What makes a $20,000 cd player cost 20,000?

APL Hi Fi Denon 3910. The end of our upgrade path.

Anyone engaged in this hobby has already overstepped the limits of the price/value relationship. Just ask any of your neighbors. They will shake their heads in disbelief when you tell them how much you spent on your system.

Flip the argument around, and suddenly I'm the one claiming they're nuts for spending $500K on a 1400 sq. ft. bungalow in need of work. Value has nothing to do with reality, regardless of the price. It's just a story that we repeat to ourselves until we buy it as the truth.
Enjoy the music!

So the price is arbitrary, Grant?
Or are we presuming that no one who pays $20K for a CDP actually listens to it first?

Just how do we conclude that a $2000 CDP is worth the money? Or that a $5000 player is reasonable? More than 90% of the people in this world don't earn in a year what most of us have spent on a single component. Or cable! Value is entirely fictitious, and personal.

Some people will pay $400-600 to go see a concert, or an NBA game. And I cannot for the life of me figure out the value in that move. But there is no truth in this. Remember, not even money itself is absolute.

I suppose that to answer the question, Grant, we would have to open up the player and note the difference in parts, if any. But to deem it arbitrary is really just a guess, isn't it? My suspicion is that we could trace the money trail of all of its ingredients, R&D, advertising expenses, etc. and find a similar gross margin percentage as say, a Sony SCD-1. Of course, I could be wrong, but I don't think so.

However, more to the point, it seems to me that this is once again a mirror of the vast majority of the conversations that take place in these threads. And that is, we each stand for our choices based upon a justification of what we personally deem to be reasonable and worthy. If we set our limit on power cords at $300 apiece, those at $600 look like diminishing returns, and those at $2000 look like a fool's playground. On the other hand, we might conclude that the audiophile who is still messing around with the $50 cord has not quite heard the potential of his/her system. It's all a game, one in which the rules are malleable. Most of the cars I've owned cost less than our current CD player. Imagine what kind of mental gymnastics I had to go through to come to the conclusion that to spend $5K on a CD player made sense, and that I could sleep at night having made such a decision. Well, it didn't take that much effort actually, because I was after the best sound I could get. If the price is arbitrary, it must only be so to the point that we are willing to embrace it.

Honestly, and I don't want to divert this thread, but the issue that continues to nag at me throughout this discussion is how little value we place on life itself. I can't help reading the headlines each day and wondering why dozens of Iraqis, hundreds of Sudanese, and hosts of Americans are lost each day, and it's almost as if they don't even represent the number 1, let alone the loss of a life. Again, I don't want to derail this excellent conversation. I just felt like saying what came to mind, and right now I have the vision of a $20K CD player as well as the picture of a fallen soldier occupying that pea brain of mine. Weird.

I'm waiting for someone to write "The Multi-Millionaire Next Door," because I know quite a few of them, and they all have VERY expensive watches, cars, HT, and audio systems. They put making money first, but they do spend crazy amounts of money on toys. Crazy money to us, not to them.

Thanks for the thread, Jeff. You definitely sparked some great conversation.
Regards,
Howard