Okay, so here's what I don't get. A new, fully loaded, 2018 Mercedes E-Class can be purchased for the same price as a 4M set of Odin speaker cables. Sure, they're the Odin 2, and the Mercedes is only the E-Class, and not the S-Class, but still...Simple, there's demand for it.
When you look at the 2 items; the cost of materials and manufacturing -- and it's not as though Germans are cheap labor -- how does 12 feet of silver-plated copper wire with some string and a plastic coating, regardless of precision, possibly justify its cost compared to the materials and labor that go into manufacturing a high-end automobile. Simple: it doesn't. Someone -- or everyone along the "food chain" is making a LOT of money, and everyone knows it.
I can buy a touch-screen laptop with all the bells and whistles, B&O sound, blah blah blah, for about $1500. Some kid who loves his music and his computer is going to look at two pieces of electronics, both of which give him great pleasure, and see one that costs $1500, and is considered top-of-the-line, and one that costs $1500 and is considered entry level, and to achieve truly great, "gob-smack" sound, it will cost roughly a mortgage on a nice home. I'd venture to guess that one-in-a million of those kids will ever venture any further into the high end.
And so it goes. We're getting older and fewer and less willing to buy new gear in the pursuit of our love of reproduced music. I don't know where this ends, but if the industry is dying, or being given away to overseas cheap manufacturing, then something needs to change.Industry is growing if price is rising. Only dying for ones sitting outside priced out of the market.