advertisement


HiFi: The pricing structure

This is, of course, quite irrelevant to audio chain pricing except inasmuch as you may think that more expensive components outlast cheaper ones. I can see an analogy with cars here; £50K + Porsches, Range Rovers et al generally have lower scores for reliability than cheaper vehicles (Skoda, e.g.).

I'm always amazed at how well those 70s, 80s and 90s Japanese (or other; NAD, e.g.) kit seems to just go on and on. Were their trannies and cap's infused with Lotus blossom and Mt. Fuji dust?

The reason mid price components, cars, washing machines, hifi etc last longer than expensive ones is volume, “top of the range” never sell in enough volume to get rid of all the corner case problems, on the other hand cheap stuff is unreliable because it’s designed close to the edge, how much amstrad or prinzsound stuff is still around?
 
I wonder if this will change as younger people get more aware of 'green' issues. Against that, as companies habituate us into 'renting' maybe people will be renting us things/ equipment as well as the music to play on it!...
I think it will for things like cars. People are less interested in cars than they used to be and they are happy to rent them. Clothing won't because of the wear aspect and who wants to wear second hand clothing? Music and films are primetime rental items, but they always have been since the dawn of the VCR. Films especially because however much you may like The Godfather you won't want to watch it every week. Beggars' Banquet, however, I just might play every week.
 
I read on another thread earlier about poster paying £300 for a Sondek in 1970. That was a huge amount of money back then....what say £4K in today’s money? Maybe more?
Today you could buy something at £700-£800 that would out perform it? I think there’s a strong argument that in real terms hifi has actually got cheaper?

My mate has a reasonably large hifi shop/s and he reports that the market has changed considerably over the last 10 years or so - with the very low end and very high end selling well, where it’s the mid range stuff that is struggling....
 
I recall a major "the worlds gone mad" moment about 10 years ago in Asda when I was able to buy a set top box for freeview for only £9.99 and yet what looked like a fairly middling sized piece of lamb that may just about have done for a families Sunday lunch was about £10.50!

That's an RF front end, no doubt a PLL frequency synthesizer, micro processor or micro controller and/or a digital codec.... complete with wall wart PSU, for £10. NASA would have killed for this technology when it was moon landing time... and by now it was miniaturised into something the size of a paperback novel.. and all for a tenner!

and a bit of grub cost more! :eek:o_O
 
The 'increased affluence' seems mainly to be in two categories.

1) Those who were quite poor (3rd world mainly) a couple of decades ago have advanced by a fair factor.

2) The top 1 percentile - i.e. the very wealthy - have done very well.

I was mainly thinking of this country, but of course, much hifi is globally marketed. Your first example would include China; affluence there has been meteoric and as I sold my newly serviced 01 to a man from Shanghai (but then a student in Essex) for a top price, I learnyt of its value in FM terms over there. It was on a plane to Shanghai within two weeks !

The top 1 percent (this country or worldwide?) doesn't mean much, as maybe the top 10%, many of them self-made entrepreneurs or bankers, are definitely in the market for £100K plus hifi. This kind of nouveau riche hardly existed before the internet explosion and long boom periods following.

I'd guess that quite a few fishies could go out and blow £130K on the Naim Statements if they wished; I certainly could, but even more certainly wouldn't, despite music and hifi being my only 'costly' hobby. !!!
 
A mate of mine has a B&O dealership in the South, he’s never done fitting £100k+ systems to boats and holiday homes...
 
Back in the 70s each small town had several bank branches, each with a manager on substantial salary, not nearly as high as City financiers get. There were many other professionals at similar level too. This level of salary has been wiped out and taken away the "pipe and slippers" demographic that bought all those tens of thousands of Quads
 
Back in the 70s each small town had several bank branches, each with a manager on substantial salary, not nearly as high as City financiers get. There were many other professionals at similar level too. This level of salary has been wiped out and taken away the "pipe and slippers" demographic that bought all those tens of thousands of Quads

And we are happy to do their jobs all by ourselves (called 'internet bank') with no pay while still feeding the banks by paying interest every month. Here in Sweden the banks are even to lazy to bother with handling cash. 'This is a non cash branch' is the most common sign today.
 
I think it will for things like cars. People are less interested in cars than they used to be and they are happy to rent them. Clothing won't because of the wear aspect and who wants to wear second hand clothing?

Well, watching programmes like "Antiques Roadshow" we can see there is already a good market for fancy clothing from earlier decades. Second hand by another name. And as the mood changes to being 'agin' disposable, charity shops may find their turnover of second hand clothing rises.
 
The top 1 percent (this country or worldwide?) doesn't mean much, as maybe the top 10%, many of them self-made entrepreneurs or bankers, are definitely in the market for £100K plus hifi. This kind of nouveau riche hardly existed before the internet explosion and long boom periods following.

I'm wary of the "self made" image they try to present. In reality it all too often is gaining wealth by standing on the backs of other people, combined with luck. Then expanded by being able to dominate over smaller contenders.

The type of activity does indeed change, but the approach and result has been much the same. Centuries ago it was mills. These days it is 'financialisation' 'renting' 'the user is the product' etc.
 
Back in the 70s each small town had several bank branches, each with a manager on substantial salary, not nearly as high as City financiers get. There were many other professionals at similar level too. This level of salary has been wiped out and taken away the "pipe and slippers" demographic that bought all those tens of thousands of Quads

That's what the stats I referred to show. In effect, what we might think of as the 'middle' people have lost out whilst the 1% have advanced. Hence the logic of makers to go for the 'bottom' or the 'top' depending where they judge they can best make a living.
 
The type of activity does indeed change, but the approach and result has been much the same. Centuries ago it was mills. These days it is 'financialisation' 'renting' 'the user is the product' etc.
They are not really comparable. The mills created wealth whereas financialistation redistributes wealth. The former is a mainly positive effect on society the latter in small quantities is a necessary loss a bit like oil in an engine but when it becomes at least an order of magnitude too large as it has today (compared to when it worked as intended and ignoring efficiency gains which would make a healthy financial industry smaller) the effect on society is almost wholly negative. The exception being the small numbers extracting unhealthy amounts of "rent" for existing rather than creating.
 
Well, watching programmes like "Antiques Roadshow" we can see there is already a good market for fancy clothing from earlier decades. Second hand by another name. And as the mood changes to being 'agin' disposable, charity shops may find their turnover of second hand clothing rises.
I hope so. I haven't seen it recently. "Antique" isn't to be confused with "second hand" though. Would I like to own a 1960s Ferrari? Oh god yes. OK, how about a 1985 Austin Maestro or a 1997 Vectra? Er no, you're OK thanks. Similarly people will pay for a Pucci shirt (or even a pair of Nike trainers) from 1960, but my collection of £5 T shirts with holes in?

Consumerism is still driven by cheap goods and propped up by expensive services. Why am I going to pay someone or spend time mending when I can just replace? I'm not putting a £400 clutch in a £500 car.
 
They are not really comparable. The mills created wealth whereas financialistation redistributes wealth. The former is a mainly positive effect on society the latter in small quantities is a necessary loss a bit like oil in an engine but when it becomes at least an order of magnitude too large as it has today (compared to when it worked as intended and ignoring efficiency gains which would make a healthy financial industry smaller) the effect on society is almost wholly negative. The exception being the small numbers extracting unhealthy amounts of "rent" for existing rather than creating.

I'd agree in large part with that; However, if you haven't read it, I'd recommened reading Paul Mason's book on 'Postcapitalism' as it shines quite a nice light on the real nature of financialisation, and gives a wider context to the problems it is causing.
 
In effect you're correct in that people won't want to buy second hand items that were clearly made to wear out asap. However this means they vanish whilst the items built to last endure, and may grow in number. :)

When I designed the Armstrong 700 amps I aimed at them being reliable for at least a decade. 35+ years later the ones I have are still (touches wood) working fine. Sadly, too few were made to matter. But the point is that people will buy what does the job and can be expected to endure. If the supply of such goods is low, more may be made.

Against this, of course, is the wish by the few to extract your money via rental or the equivalent in the form of a stream of disposable mock-durables. IIRC the 3M company used to focus on what it described as 'consumables perceived as durables' - e.g. recording tapes, washing up sponges, etc.

Who knows, maybe people will even learn which end of a needle and thread to push again. :)
 
I'm wary of the "self made" image they try to present. In reality it all too often is gaining wealth by standing on the backs of other people, combined with luck. Then expanded by being able to dominate over smaller contenders.

Who tries to represent? It's simply capitalism and entrepreneurship. There are those with business ideas and acumen and others (me included) who are (or was) simply employed. Of course, there are the lucky ones who win large sums, but everybody's different, with consequently different outcomes. By and large, many peoples across the world are better off than before (China being an example).

A heck of a lot of people have a laissez faire attitude to money, frittering it away rather than saving (not that there's much incentive with today's interest rates).
 
Who tries to represent? It's simply capitalism and entrepreneurship. There are those with business ideas and acumen and others (me included) who are (or was) simply employed. Of course, there are the lucky ones who win large sums, but everybody's different, with consequently different outcomes. By and large, many peoples across the world are better off than before (China being an example).

A heck of a lot of people have a laissez faire attitude to money, frittering it away rather than saving (not that there's much incentive with today's interest rates).

Alas, the actual truth is rarely "simple". :) And 'capitalism' takes many forms. It has been changing quite a lot in recent decades.

Yes, as I've pointed out. The stats show many have benefitted, whilst many others have *not*. And the financialisation has lead to it all largely being based on debt. If you want the details, I'd strongly recommend the Paul Mason books as they show what has driven the changes since the mid 1980s and why it is leading to problems now. Fortunately, he also shows that once this is realised, what can be done to improve things and avoid even bigger problems.
 
By and large, many peoples across the world are better off than before (China being an example).
This is not true for the average person in the UK and the developed world. Real wages have been essentially flat from the late 70s until 10 years ago when they started to go down. Some things got cheaper like electrical gizmos but more important things like housing, education and the like have tended to get more expensive in real terms. The top 1% have done unhealthily well, those that have been able to obtain assets like a house have done OK (essentially old people) but those without significant assets are not doing well and they are going to do even less well in the future if things continue as they are.
 


advertisement


Back
Top