commercial amp/dac prices

Todd has shown pictures of the inside at it's release. 

http://www.head-fi.org/t/564678/the-apex-high-fi-audio-butte-now-ready-to-ship

 

Every time you buy parts, some of them will not be good, or meet your specs, or won't match correctly. 

 

Laying out a printed circuit board is more than just a couple of clicks on the mouse and then ordering up a couple of pcbs.

 

Sizing a chassis, and having the panels machined and silkscreened by a professional company is not cheap, and here you will have even more defective parts that add cost. 

 

Also, the chassis and pcb must be designed to work together, along with everything else.

 

Add shipping to everything that is coming or going, and packaging to everything that is going out.

 

And I suppose that this product should just be given to the public at "cost of parts"?

 

No one is doing any arm twisting to force anyone to buy something that they do not "think" is "worth it".

 

Have you ever built an amp, to know what it actually costs? I would strongly suggest your tune would be different were you a designer or vendor.

 

Assuming a small volume run (say 100 units), this unit probably still cost $175-200 to produce, which would be $17-20k in up front cost. Add marketing and design cost (it still took some board layout, case design and parts selection/sourcing), this is surprising that it would even come to market for the pittance it will return to the designer and vendor.

 

So, vote with your feet. If it isn't worth the $$$ to you, ignore it. We should be glad that Pete and Todd keep bringing designs to market.

 

Oh, and I suggest this be moved to the commercial amps forum (or deleted) as it is off topic for DIY.

Edited by pabbi1 - 8/21/11 at 11:49am

And to add to what Al has mentioned, I totally forgot about customer returns and restocking and/or refurbishing.

Where would you be without some sort of customer satisfaction policy?

Edited by digger945 - 8/21/11 at 11:57am

And another thing. Todd and Pete actually bring their amps and stuff to meets, or supply "loaners" for folks to actually listen to before they purchase. Not exactly what I would call free.

You're quite right that the cost of the parts is low, but the cost of all the other factors of designing and preparing a commercial amp build are very high and make up the majority of the cost. Not only does the design have to be comprehensively tested with a variety of equipment, but also the design may be limited in what parts can be selected that wont suddenly go out of stock or become obsolete.  The manufacturer will also have to invest not just in the parts for a production run, but often a huge excess to allow for shortages (a regular occurrence) and faulty parts (another regular occurrence).

 

In quite a few industries, customers are paying more for everything other than the physical product.  Most furniture materials cost 1/10th or so of what the furniture sells for. You pay for the manufacture, shipping, storage and shop floor space primarily.  Fashion -- don't get me started. Lets just say that, the bigger %-off sales a shop can have, the less they are paying for the goods wholesale. Do you own a cell phone or computer? Can you see where I'm going with this? 

First, I have no knowlege of any of the particulars of this amp, and am in no way associated with the designer or TTVJ. I have talked to Pete on several occasions in the past, but never regarding ANY solid state designs.

 

Just for grins (give or take):

 

Components:                  $50 (remember, you are buying, not getting samples - include shipping)

Case:                             $20 (Custom front and back panels are expensive in low volume)

PCB:                             $15 (again, small volume)

Board stuff/solder:           $70 (this low a volume,  so a manual stuff and solder - guessing two hours of assembly and test)

Misc hardware                $15 (knob, screws, feet)

Assembly, test & pack   $15 (1/2 hour guestimate)

Wall Wart                      $15

 

Total:                            $200

 

You cannot base a 1000 piece price for cost in small runs - and, in fact, have problems finding fab shops for small runs. And, fabricators have been known to screw up entire runs, where they may ruin all the parts in process. Just sayin. This estimate does not recognize any overhead, like legal work (product liability), or patent protection, or even design software and prototyping expense.

 

It all adds up, even if you get it all right, and with no scrap or complications. As you see, there is $100 in labor, no matter what all else, and that estimate may be low.

 

 

Edited by pabbi1 - 8/21/11 at 7:06pm

Paint and a canvas are cheap, a painting is not.

 

The whole is greater than the sum of it's parts.

The reason why a game that costs a million dollars to develop only sells for $50 a copy is because they expect to sell 100,000+ copies. How many amps do they expect to sell? Five thousand, if they're lucky? Supply and demand, my friend. Supply and demand.

Costia, there's a guy for you to be friends with.

 

That's rather like the example leading question "Why did you use the axe to murder your wife?".

 

To truly answer your question, if it wasn't obvious from our answers, you'd need to answer it yourself by DIY'ing some amps yourself.

Well there's all the work that goes into designing the circuit to minimize that offset, balancing the inputs, a dc servo is an easy solution though not necessarily the most elegant, etc. They could also test each chip and select the best ones, discarding the rest, which is yet another cost. *shrug* plenty of options available.