NickofWimbledon
pfm Member
In Capitalism as we have it, the price is set as high as the "market will bear" to optimise the profit oif the makers. So if they can make more profit from selling a few via advertising making it seem 'special', that's what they go for.
Some markets are also in essence, 'captured', by the 'suppliers'. Housing in the Uk is an example. The big housebuilders have openly said they only build when they can make 20% or more profit. And they 'lockstep' on this. i.e. no real competition drives down that margin by building more.
There is no magic ooofle dust. If a given cable 'costs' (sic) 1000 UKP/m and 'sounds good' the chances are that someone else could make it for sale at, say, 20 UKP/m, but would then get a lower profit to use in part for their advertising campaign. 8-]
People buy the label and the image when they splash out high amounts. KK routinely compares this with superb watches or expensive wines.
If you're happy to do it, fine. Your ears, your money. Personally, I stop worrying when moving my head half an inch or turning the level up a dB makes a bigger improvement. Having done both listening tests and measurements in the past, I now just enjoy the music, quite happy with cheap cables I got from CPC/Farnell on drums. YMMV if you can afford it. I use the money to buy CDs, etc.
That said, I also now use a DAP and headphones a lot. So the only cable is the one from DAP to headphones. And, yes, the cables that came with the phones *did* alter the sound. They were also too long for mobile use, and absurdly fat and heavy. So I got some simpler leads made by someone via PFM. These work fine. Measurement showed the fat fancy ones had a remarkably high end-to-end resistance due to the way they were made. Which then could be expected to interact with the headphone's frequency-dependent impedance and 'change the sound'.
Maybe people experimenting with cables could also experiment with adding small amounts of series inductance or shunt capacitcant or series resistance. Such components are cheap and may give you improvements (i.e. changes to your taste). Main snag for some may be soldering, I guess.
I'd have to suggest applying "I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that" to some of that.
How does changing market share/ affecting competitors get built in and how do you value the changing profit margin profile over time, what degree of disruptive innovation and market share & margin fade rates should be assumed and are all market participants assumed to be rational players (in a capitalist sense)? It's all relevant if you want to look at that perspective and it's all really messy, but saying anything close to "Because Capitalism" may not help much.
In your cable price analogy, the market supply is elastic. A new player could spend a year's profit on an unusually high level of advertising, price at £900pm and clean up over a year or two - or until someone else did the same at £700. 'Price discovery' in a competitive market (many aren't) in its multifarious forms does eventually work. In the meantime, with forums like this existing, the company pricing at £20 might have a different audience and no control of their marketing process, but they would probably do very nicely too as soon as they make it £25.
I have over 16M runs of TQ Black 2 cables. If you can suggest a readily available cable that measures the same and is equally flexible that you are confident (a) won't damage anything and (b) will be indistinguishable to all in an extended 'as blind as we can' test, I may do a little experiment.
Otherwise, this all looks pretty sensible to me.