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

Every time I listen to my Luxman Class A integrated I tell myself it's a $40,000 amp and by gawd, it does indeed sound even better.

Keep in mind allow for a $10k budget for the power cord!😅

so if they made the new list price on our amps $40,000 but they were always on sale for much less, then we would like them more ??

@jl35 I say yes. A great example was the TAD ME-1 speaker. It was $15K with stands, which was very high for a monitor. They dropped the price by $5K (I think) to be more competitive with gear like KEF Reference 1. That last about a month or 2 and they raised the price again to $15K. That told me that they could make a profit at $10K but wanted the cache of $15K exclusivity. 

With a warm amp that is a great monitor, but I lost interest after that price gymnastics.

The spending of big bucks is fine for those that can afford it. At one time, I sure did. But the unfortunate reality is, people are listening to equipment that can never achieve " live, unamplified " sound, of the musicians playing. And if you think your system does, you have little experience with live, unamplified music. However, giving more credit to many listeners, whatever you spend, it will be a compromise in so many ways. THE RECORDINGS are compromised. The most popular thread here had, for at least a week, a discussion on ( 1 ) what is the proper tone of the guitar, ( 2 ) where is the musician located on the stage and ( 3 ) how much ambience is heard within the recorded space. I am talking about Keith Don’t Go, by Nils Lofgren, from Acoustic Live. A popular demo track at shows when it was released, and long after. Was the guitar he used the popular and regularly played Takamine Legacy 508 ? Will your system tell you ? Would you actually know if it was, just by listening ? I don’t pay attention as much to that stuff on recordings, because of the mic’s, cables, recorders, eq and compression ( just to name a few ) and ALL of the associated equipment used, to make it to the production. However, there are some attributes of the music that I care about more, and two are dynamics and transients, which consist of quiet to loud, forceful, rhythmic, control, speed, articulation ( and yes, PRaT ) thunderous, delicate, believable attack and decay, etc. These suffer from the " recording " as well. But these are very important sound characteristics I yearn for, from all recordings ( I come from a " music " background ). Given what I have $ wise into my system, the systems delivers it. Live unamplified music, from a violin, to a huge drum set, exhibits these....as a given. So many Hi End systems I have heard, fall short of these characteristics. Yes, they are spatial. Yes they are holographic. Yes, they can place you in the audience. Oh, my system does that too !. But the meat on the bones, is not just added punch, or more bass. One of my many " challenge recordings " for systems, is Romantic Warrior, by RTF. Not a Sheffield Lab, RR, or similar,etc. ) 4 fabulous musicians, playing individually......and together.....The key word is " PLAYING ". This is what I listen to. I hope I have not offended anyone here, as it was not my intent. For many of you, you have your own sound characteristics you are looking for. Listening to recorded music is always a compromise, no matter the system. I know my system has limitations. The recording processes are the limiting factor. Sorry for my rant, but I found a new Sativa, and my mind is exploding with thoughts and ideas.....lol.....My best to everyone......Always, MrD.

"Sorry for my rant, but I found a new Sativa, and my mind is exploding with thoughts and ideas.....lol"

Now I get it.

Just pop the lid off and take a look inside.  Layout, parts quality, etc.  and then you should know if it was worth $40K.  Remember the dealer also gets a percentage of the $40K so in reality, it is not a $40K product,

Happy Listening.

+1 bigkidz, truth is inside👍

"Pop the lid?"

As a mere mortal, somehow $40,000 dollars of "truth inside" does not compute.

I have no way of qualifying nor quantifying this assertion.  I'm a mere mortal with adequate but  not "deep" pockets.

However, I do have a sense of how much food $40,000 will buy. 

But this is an audio forum and not culinary.

Market value is what the market is willing to pay. Intrinsic value? Well, that's a whole other rabbit hole.

Onward, Lads and Lassies.

@rbach , actually, you are clueless as to anything I spoke about. So, enjoy ! Always, MrD.

it all depends who you ask?  to a wealthy person, $40k will not mean much to someone.  to a middle class indvidual, he may be able to afford it, but wil rationalize and think what the $40k can do for himself and his family.  

now for the questions of listeing/diference between $10k vs. $40k amp.

I was lucky enough to hear a Gryphon Antileon Evo, excellent sounding like many other amps I've listen to.  Would I purchae the $40k Gryphon?  I would not, the small differenes between them isn't as noticeable as one would think.  But I can't be the judge of it as what I hear, may not be what someone else likes.

the life of a need and a want.  wealthy people could not be satisfied with $10k amp just knowing it doesn't cost as much.  

also like others have said, is the amp $40k build?  how much of a percentage is taken out for marketing?  distriubtion?  sales?  

enjoy music friends.

Some people would say the same thing about the difference between a $5,000 and a $500 amp, or some might say a $40,000 amp doesn't compare to a $150,000 amp. 

I was at an audio show recently and they didn't seem to have radically expensive amps. But they did have speakers that were 120k and 350k. I heard absolutely nothing that would make me even consider either one, even if I had the money to burn.

@secretguy 

"I've never known anyone silly enough to spend 40k."

It is not about silly it is a different value system then most of us have to worry about. Like some big fancy houses I have been to in Nashville where they have the four walls but are now to broke to fill the inside with "fine" furniture. But the house says I made it.

Why did Andy Warhols ridiculous famous, I have no idea why either, Cambell's Soup can painting go for 11.8 million? Because someone wanted a trophy not a work of genuine art..

  As is often mentioned it is their money to do with as they see fit and they pay the bills for the makers of such "fine" audio gear. I don't object to how they spend it I object to how they think I should revere their bad choices as being great sound.

This forum is really becoming as silly as ASR. Yes, a lot of audio equipment is overpriced. Yes, some cheaper equipment sounds great. Yes, some dear equipment sounds poor. Yes, some high priced amplifiers are worth it and you can really hear the difference. Listen with your ears and not your eyes.

The problem with the high priced audio gear is that the marketing information that accompanies this gear is horrifying.  It's just a lot of crap meant to be read by people who don't know what they're doing.  The dealers don't really understand what they're selling and they don't have any of these higher end products in stock so you're forced to buy it without hearing it.  The dealers are forced to buy the product before they can sell it to you.  And even if you did hear it, it's not gonna be the same at your home.

It's the worst possible selling situation in the world.  

@mrdecibel
Being at a live show also has compromises: the person sitting in front of you, the one sitting to one side of you, the one sitting in back of you, the quality of the seating, how far back, to one side, or close you are sitting, the depth of the stage, and most importantly, the quality of the acoustics of the music hall, which are almost always compromised, depending on where you are sitting. I could go on.

@unreceivedogma 

That's a good observation.

You know, that is interesting. I don’t think I have ever read marketing information until after I have made the purchase. I have never considered it a useful source of information. 
 

I read professional reviews or audition equipment. But would never look at the market stuff.

I've listened to very expensive speakers driven by equally expensive power amps at audio shows and they sounded horrid, but f course the exhibitors claimed they sounded wonderful..  I tend to rely on my ears, not on what price is charged for the gear.

@mahlman 

I like to put the question of "what is art?" into the same folder as "what is love?"

@ps  Hmm and the corollary to that speaker price might then be might be all the very expensive weddings with those in "love" with each other seeming to fail more and more as the $$$ go up? :D

mahlman, that is so hilarious but true😄

@roxy54 

Which is why, 97 times out of 100, I prefer to sit at home (saving me travel time), in a room that is in part specifically designed for listening, in front of an audio system that evolved over the  54 years I have spent fiddling with it, costing me about $22,000 in improvements over those 54 years, a system that an audio engineer and blues musician just recently claimed was the best he had ever heard, excepting one that he worked on that cost it’s owner $165,000, and if he had to choose between the two, he would choose mine. 

@unreceivedogma , I am not sure if you understand where I am coming from. On a post of mine on another thread, it was brought to my attention by another poster ( a great individual, imo ), stating that he read a statement from a poster on WBF ( a site I enjoy )....in which he listens the way I do. And, the statement was : I want to hear " WHAT the musicians are doing on the stage ". This, to me, is the essence of  listening to music. Because we are talking amplifiers on this thread, here is a brief story I spoke about on another thread. In early 2017 ( for shits and giggles ) I purchased a Nuforce STA200 amp, highly rated by a reviewer from The Absolute Sound Magazine. It was $500 to purchase this amp, so why not. Based on what I listen for, it bettered so many other amps in my collection, so I sold many from my stash locally from my collection. All quite expensive in relation to this little gem. In fact, it got someone posting HERE, quite upset, as he owned one of these amps I sold. This person actually thought that my amp ( the same one he owned, and cherished ) was old, out of spec, and needed work. Well, I was happy to sell this perfectly mint example, and received lots of money for it ( there was actually a bidding war on it ). Needless to say, this poster has since not liked me, as I suppose this person took offense to it. It is fine, because my music listening, is for me, and me alone. I know I listen differently than many others, and my ears / brain works a particular way, as everyone else's. I was 15 when I knew the " sound " I was looking for, and what characteristics are important to me. Enough of my blabbing......Whatever makes one happy. My best to all. Always, MrD. 

I find it humorous that some a’philes seem to think that the pursuit of reproduced musical sound is some kind of contest. As in big swingin’ D***S. "Mine is bigger/better than yours."

We’re approaching the winter holidays, and I thought of a certain tune. Partial lyrics:

"do you hear what I hear?
A song, a song, high above the trees
With a voice as big as the sea
With a voice as big as the sea"

@ps 

I can't see any relation between those lyrics and what you were trying to say.

@mrdecibel 

We might be saying the same thing.

In a way, all that I'm saying is that my listening habits have evolved over 54 years, I'm an old fart now and I'm set in my ways. Full stop.

Sound quality is just a byproduct. The money that you are paying goes to

1. Raw material which contributes to build quality and fit and finish

2. Parts and components

3. Research and development

4. Wages for everyone

@ryder 

5. Advertising and promotion

 I can't afford a $40K amplifier and I'm not worried about whatever I might be missing there. But I don't doubt I might be missing something very good, and it may not be just about the sound quality taken in isolation. I have a fairly expensive watch that was given to me by my father. It's something I never would have bought. He gave it to me telling me I could sell it to get some money. I could have, but I kept it, and it's not just because it's a keepsake. I really enjoy this watch and understand its high price now. It doesn't keep spectacularly accurate time, and doesn't have advanced features - just time and date. It is self winding and exceedingly well built with plain stainless steel. The quality of construction becomes evident with use and builds a lot of confidence in me about the staying power of this device. I have something I can reasonably count on to do the simple act of telling me the time, probably for the rest of my life even if I live to 100. The crystal won't scratch, the casing and band won't rust, fatigue, rot, or leak. I've already put it through the ringer working as a mechanic. I probably shouldn't have used it while wrenching but the watch proved its worth. I don't have to worry about software updates or the battery becoming unable to hold a charge. It's a beautiful thing! I don't see any evidence that something truly equivalent is available for a lot cheaper.

$40k is a dollar amount, not a sonic experience. There's so much placebo products out in the industry just because someone can afford it. I've seen a $30k power cable.

I understand the difference between good, great and spectacular. I understand why a $25k pair of speakers can be objectively better than a $10k pair of speakers. I can't wrap my head around a $30k power cable.

I doubt many $40,000 amplifiers are sold.  Ie. $80,000 for a pair.

I'm wondering what parts or part makes this amplifier really nice.  Yes it has a very expensive parts I hope but are we talking about merely craftsmanship and R&D that makes it what it is? That's very thin.  It's an amplifier.

Preamplifiers at least have volume controls and source selectors and a remote control which makes it a little bit complicated.  

@jumia 

Not to be unkind, but I think that the factors that make such an amplifier cost what it does have been explained in detail multiple times within this thread. If you still don't understand, I doubt that you ever will.

@roxy54 

+1

I recently heard a system with huge Pass mono blocks, Magico M3 speakers, Techdas tt, ARC preamp and ARC phono amp. High end cabling and lots of room treatments.  It sounded pretty darn impressive.  But, it wasn't "tuned" to my taste. The bass was overpowering.  My point is, it's all subjective.  Ultimately, I liked my comparatively low priced system better than the hugely expensive one even though the expensive one was surely better by most audiophile criteria.

Irrespective of a "house sound" and what may float one over the other's boat between different brands of amplifiers, there are ways to more effectively harness the potential of a given amp with how it's loaded. Looking into a passive cross-over of a speaker, not least a complex one and delivering the power over a full range spectrum under such circumstances is way more challenging and therefore more compromising wrt. performance envelope vs. seeing a pure load directly into a driver from a dedicated amp channel and over a limited frequency span. The amps functioning in the latter scenario will see their power and quality much better and easier utilized, whereas with the former the amp would ideally need to be close to impervious to load (which is saying a lot in the face of a difficult, full-range ditto) for any hopes of it to be a comparable scenario with the latter - and that is disregarding the sonic influence of the passive cross-over itself, one might add.

I'd wager a vital aspect of why a, say, $35k amp sounds better over a pair of speakers than its cheaper $20k sibling might very well come down to the fact that the more expensive amp is less affected by load and therefore has more power headroom/is more at ease operating, with all that entails. Indeed, passively configured and inefficient speakers with complex XO's call for the need of amplifiers with massive power supplies and overall sturdy build to come to life, whereas conversely in an active scenario much less is needed of the amps to still be fully up to the task, not least power-wise - again, with all that entails. 

Configuring speakers actively myself I see no reason to strive for 10's of thousands $$ amplifiers when I can get by with much less. Moreover, this scenario (i.e.: active) lends the opportunity of a differentiated amp approach, where fewer quality wattages can be used in the mids to upper frequencies (even less watts the higher the speaker efficiency), and more brute force can be used in the lower regions where it's more readily required, in addition to the typical need for more damping factor here and proper driver control (this could be done passively as well with a bi-amping approach, but without the same opportunities of active to blend different amps more smoothly). Surely, when developing amplifiers it would seem that the marriage of the more ultimate in sound quality with gobs of power doesn't always go hand-in-hand, and thus differentiation of amp usage via an active setup can make even more sense. 

Whether a $40k amplifier is worth the investment is up to each to decide. If it makes sense to someone to throw that amount of dough after it in the system context it's supposed to be used, go for it. It's not that I can't see the reasons why expensive amps are expensive, but coming down to it it's only saying so much: that's they're very expensive, and it figures why. I certainly wouldn't automatically assume they're the better for it compared to offerings much cheaper, depending on the context they're to be implemented. 

@dwmb Is that $264k each, or for the pair? I ask because he claims that his monos cost $500.000.

@roxy54 , I saw on that huge thread how rudely he responded to you. I don’t care for such folks nor their wares.

The price of top end gear does not bear that tight a relationship to the cost of the parts.  The pricing is value-based.  The builder compares the performance of the gear to other gear on the market and sets the price based on how it sounds as compared to the competition.  Of course audio is something that not everyone agrees on what sounds good, so something priced way up in price might still not fit one's taste.  But, that price is aimed at someone who likes this particular sound and is comparing the product to other like sounding gear.  

Because potential buyers have limited ability to hear a wide range of gear, particularly to hear the gear in their own system, most do not even know of the range of possible sonic alternatives.  A local dealer in my area that sells only tube amplification gear, almost all of it of the low-power type, often gets in customers who have never really heard what low-power tube gear can do with the right speakers.  For many, it is almost a religious experience.  This dealer often has to make odd deals where he is getting in gear for trade that is worth MUCH more than the gear the buyer wants to swap for--meaning the dealer would owe money to the buyer; the arrangement made is usually some kind of consignment sale of the turned in gear.  At this store, it is not at all strange that the customer finds that his $40k and up amps sound much inferior to something around $10k.  But, that is not to say that the $40k stuff is a rip off--it was more of a mismatch to the listener's actual preference, a preference the customer did not even know he had until experiencing the alternative.

@milpai 

Yes, Jay was very defensive, even though I asked members (not him), the question is a courteous way. I was interested to know how many here find his advice worth paying for. After all, this is a man who just got into audio a few years ago, and now considers himself to be an authority whose advice is worth paying for. Even if he had a background in electronics or music, his opinions would still be purely his opinions, which are worth no more than anyone else's.

Of course, he's being protective of his income stream, so he immediately got defensive and came off like the bully on the playground. If I was peddling that nonsense, I might do the same thing.

Veblen Effect

Abnormal market behavior where consumers purchase the higher-priced goods whereas similar low-priced (but not identical) substitutes are available. It is caused either by the belief that higher price means higher quality, or by the desire for conspicuous consumption (to be seen as buying an expensive, prestige item). Named after its discoverer, the US social-critic Thorstein Bunde Veblen (1857-1929).

https://www.monash.edu/business/marketing/marketing-dictionary/v/veblen-effect

One example I've seen given to showcase this is college tuition. Colleges found that if they decrease tuition enrollment goes down and goes up when they increase it.

Another example is Campagnolo, a well-known bicycle parts brand. Rather than price according to a formula, they price according to what the market will bear. 

roxy54

... this is a man who just got into audio a few years ago, and now considers himself to be an authority whose advice is worth paying for ... he immediately got defensive and came off like the bully on the playground. If I was peddling that nonsense, I might do the same thing.

It's one of the strangest threads on A'gon. Not only is he defensive, but so are his minions. It's really a fan club. The guy promotes the uber-expensive Stromtank battery system, but attacks those who point out problems with his electrical system. He's a wannabe guru and it looks like there are quite a few of them on Youtube. "Jay" charges top-tier "members" $600 a year for benefits like private "raw" zoom meetings. Weird.

Cults and their members are where one finds them. This is simply a general observation based on keen observation of human behavior. All in a historical context of course.  :)

@cleeds 

No matter what level you subscribe to on his site, all you're really getting it to see this very expensive gear; you can't hear it in any real way because it is replayed over inexpensive computer speakers. So, it's like a type of voyeurism, with the addition of his opinion of this or that being "this year's model"; and of course, that always changes.

Getting back to amplifiers. For 50 years I have changed power cords on products to heavier gauge, and in one or two instances, converted to iec inlet ( not an easy thing to do with metal work ). Anyway, huge improvements every time. I am also very much into chassis damping ( some people refer to this as dampening, which is wrong, as this involves wetness and moisture of some kind ). Again, this is huge, to my ears, and many others ( clients, friends, and not to forget, ricevs as an example ). Heat sinks ring like crazy, on many amps, and isolating the transformer ( s ) from the chassis, is another area of achieving greatness. Take the lid ( top cover ) off of your amp, and while holding it with one hand, flick it with a finger from your other hand. It will likely " ring " in most cases. The chassis parts are important, and if a 40K amp includes much of this....great. But my experience has been, all amp chassis’s have a sound ( not different with preamps, dacs etc. Anyway, till next time. My best, MrD.

Magic things in hifi field is that money is not always the solution. In most of time, your experience is more important and you know how it will be in the match within different equipments.

I know a lot of people with no very expensive hifi set and they are deen to listen for whole life if it's running well.

I also know at least one of my friends who has 6 set of hi-fi system in his big house, I listen 5 of them and they spend a lot but I am not impressed very much.