A point I want to bring up is: Isn't a company that makes simply bad stuff and builds up hype a company that really take advantage of audio enthusiasts, not a company that makes good stuff then sells it expensive. I mean, my main point is coming from a Stereophile article I read. It was basically talking about how speaker prices are going up exponentially. A decade ago or more, speakers costing more than $200,000 were almost nonexistant. But now, we see $200,000 ones all the time at shows and it's not all too hard to find speakers costing more than $300,000-400,000.
If this trend of DAP prices keep going like speakers have over years, I wonder what A&K's version of the ultimate player of the month year will be like 10 years later. AKXXXX with a price tag of over $10,000? Laugh all you want because I'm sure people would have done the same thing if they were told 5 years ago that AK240 will come out in the future with a price tag of $2500. Let us hope that we won't see price tags like that for the good of all of us.
To conclude, price tags will go up, we will get used to it, some people will get rich, and money will keep coming out of our wallets/bank accounts/piggy banks/etc. So companies that make good stuff and sell them at a high price is not taking advantage of audio enthusiasts, it's simply what they do. Companies that really take advantage of audio enthusiasts are companies that make bad stuff and sell things at a high price only due to the hype.
The end.
