Surely this is getting a bit out of hand, doesn't it? We all know there is a group of people with excessive wealth and in our current economic system this can only go in one direction: further up.
So what do you do when you already have a dozen houses around the globe, a few yachts to play with, a bunch of cars, watches, should I continue?
Somewhere down the line of such trophies comes our precious little hobby. Even when only a very small portion of the global 1% takes a fancy to high end audio, there is still big money to be made. Which explains the existence of 10k+ cartridges, 100k+ turntables, etc. Audio designers are just like normal people with mortgages to pay, so if there's a market for such items, they will produce it.
Does this make such products rip offs? Not necessarily. There are serious and talented audio designers who have welcomed this market as a unique opportunity to work with a budget that will allow them to push the bounderies of technology and performance (and still make a nice profit). Other designers may consider this to be objectional (or even distasteful) and choose to focus their talents on making high performance products at reasonable prices for regular folks. Some do both.
But as in every market there are also likely to be fraudulent types who will step into this 'trophy' market, stick a silly price tag on some fancy looking mediocre product and hope to make a handsome profit by selling it to some ignorant with money to burn. That would certainly qualify as a rip off, but why should we care?
So what do you do when you already have a dozen houses around the globe, a few yachts to play with, a bunch of cars, watches, should I continue?
Somewhere down the line of such trophies comes our precious little hobby. Even when only a very small portion of the global 1% takes a fancy to high end audio, there is still big money to be made. Which explains the existence of 10k+ cartridges, 100k+ turntables, etc. Audio designers are just like normal people with mortgages to pay, so if there's a market for such items, they will produce it.
Does this make such products rip offs? Not necessarily. There are serious and talented audio designers who have welcomed this market as a unique opportunity to work with a budget that will allow them to push the bounderies of technology and performance (and still make a nice profit). Other designers may consider this to be objectional (or even distasteful) and choose to focus their talents on making high performance products at reasonable prices for regular folks. Some do both.
But as in every market there are also likely to be fraudulent types who will step into this 'trophy' market, stick a silly price tag on some fancy looking mediocre product and hope to make a handsome profit by selling it to some ignorant with money to burn. That would certainly qualify as a rip off, but why should we care?