[Hawaiibadboy]

If they charge above $700, I won't buy them. They can't charge more than Samsung Note 4....come on.

 They can and they will...the Onkyo anyway
 

 
My own rig is a dev edition Note 4 with a glorious 5.7" screen and my newest FiiO item..my 3rd...on it's back.(no bands on my damn screen) supports 24/96 which is enough for a red book Hi res argument has a 3,500mAh battery and more power than the Onkyo,Pioneer and X7. Beautiful and brutish....and I still am intrigued by the Onkyo just cuz I'm a fan of their home receivers.
 
This competition stuff is always good for us the consumer so let them battle for our money

 

[Joe-Siow]

If they charge above $700, I won't buy them. They can't charge more than Samsung Note 4....come on.

 
Don't mind me, but it sure is weird to see a product touted to take on the likes of AK380 being brandied at prices of smart phones.
Though the DP-X1 is based on Android, it is a very different beast compared to the likes of Samsung Note 4 in terms of hardware design.

 

[Hawaiibadboy]

   
Don't mind me, but it sure is weird to see a product touted to take on the likes of AK380 being brandied at prices of smart phones.
Though the DP-X1 is based on Android, it is a very different beast compared to the likes of Samsung Note 4 in terms of hardware design.

I think the only person aligning price with a smartphone was the guy you quoted? That would be nice though

 

[Joe-Siow]

I think the only person aligning price with a smartphone was the guy you quoted? That would be nice though

I was trying to be polite. Lol.

Anyway, as much as I hope the price might be kept low, at the end of the day, I'm managing my expectations. If the released price is less than 1,200 USD, I'll take that to be a bonus.

 

[Samuel777]

one video of the Pionner : 

 

[T.R.A.N.C.E.]

Anyway, as much as I hope the price might be kept low, at the end of the day, I'm managing my expectations. If the released price is less than 1,200 USD, I'll take that to be a bonus.

 
You have to raise your expectations, the entire audio industry is overpriced, some much worse than others, we gotta start rallying for better value. I'm hoping the DP-X1 is $900.
 
The guy that wants same price as a smart phone has a point, although I do think daps should cost a bit more. Daps even like AK380 don't cost much more to design and build than a high end phone, but are sold for exorbitant prices. The components in a high end smart phone are often more costly than those in a high end dap, but a dap with a nice metal body will even out the cost, so we can say high end daps and high end phones are similar in production cost, so why do high end daps cost so damn much? Simple answer is demand, a lot more people buy phones than daps which allows much better pricing and lower margins on phones. In general any dap that costs over $1000 is simply overpriced, there is no reason for it and it is just company greed and overly high profit margins. Not all phones are priced well though, iphone is an example of a unfairly priced phone compared to it's android competition, at least it's not hugely overpriced like some daps.

 

[goodvibes]

Economies of scale. They'll 1000 or more note 4s to every Onkyo, Questyle, Pioneer etc DAP. Any one that thinks they can do this for the same $ is just not being realistic. Be happy you can get a phone for so cheap even if they often use questionable labor practices to pull it off 

. Don't be unhappy that you can get better things for higher prices. They're here if you want them and there are alternatives if not. 

 

[mscott58]

Economies of scale. They'll 1000 or more note 4s to every Onkyo, Questyle, Pioneer etc DAP. Any one that thinks they can do this for the same $ is just not being realistic. Be happy you can get a phone for so cheap even if they often use questionable labor practices to pull it off  . Don't be unhappy that you can get better things for higher prices. They're here if you want them and there are alternatives if not. 

+1. Exactly. The scales of these products are massively different. With scale comes much lower part and manufacturing costs as well as the ability to recoup fixed costs and overhead much more easily. For example if you spend $1m developing a product and sell 10 million units that's just 10 cents a unit needed to cover the R&D. However if you only sell 10,000 units then that's $100 per unit. Apples and oranges IMO.

 

[kawaivpc1]

In terms of development cost and hardware price, they're not paying more than Note 4.

It has the same snap dragon CPU and 2GB ram but better sound quality and worse touchscreen.
They should not charge more than $700.
$1000 is so unrealistic for a portable electronic device. Circuit board costs only few dollars or less at a factory.
The AKM DAC chip is $15....

 

[T.R.A.N.C.E.]

^ Actually the AK4490EQ in the AK380 is a $5 dac chip. You seemed to have missed the part about economies of scale, it is unreasonable to expect these items to be sold for the same price as a phone, although it is not unreasonable to still want value for money or <$1000 price tags.

 

[kawaivpc1]

^ Actually the AK4490EQ in the AK380 is a $5 dac chip. You seemed to have missed the part about economies of scale, it is unreasonable to expect these items to be sold for the same price as a phone, although it is not unreasonable to still want value for money or <$1000 price tags.

$5 but even cheaper whn you order a bulk of them from factory.
Wifi receiver and a 32gb flash storage aren't that expensive either. MicroSD card circuitboard is only a dollar at Chinese factory.
I hope for $600 max. Then these guys will dominate the market.

 

[LFC_SL]

Whilst the upward pricing trend of personal audio in recent years is lamentable,

Those who want a budget price ought not read in on these kind of threads! Whether or not the marketing speak is realised on release, Onkyo and Pioneer clearly are not pitching for the low-end space.

"Economies of scale" may be in play but (1) no-one is privy to the purchasing power of audio manufacturers (2) purveyors of niche audio toys are not in a price war when a high price is precisely part of the psychology of selling to a certain type of consumer.

P.S. The Galaxy Note series smartphones are actually quite expensive and below only the flagship S Series

 

[T.R.A.N.C.E.]

Well the Pioneer dap will be approx $600 or so, similar in price to a smart phone, so it's good value for money considering it will sound way better than a smart phone plus have an aluminium body along with the best Quadcore processor on the market which dominated 2014 flagship smart phones, and comes with Android 5. So pretty good value imo. The onkyo will cost a bunch more even though it will barely cost more for Onkyo to produce, but that's just how it goes, the top model always comes with a price premium, it will still be better value than most daps anyway.

 

[kawaivpc1]

  Well the Pioneer dap will be approx $600 or so, similar in price to a smart phone, so it's good value for money considering it will sound way better than a smart phone plus have an aluminium body along with the best Quadcore processor on the market which dominated 2014 flagship smart phones, and comes with Android 5. So pretty good value imo. The onkyo will cost a bunch more even though it will barely cost more for Onkyo to produce, but that's just how it goes, the top model always comes with a price premium, it will still be better value than most daps anyway.

Obviously they're better than criminal Hifiman HM901, AK240, DX100. 
 
But, they should stay around $600... this is the max price for something like this.
If this happened in 2010, would you consider this normal? an electronics company can charge that much for a portable device? 
iRiver used charge $200-$300 for no matter what they make in 2000's...
Archos players used to be $200 range as well in 2000's. 
 
Onkyo guys aren't going to pay $200 more to manufacture X1 which doesn't include more expensive hardware than pioneer's product. 
 
I hope they're reading this and decide around $600 and put this market back to normal. You guys are paying a price of 256GB SSD Win 10 64bit laptop with a quadcore CPU and 16GB RAM for these portable players. This isn't normal. 
I bet it costs them less than $110 dollars to manufacture each one at their factories in China. 

 

[Duncan]

It is up to the retailer as to the cost they attribute to their product...

R&D doesn't put food on their tables... - the difference is, are they expecting top end caviar and champagne, or ramen noodles...