People want the ultimate and happy to pay, AK answers their request.
Nope. Sorry, but I think you have that back-to-front.
IMO, AK created a cynically-calculated and deliberately-Freudian marketing strategy to prey-upon wealthy individuals' psychological insecurities. These people may want the 'Ultimate', but,
even more than that, they desperately want to soothe their subconscious insecurities, by buying an expensive material object, that they misguidedly convince themselves will help them 'BE the Ultimate', in the eyes of themselves (and, hopefully) 'envious&admiring onlookers'.
Therefore, although there are some audiophiles who are convinced that AK products truly offer the best SQ, and are willing (and able) to pay a premium for that,
for the majority of customers to which AK products are being marketed, the performance of the material object is
secondary to the perceived psychological band-aid offered by ownership of the object / status symbol. This tendency for many people to misguidedly identify themselves with material objects is exploited by many 'luxury' companies. If anyone wishes to understand more about this egoic tendency, a good place to start would be by acquainting yourself with material by Eckhart Tolle, because he deconstructs the tendencies of ego in intricate detail.
AK's marketing team knows these egoic tendencies extremely acutely!
They even exploit this psychology further, by deliberate
incremental releases, to keep
moving the 'latest-&-greatest' goalposts, thus leading to customers feeling compelled to up
[side]grade each time, in order to keep scratching their psychological itch (Blue Note, Stainless Steel, Copper, each with an
even higher implied status-level, and, of course, a higher pricetag to go with it).
It's a pity, because AK's
engineering team (both software and hardware) are actually quite talented, but are, IMO, taking a backseat to the cynicism and greed of the company that employs them.
I realise some head-fiers will disagree with my above remarks, quite vehemently. I'm not saying
all AK customers follow the above psychology, but a great many.
It's uncomfortable to hear it, but the AK240 marketing, in particular, made it abundantly apparent that iRiver's marketing is
very carefully calculated to play upon wealthy individuals' psychological tendencies.
I predict that iRiver's next AK DAP will incorporate FPGA technology (much like Soundaware's Esther DAP already does). iRiver know that a certain tiny DAC-Amp, based upon FPGA technology, has been extremely successful, in recent months, even in the very TOTL of the portable audio sector (and at a price iRiver would probably have charged around 8x as much for, had they been marketing it) so they'll doubtless feel compelled to try to grab some of that market share.
And, looking at
Soundaware's Esther DAP, it is interesting to note that they offer 2 very different sound characteristics, implemented (iirc)
mostly in the FPGA code - I can therefore forsee iRiver rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of being able to make incremental changes in FPGA code, along with a few very minor hardware components, to create a whole string of only-slightly-different DAP models, spread 6 months or so apart, to keep the compulsive upgraders paying through the nose, ad nauseam.
We shall see...
.
.
