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When someone tells you it's a $40,000 amp, does it sound better?

I've always been a little bit suspicious when gear costs more than $25,000 . At $25,000 all the components should be the finest, and allow room for designer Builder and the dealer to make some money.

I mean that seems fair, these boxes are not volume sellers no one's making a ton of money selling the stuff.

But if I'm listening to a $40,000 amplifier I imagine me Liking it a whole lot more just because it costs $40,000. How many people have actually experienced listening to a $40,000 amplifier.  It doesn't happen that often and usually when you do there's nothing else around to compare it to.  
 

I'm just saying expensive gear is absolutely ridiculous.  It's more of a head game I'm afraid. Some how if you have the money to spend, and a lot of people do, these individuals feel a lot better spending more money for something.  Now you own it, and while listening to it you will always be saying to yourself that thing cost $40,000 and somehow you'll enjoy it more.

 

jumia
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,794 posts
 

With great respect, since I'm well-aware of your expertise- is it possible to assign a monetary value to those attributes? 

Yes- and depends very much on who is doing the assigning 😉

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milkdudd
64 posts
 

I've considered that at some point I would upgrade from my $3,500 ATC P1 Pro amp to a $6,500 Parasound JC-5 amp. To me both of these are in the sweet spot of their price range. I can't imagine spending more in my 9 ft by 12 ft listening room. I imagine the ultra high dollar systems are how extremely wealthy people try to impress (and poke fun at) other extremely wealthy people. Not that I wouldn't like to have a system like that myself. I'm imagining a similar scenario where Oprah (or some other billionaire) calls her friends from her yacht and ask them if they're enjoying their weekend on their 80 ft "dinghy" and then scoffs "What yours didn't even come with a helicopter?"

phd
1,314 posts
 

I would think it depends on a designer's ability to resource and buy parts for less to build an amp at a reasonable price. For example some well established companies like Audio Research and Conrad Johnson buy parts in bulk and pass on the savings to their customers. So this could be true that just cause an amp cost more doesn't mean it sounds better. No savy businessman would spend forty thousand dollars on something that loses a lot of its value once purchased, only a rich audiophile would do so

fisher_400
71 posts
 

For some audiophiles the Placebo effect cannot be controlled and will make an amp sound better if it is expected to sound better. Cable manufactures are very dependent upon the Placebo effect due to besides too high capacitance for some cartridges, their cables do not sound much different than other cables (spaghetti size cheap cables are excluded).

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