But these dacs don’t exist. Be it Nd555, Chord Dave/ Mscaler or DCS, a lot on different places observe a consistent upgrade in sound quality using these expensive switches.
I do think a fair portion of the younger generation is very interested in high end sound, but they want to be able to determine that sound themselves. So instead of looking for a manufacturer that has just the right sound for them, they look for equipment that measures objectively neutral and then offers the tools to further adjust the sound to their liking or needs.
This is a different approach to traditional high end audio, where you first buy equipment that already has a certain sound, and then use expensive cables and PSU’s to change or improve that sound to a degree. Instead they use EQ and DSP to do the same thing, which are very powerful tools if implemented and used properly.
And Atoms at one time, including one of the Focal bundles. But I’m not sure JL is the obvious outlet to attract the younger market.
Roger
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Is €2.700 a lot of money? Recently an unopened box of Pokémon cards sold for $200,000 USD.
Certainly to me €2700 is a lot of money! In the contaext of hifi it is the value of a major item, as opposed to a tweak. I bet the person who paid $200,000 for Pokemon cards isn’t someone of average or even just moderately good income!
It’s about the average, gross, monthly salary in the Netherlands, so yes, I would say it is.
I think that’s a general age thing. Younger people are happy to spend more time tweaking, once they get older they get more lazy, and perhaps helped by more disposable income, are happy for someone else to have sorted it for them.
I do think the trend for move convenience and/or lifestyle products will remain as they grow older. And certainly the desire for objective measurements will remain. I think there’s a trend for people to be more sceptical, less accepting of others opinion, probably a result of increasing individualism.
I haven’t seen measurements of the ones you mention, but there’s for example the Mola Mola Tambaqui. You can google the noise measurements that were done on Audio Science Review.
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Some things can obviously be priced by materials cost with the addition of labour. Clearly that’s not the case with the cable. The price must be whatever is needed to keep the company alive I suppose.
I started a small business making concrete kitchen counter tops for a few years. I was good at it and created some really nice products but my downfall was being terrible at the numbers. I tried too hard to provide both a top quality product and a very reasonable price. No room for error.
That I can very much relate to: people who have seen kitchens I’ve designed and installed, at extremely low cost compared to the kitchens they bought for a lot more money yet not as good, have suggested I should go into business. But if I factor in my time I would make a poor living.
The cost of hifi is far more than just the materials, even the labour of construction, as it must also cover research and development, and stocking and marketing. And of course there is always an element of charging as high a price as the market will stand, while having regard for competition both now and developing. But as intimated previously some “audiophile” products seem to be priced on a notion of higher cost = higher perceived value in the intended market,
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The mention is the prices of Cables vs Amplifiers promoted me to do a quick comparison - of the Price of Naim NACA5 vs the NAP250.
This is based on published Naim Audio Price Lists, from 1992 up to 2020.
In 1992 - A5 was £4-35 per meter - NAP250 was £1398
In 2020 - A5 was £35 per metre - NAP250 was £4099 (yes - I know this is the 250 DR)
A5 has gone up by around 700% or 8 times.
(the biggest increase was around 2013)
The NAP250 has gone up by around 190% - or 3 times.
(the biggest increase was around 2004)
I would say that the price escalation of the 250 is fair, over this length of time.
The price of A5 though, cannot really be considered fair, in my view. YMMV.
(for a Should Cost, just look at the price of Linn K20)
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I seem to recall having read that the price of NACA5 was jacked up intentionally because it was found that “audiophiles” didn’t take it seriously at the original old price, and it sold more after increasing it to 4 times the original price
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The prices I have for A5, when it increased significantly, are:
2005 - £9-25
2008 - £12-00
2010 - £15-00
2013 - £25-00
You could well be correct. Its what the market will stand… 
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So the biggest increase was more or less right after the merger it seems?
Umm… when was the Focal takeover…?
2011 i believe
Yes, just checked - you are correct. 2011 - Naim ‘merged’ with Focal.
And thats roughly when A5 started to increase in price - but the 250 did not…
Around this time they also decided to start with the Uniti range, which had to be priced somewhat competitively in a new market. So perhaps they didn’t want to raise the Classic prices too much, since the relative difference with the Unitis would become too great?
(just speculating ofcourse)
Ah! upward sloping demand curves. I suspect what you say is true of quite a lot of audiophile stuff. The perceived value of a piece of wire may actually increase if it costs more. Reassuringly expensive and all that. Perhaps it might even sound better?
I think Malcolm Gluck, the Guardian’s erstwhile wine correspondent used to hold a similar view about the taste of wine and was an advocate of pouring good but cheap stuff into an expensive looking bottle when entertaining certain “experts”.
Roger
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Nigel, my late wife used to say “it’s worth it if it’s of value to you”. As I’ve discussed with @Gazza I’ve got a great mate with a yacht which costs him a small fortune in dry dock and hull cleaning every year. If he hits the Solent 3x a year he does well. He can’t understand the value of my hifi but as I explain to him I use it everyday.
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You sum this up well. If you are happy and enjoying your system then for you it is good value, whatever others might think. It is not the parts but the sum of them working together that create the final sound we hear and hopefully enjoy our music through.
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How many “young” people have thousands of dollars laying around to spend on expensive hifi equipment? I doubt many and I expect this is the bigger driver with the younger demographic’s lack of enthusiasm for expensive kit. I’m not a trust funder and I expect most working class folks don’t have thousands of dollars laying around for expensive hifi kit. I was in my 30s before I could afford the second hand CD3.5/FC/Nait3 that introduced me to the Naim sound. Now if these folks do have many thousands of dollars of discretionary income and are not spending it on expensive hifi (esp Naim) then that’s something Naim would want to understand it seems.
I agree with the comments that if a proposition is valuable to you then that’s all that matters.
I have some interest in the Innuos Phoenix switch and have a dealer who has agreed to let me demo it. I just bought a 555PS so I’m in no rush at the moment, esp since my Cisco POE is network is performing quite well. But I’ll eventually see what the fuss is all about.
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