The Insane World of High End Audio! Is it All a Scam?

Now about acoustics...I don’t use a single thing. I treat the room by stuffing it with all sorts of different fabrics/upholstery/furnishings etc.... It sounds good to me, and I can care less if it does not to someone else.

Perfect for you as my room is perfect for me...

Congratulations..

But your feeling does not invalidate my experience with acoustics nor science itself...

Acoustics is the only way to put any system at any price at his working peak potential once we had control over mechanical &electrical problems...

Changing a piece of gear instead of making the system we already own work at his optimal level, before the necessary or unnecessary upgrading will not do much, or as well as we imagine...

No one can know if his room is optimal to serve his system acoustically BEFORE experimenting with all aspect of acoustics... our feeling that all is right has nothing to do with objective experience in changing conditions and changing acoustics parameters..

It is hard to do. We must study, We must have time for many experiments to learn (most of people work and dont have the luxury of time) We must have a room to do it(most people has no dedicated room ).

But the truth must be tell for the sake of it and for the benefit of all...It cost me nothing to do it, it is the good news...

Like 'cheapman' said, people by Rolex because they want a Rolex not necessarily because it is a 'precision time piece'. 

But have you ever read a review where the author states that 60% of the cost of an audio amplifier is the fancy chassis?

That's the dilemma we have.

Scamming or even misleading people is different than overpricing, which is a business/marketing strategy. In my business, there is a notable story, now taught in business schools, of a vendor with an inferior product but deep pockets and lots spent on p.r., trade shows, and advertising. They made in roads by creating demand from higher ups at companies, semi-knowledgeable, who liked the branding and wanted their department to buy it. Competing products did more and better, all the prices were around the same. They re-branded the company, claimed a massive engineering change, for endorsements from major players, put it all in  a black box, all hardware and software now proprietary, so they said. They also raised the price to $160,000 vs 25-40k for competition. They sold to wealthier outfits so we'll that they went public and never looked back. With basically the same thing that had been $35,000. Harvard teaches it as a positive lesson that if you have something you spent too much on to develop and can't recoup cost because you are no better than or inferior  to the competition, differentiate your product not on features or benefits but on price. They advise at least a 5 fold increase over the competing products. 

@audioguy85  I could open up the higher end stuff made by Technics, Yamaha, etc and do a back to back comparison of his 'boutique' (low iq engineering/scam priced junk made by some guy in his garage) sold by OCD dealer.

The OCD MIKEY GUY IS ANNOYONG as all heck. Looks down on All kinds of quality gear, such as marantz, Macintosh, Yamaha, etc...only raves about the boutique crap he sells, and Noone ever heard of, of which costs crazy amounts of dough.

I've watched a few of his videos. I think he’s just looking for clicks. The scam is his content to get subscribers using clickbait titles. He’s a good entertainer though.