[chinesekiwi]

See I don't see myself spending more than US$150 on earphones but I don't kick up a big fuss about it tbh Lucky.

I'll do a 'you': 'see my profile'.

The thing is is yes, whether you like it / acknowledge it or not, Hi-fi is a overpriced business for the consumer. There are great profit margins to be made. It's how much of a profit you are willing to do that's the question e.g. Bose vs. high bang-for-buck Chinese products.

Even then Chinese products can have huge profit margins e.g. the Darkvoice 336i markets for $300ish with $50 in parts.

Let us not forget the infamous Grado RA-1.
We, in a capitalism society, pay for knowledge, service and convenience.

In terms of audio, the diminishing returns goes from mid-fi on with spikes on the value scale (e.g. JVC RX700, Audio Technica AD700, Koss KSC-75 for headphones) in between.

In a free market society (not so much a free social society), people can choose to apy for that extra 10%. It is their choice in the end.

 

[chinesekiwi]

Quote:

Originally Posted by xkRoWx /img/forum/go_quote.gif Ha, that line falls right under $100. People tend to think that anything over $50 for a headphone is a rip off.

Until they've experienced over $50 good products. The doubters are always the ones that have never experienced it.

By the way, your socially thought-provoking cartoon of the day:

 

[Gradofan2]

"Beauty is in the eye/mind of the beholder" - which is stongly determined by Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, The Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility of One's Money Supply, and the degree of their OCD.

 

[olblueyez]

Its funny how people think in terms of money spent and not margins. They all think the less they spend the smaller the margin gets. After 14 years in retail, I can tell you the greatest margins were no name, cheapo, trinkets. Big name stuff was expensive and margins were low. Look at it this way. A store needs to attract customers with popular goods, Bose, Sony, MAC, etc. Margins on that stuff is not as high as a house brand power strip. The monster power strip may even have less margin at 90 dollars than the house brand at 30 dollars. These corporations know how they stand in the market and they are making the money, not the retailers. There is no need for Sony to sell TV's on the cheap to Best-buy, they don't have too. Westinghouse on the other hand will approach Best-buy and sell them TV's for a pittance making the margin on the Westinghouse TV's much greater than the margin on a Sony TV. Then it is the job of the sales people (for whatever store it is) to guide you into a Westinghouse and if not then some high profit margin accessories. To sum this up, if an outfit like Best-buy relied solely on the "popular low margin stuff" then they would be out of business. Therefore I say to everyone, spending less doesn't always get you more for your dollar.

 

[buddhashenglong]

For 'Joe' and his mp3 files, 80 bucks as a guideline in my opinion. With vinyl or CDs, I say man up and do what ya gotta do.