[kelly]

Sensationalist title, I admit.

I'm not asking for a bunch of DBT rhetoric comments about the scientific process and yada yada. That's all been said before so please don't bother here.

Here's what I'm asking:

When I buy a product, a part of what I'm buying is the end result. If the end result is good then ultimately that's how I judge its value.

...However, like anyone else, I like to know what's under the hood. What makes it tick. I look at cables--any cables: interconnects, digital, power cables, etc. and I see some amount of raw materials and some amount of labor. For the $300 cables or so, I can almost see the markup being reasonable (as in, only 4x or so the costs of manufacturing including overhead).

With high end cables, I don't see it. How are cables that cost $1000 and $2000 justifyable purely from a construction standpoint? This isn't flamebait. I concede that you guys know more about high end cables than I do - so explain it to me. How are these cables so expensive?

 

[setmenu]

I would guess the use of a pricey material or and construction process would push a cable up to a price point where the production run would have to be smaller which in-turn would call for
a greater mark up to cover R&D costs etc.
A Kind of vicious circle.
Then of course there is 'perceived value',more expensive= more
rare= more expensive....Bit cynical that, I know.

I suppose also if you have a premium income [and are confident
it will stay that way,or have the reserves] you would expect to
purchase a suitably premium priced interconnect to partner your
expensive gear.
After all I have noted that hair stylists at the 'high end' will charge $200 for the same buzz cut others can have done for $20

.[footballers spring to mind here in the UK]

Outside of that, top end cables can sound good too of course,
if that is there really is a difference and it is not all in our minds

.

At the end of the day though it really is not too difficult to end up
with an insanely expensive product in the retail world,one just has too follow the[mostly and often needed] middleman chain back to the material cost!
Generally a rough estimate of base cost can be had by dividing retail by ten.[I expect this varries from industry to industry though]
Following that formula it is easy too see that in a lot of examples
the most expensive part of say an amplifier is not all those lovely
sound producing components but the case[mm..and the shipping charge, I would bet in some products costs the most

]

Me tuppence worth

Setmenu

 

[DarkAngel]

Quote:

Originally posted by kelly Sensationalist title, I admit. With high end cables, I don't see it. How are cables that cost $1000 and $2000 justifyable purely from a construction standpoint? This isn't flamebait. I concede that you guys know more about high end cables than I do - so explain it to me. How are these cables so expensive?

It seems outrageous that a cable can cost $1,000+ and there are hefty profits involved, but if they do have unique/exotic materials and employ expensive low volume construction techniques it is probably not as out of line as you think. Nordost Vahalla cables for instance are unique design and very hard and expensive to manufacture......and cost a bloody fortune! Does it sound 40x better than an Outlaw PCA, surely not, but in audio you often have to pay large sums of money at the high end to improve sound ever smaller amounts.

Look at other products, do you realize that a glass windshield for some cars can cost $2-3,000+ We are just talking about laminated glass cut and bent to shape, but manufacturing is very expensive. You can buy a new HD widescreen 55" projection TV for the price of some windshields...........sounds crazy but true.

Don't break a windshield on your new Corvette, it will cost a small fortune to replace.

 

[Hirsch]

There is greater markup in cables than in any other are of audio, AFAIK. This isn't new. Some companies have a legitimate contender for one of the great interconnects. I suspect that in some cases the pricing may even be necessary to get taken seriously in considering a high end cable. In some cases the price may reflect construction considerations. In other cases, it may reflect marketing considerations. I strongly advocate buying cables from a company that allows a good return period, if buying new. Usedcables.com has a good return period, and a way to audition cables that doesn't risk a lot of money.

Ultimately, my ears are the final judge of what I like. That applies to active electrical components as well as cables. Just be sure that you're listening to your ears, and not your hopes, which is trickier than it sounds.

 

[pigmode]

Quote:

How are cables that cost $1000 and $2000 justifyable purely from a construction standpoint?

I agree with Hirsch for the most part.

To make matters more complicated, there are some great sonic virtues in some of those high priced cables, and its up to the individual to pay the tariff or not.

I am trying to keep things in scale, letting the major components do the talkng. For my main system I don't think a $500 IC is out of line, although what I have is a bit less.

 

[aeberbach]

DarkAngel, you picked a bad example - auto manufacturers make a LOT of money on parts. That windshield that you can't get for under $2000 costs them much, much less, probably in the order of $200. The reason this works is that hopefully your insurance pays, not you. It's a symbiotic relationship between Geico and AC Delco! High parts cost means you need insurance, and insurance allows high parts cost.

Hirsch is quite right about not being taken seriously unless you have the high price. John Grado suggested that this is why the SR40 headphone never sold well, at the dealers where his phones were sold people sneered at $40 headphones, even though they have the same drivers as the SR60 and all who heard them on Saturday last said they were not bad at all. (Not me, I left just before the free phones were handed out

)

Let's get hypothetical. Suppose I have a 1M interconnect design in which the parts cost $500. If I make them by hand the procedure is so complex and time consuming that it takes me a week. If I sell them for $1500 each I'm making about $52k - not so great. If it takes half a week I make a more respectable $104k. One per day and I'm retired in a few years.

But does anyone believe that it takes even one whole day to produce a pair of cables, even with just one person doing it all by hand? When you think about it you have to conclude that overly expensive interconnects are an exercise in sounding good enough while extracting the maximum money from consumers. The point at which I start laughing is about $400, and I guess this amount is different for everyone. Before you flame, think about $15,000 power cables. Are you laughing yet?

 

[Old Pa]

A couple of years ago I saw a quote from some print Hi-Fi guru that has stuck with me as representing one extreme. He said that if you could hear an [improved] difference with an equipment change, then it was worth whatever price was being charged.

Now, I have a problem of not fully trusting my initial hearing perceptions of a different hardware item (especially when I am trying to hear a difference). Besides that, there must be some relativity between an equipment change's sonic improvement and its cost(s). Finally, I like to know how this stuff works and have fundimental suspicion where equipment changes cannot be explained or demonstrated or measured.

 

[kelly]

aeberbach
$400 is about where my ability to understand the cost stops. My favorite interconnect so far that I've heard was dparrish's Kimber Select 1011 which runs about $600/1m I think. To me, it definitely produced a cleaner sound than the $300 JPS Labs cable I had to compare it to, which later sounded better than any other similarly priced cable I got to compare before reviewing.

At $400, I can look at the parts myself and think, "Hmm, if I were a small company and I needed to order this kind of cable, these connectors, this sheath, and let's say it took me two hours to put it together... and I was going to mark them up 4x to retail (which is about average in audio components)" then yeah, I can see about $400. Believe me I don't LIKE the idea of $400 for a wire, but I "get" it. I look at the Kimber Select 1011 mentioned above and I just don't understand how it can cost so much more, and then they have a 1030?

Are these "unique contructions" REALLY that time consuming to produce? The most expensive part of the cable is probably a three foot stretch of $5 a foot wire. Even if you had to double it for your design, we're talking $30. Maybe somewhere there's $100 total in parts in the nicer cabels and let's say four hours of labor. That just doesn't add up to thousands of dollars.

 

[setmenu]

Quote:

Originally posted by kelly Maybe somewhere there's $100 total in parts in the nicer cables and let's say four hours of labor. That just doesn't add up to thousands of dollars. [/B]

When you take into account R&D costs,the fact that low volume items may take up resources that could be otherwise used on
more profitable higher volume lines,dealership costs tax etc.
You may be surprised how quickly a $1000 retail item materializes.


Setmenu

 

[kelly]

So is it just R&D then?

I guess I was hoping someone would explain to me how some of the designs were more labor intensive than I'd imagined or something.

 

[setmenu]

Hehe...'Just R&D then'.

Well as you know, making something once the design has been
sorted can be the easiest bit!


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[x1lexure]

Some companies talk about the purity of there copper/silver. Could refining it to such a purity up the cost? (If it really is that pure, I'd like to see another cutting of High end cables by someone again. And then have someone skilled in Chemistry examine everything in the cable. But I understand why that would be hard.)

 

[kelly]

Quote:

Originally posted by x1lexure Some companies talk about the purity of there copper/silver. Could refining it to such a purity up the cost? (If it really is that pure, I'd like to see another cutting of High end cables by someone again. And then have someone skilled in Chemistry examine everything in the cable. But I understand why that would be hard.)

Yup, 9N copper is more expensive than 6N copper and single crystal copper is even more.... but $1500? Hrmm.

 

[Hirsch]

Quote:

Originally posted by kelly Yup, 9N copper is more expensive than 6N copper and single crystal copper is even more.... but $1500? Hrmm.

The copper isn't even made by the cable companies. Not one of them could afford to tool up for it. They all order the copper wire from existing factories that can make it in bulk. The same factories supply all of the audiophile cable companies. It's what they do with it when they get it that adds the price.

 

[kelly]

Quote:

Originally posted by Hirsch The copper isn't even made by the cable companies. Not one of them could afford to tool up for it. They all order the copper wire from existing factories that can make it in bulk. The same factories supply all of the audiophile cable companies. It's what they do with it when they get it that adds the price.

Right, so what do they do with it exactly that justifies such a high price?