Why so expensive??

"Unfortunately I have yet to find any woman who doesn't find an interest in Audio, plain weird."

I have yet to find a woman who doesn't find a man, who demonstrates his wealth of disposable income by spending a quarter mil on a stereo, more interesting than a guy with a Bose.

We have an amp that costs $92,000... it takes 2 of our guys about 3 months of solid work to build it. Its on 4 chassis and makes a lot of power: 500 watts into 4 ohms and it has built in tube testing and power line regulation. At least when done you can *see* where the money went. OTOH I agree with the initial comments but there was some thread drift so I jumped in....

Why is oil near $100 a barrel? Pumping it out of the ground costs no more today than when it was $19 a barrel.

Answer is that there are people who will pay that price. To the extent that high end audio is an ego trip, a high price is a plus.

Sometimes it is better to look at other factors besides just the actual price. For example, I am in the lawn maintainence business (fancy way of saying I cut grass). My lawn mowers cost $10,000; $8500; and $3500. Some may baulk at that much for a lawn mower, but they are all Commercial equipment made to cut grass sometimes as much as 50 hours or more a week, do it quickly and with a quality cut without tearing up (usually). Compare this to the homeowners' model riding mowers that have Built-in obsolescense (designed not to last too long, so you will maybe buy a new model in 2-3 seasons instead of fixing the old one.)

So high-end audio is like commercial lawn mowers, you get what you pay for.(although I still wonder about six-figure speakers;)

Why is oil near $100 a barrel?

This is why.

Now back to regular programming......