cost of material vs the cost of final product

I feel Sivat can comment on this..Sivat your opinion is required!

Well it sounds unfair that the end-user pays close to 250-400% above the cost of material but to a certain extent I dont blame the manufactures and the dealers as the stuff moves very slowly, high-end is a very slow high-margin business just like any other specialty business.

If there only one sale every Q then one need to make enough rip on every sale to compensate the overheads and other expenses involved otherwise its a no-no from a business prospective.


Regards,

Satyam.

PS: I dont support dealers quoting prices above US retail over here thou.

Why this obsession with cost of materials?? If someone feels that's so important, then that person can just go for DIY

When we buy from a branded company, we also pay for the designing, as well as all other things listed above. Whereas, as I understand it, many DIYer's just rip-off these designs, and then boast that their speakers have same SQ as so-and-so brand, at 1/10th the cost.


As for the Indian scene....yes, most dealers seem to be very greedy. Thats sad.

it is a very silly thing to compare value of a product with cost of materials.

and this is not just for audio

if so then one should stop using using Any product from toothpaste (cost of materials 10%) to cars (even less) and more so for travel/hotel/food in restaurants/doctors/ medicines/Movies/TV..... almost anything in life.

stop wearing any branded shirt/trouser/Shoe and using any Pen (Parker/cross), MP3 player (iPOd)...

and definitely stop drinking coke and eating potato chips.

If the manufacturers also start looking raw materislas that way then if we go down the entire supply chain, everything would boil down to cost of Air/Minerals/Water.. and crude oil which is Free as no one owns it.

A very comon misconception that most buyers have is that the sonic quality of an audio product is directly proportional to the cost. This is far from true. It involves a great deal of scouting to audition various brands and dealers and the end result benefits the buyer as he can get a much better sounding product at less than half or fraction of the cost of popular brands.

Ofcourse, since the dealers get a lower margin on budget priced products, they will not be keen or enthusiastic in giving a proper demo and will give least attention or advice to the buyer to base his decision. Also the after sales service for such entry level products is virtually absent since the dealer is only interested in closing the sale rather than maintaing a relationship with the customer.

Of-course cost of a product is not a benchmark the way it is going to sound, but there are some OVER THE TOP products which do actually sound insanely good at the same time some sound bad to my ears, but ultimately every product has a place in the market therefore so many high-end brands in the world of audio or any other speciality business.

The budget products will always be ignored but in the long run the dealer will realize its something which will always keep the cash register ticking, its all about marketing your product well IT's THE SOUL OF ANY COMPANY/BUSINESS.

Regards,

Satyam.

The margin's may seem high...but as explained in the original text, it seem justified. The resonses so far ...also seem to echo the same belief.

My only advise : Avoid products that are insanely priced..and do not pay huge premium for any specific brand. If you like a product and want to buy it...atleast make sure it's price is comparable to the price of other products with similar performance.

Just one clarification to zhopudey- Unlike popluar belief in this forum...DIY is NOT only about cost saving. Infact there are few DIYer's who have spend a lot more money (including myself) that what it would have costed to purchase a "off-the-shelf" product. To understand what i'm talking about... you need to DIY. And it's absolutely wrong to assume DIY is about copying a well known products.

hey all,
i agree with Siva...DIY ain't as cheap as one might think...in fact it takes so much of ur tiome and effor tthat u can't stick a tag to it..besides things don't always work the first time u switch it on..

from my experience,FWIW ,it is very difficult to build and make a reliable product..especially a good sounding and fgood looking one....i know casue my amplifier has been gathering dust(my speakers too) for the past 3 months...haven't been able to fix it yet..

... for amplifier manufacturers i kinda understand why they price their products so high...though i think they could position them a little lower...the time that goes into designing a product is huge....not to mention the man hours and resources needed...

but DIY is done purely for the fun of it..monetary gains if any are only an offshoot..just 'amplifies' the joy of seeing ur creation work....at least that's why i did it..and continue to do it...if i find something that i really like and feel justifies the price i wouldn't hesitate to pick it up..assuming i have the moolah

I am inclined to agree with behram and siva on this. While I agree with Arj’s comments, I am shocked at the markup of various popular brands and the quality of parts inside. As Behram was saying, we need to scout more and listen to more. Maybe we will be shocked at what is actually available. Maybe we will be shocked at what fantastic systems could be assembled at a fraction of the cost of all these so called “popular-brands”.
I feel hi-end and affordability can mutually co-exist if we look around and shop carefully. If members of this forum find some giant killer brand (amps/speakers/pre-amps) which is affordable, they could help others by posting this information on the forum. I hardly see any such brands being discussed here. I see a lot of such discussions on AA. Most discussions on this forum are about obscenely priced so called “popular gear” or budget gear again from popular brands.
Most sensible people on tight budgets in the US and Europe with “hi-end sound aspirations” have moved away from popular brands in a big way. They have become wiser and discovered smaller operators who make fantastic quality equipment at affordable prices. Check out AA/audio circle etc.. and you can see people passionately discussing such gear. In fact most of them are assembled in Taiwan, hong-kong, china etc.. India being closer to these countries could definitely benefit from this. I wonder why nobody markets these in India. Is it because two-channel stereo is too small a market in India? Kits too are serious hi-fi for the initiated out here in the US at least.

hojo schrieb:

Most sensible people on tight budgets in the US and Europe with “hi-end sound aspirations” have moved away from popular brands in a big way. They have become wiser and discovered smaller operators who make fantastic quality equipment at affordable prices. Check out AA/audio circle etc.. and you can see people passionately discussing such gear. In fact most of them are assembled in Taiwan, hong-kong, china etc.. India being closer to these countries could definitely benefit from this. I wonder why nobody markets these in India. Is it because two-channel stereo is too small a market in India? Kits too are serious hi-fi for the initiated out here in the US at least.

I agree. audio note kits are surprisingly affordable and more sensible with regard to cost of materials (Since labor is little).

And I even more than agree that the 2 channel market for audiophile products is very very limited in India. although 2 channle market in itself is huge, ti si putely populated by Sony/phillips/kenwood...) and bose is the end all and be all.

I personally found a Sub manufacturer called BKelectric (www.bkelec.com) who were an OEM for REL/MJ to provide excellent subs at 1/3rd the price of a REL or a MJ. but being small they cannot afford to have distributors and work Direct.

Some Manufacturers purposely keep the price high in order not to be considered as a "higher value" product. etc etc.

so this is not so simple a market to operate on, since the market small that it is is further fragmented on budget levels and requirements.

I guess te ideal system would be to have an audio designer voice a system for ones ear/room .. and with the plethora of different comonents it should be possible for a freelancer who understands them all to put on together for a fee (I am sure it will be less than the cost of trials with buying/selling)

But again for some of us the journey to get there is perhaps even more interesting than the end

Let me add some relatively lesser known brands which are supposedly giving fantastic quality at affordable prices:

1. Odyssey audio. Klaus Bunge (the owner) works closely with the symphonic line of Germany and has created the affordable odyssey line from the same designs and boards. The symphonic lines cost a bomb and are considered very hi-end by most.
http://www.odysseyaudio.com/

2. Diva audio classics. This is a very minimalist brand based in Singapore. The valve pre-amps and amps are quite popular among Singapore audiophiles.
http://www.divaaudio.com/

Well.. diva is not exactly cheap. other than their CD63 mod which is great, i do not find theor Amps/preamps that great especially from the VFM perspective.

since their M7 is another marantz clone i would like to think that corrsons offering there might be more VFM than that..