplifiers with slightly different features and specs. The NAD 3050 LE is selling like hotcakes because it's "limited edition" and it looks different. It also helps that the amp is predictably good in an NAD fashion. "You can't go wrong". 

So if you view Hi-fi like Hermes handbags, you'll be buying gear based on re-sale value. Not performance. That's probably the smartest way to go about it. I mean these vintage Pioneer and Marantz amps from the 1970s are shooting up in value because of "Hi-Fi influencers" (which are typically vintage shops trying to move products). You may as well buy them and sell them later for a profit. 

Lastly, there's no such thing as a reasonable buyer. You either have cheapskates, gear flippers or fools.