All parents are bonkers 
It won’t let me post the answer to that.
I’m hanging on by a thin thread by the end of most days 
i thought everyone had to be bonkers to live in today’s world…
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How about a 45k headphone amp? as for Stax lets not go there eh the world is heading for a major recession and hi fi firms should wake up and smell the coffe
i was at the last Hi Fi News show at the Beaumont Hotel where an American was (trying) to sell among other stuff a 5k kettle lead!
Was it attached to a premium kettle?
No, the kettle came from Poundland!
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Are you suggesting that firms should stop selling high-priced products (even if there’s still a market for them amongst the ultra-rich) just because a recession is coming?
What do you think yacht companies like Sunseeker should currently be doing? Shut down all production until the recession is over?
Mark
Personally I wouldn’t buy a component or item where the price didn’t reflect the engineering content to some degree. I recently had in the house the ATC SCM50 loudspeakers at £16500 a pair active or £10500 a pair passive. I have absolutely no issue with those prices - indeed by high end standards they are an astonishing bargain. Leaving performance aside you are buying some of the best drive units ever made from a company that has its cabinets built by a high end English furniture maker, that makes it’s own magnets, winds the voice coils, builds all its own crossovers and amplifiers in England.
The engineering content, the performance and the reputation of such a product easily justifies the price. The same could be said for Naim’s components too - especially those manufactured in Salisbury.
Where I start to struggle is indeed with cables costing £10 000 etc. I was in a top London mix/mastering studio discussing this with a leading engineer a couple of weeks ago and we both agreed that cables do make a difference but while studios use cabling of good quality from the likes of VanDamme and QED they don’t buy into multi-thousand pound cables being worthwhile. I tend to agree.
Jonathan
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I agree. Some of that is not simply bonkers, but greedy and dishonest.
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I would add the wages of the highly skilled staff who build the gear and the designers, too, of course. But I do, strongly, agree with your post.
Incidentally, my understanding is that ATC’s view of cables pretty much coincides with your engineer’s, but I tend to stay out of cable threads as they rapidly get snarky.
Roger
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Greed or simple good business sense, if there are people willing to part with that sort of money? Different if, say, a scarce item really needed, like face masks during COVID. As for dishonest - yes if they make untrue or wildly exaggerated claims, in which case best to report them to the Advertising Standards Authority and Trading Standards enforcement officers (in Britain).
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Dishonest in terms of development, raw materials, production costs and a healthy margin for reinvestment etc. in relation to sales price.
But as you hint, some people make in small quantities for a very well-heeled market and want to have a lifestyle that’s comparable to that of their target customers.
The exaggerated claims are another matter. A lot of the super high-end stuff leaves me cold.
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