This is all true and not a surprise at all for people who have been in the business before .
Lets talk about the highend industry:
Another thing is the supercorrupt hifipress were good reviews often combines with commersial marketing for the products tested. Its exactly the same as reading car magazines , where BMW always get good reviews ( everyone knows the buildquality is really bad and much worse than Toyota ) and does lots of commersial marketing feeding the paper owner. People also want to believe in cheap lies and the status that surrounds some expensive products.
Without the online hifimagazines the highend industy is nothing.
Studio gear are often cheaper than similar hifiproducts. One example is the Genelec 8030c compared to Genelec G3 - essentially the same speaker, but the price is very different and much higher for the hifi model G3 ( + 25 to 30% )
There are also examples of rebadging a rasberry pi ( 30 dollars ) , add some components and a nice box and there you have it - a Bryston streamer for 3000 dollars. Knowing this - the quality can ofcourse be very good regardless If a rasberry streamer would cost 200 dollars from audiophonics or 3000 dollars in the hifistore.
Still people believe more in a known brand like Bryston or BMW and they can charge what the customers wants to pay.
I think cars are a different topic, to a certain extent. Society is programmed to be focused on vanity. Where I live[city] we have people that drive Ferrari’s but live in a 2 bedroom apartment.
You must realize, and I don’t like to get into politics, that this vanity is direct from competition and competition stems from capitalism ideology. Furthermore individualism, part of the divide and conquer strategy, further increases competition.
I say this is different from high end audio in the sense that if you told your friend who knows nothing about audio you got this and that and it’s worth a 100 grand they would be like ok. It would mean nothing to them, but I am sure on here or any knowledgeable audio community do try and continue the drama in regular society.
The good news here is most of us would think they are morons, to where if you own a bmw or Mercedes they think you are financially well off lol.
Certain companies like audioquest are trying to get filthy rich and embark on products with high profit margins and deceptive marketing. I think a lot of companies follow in suit because it works and why not, it’s either that or die.
Also they take it much further with pricing bias. They maybe able to get away with selling a product with an msrp of 1000, but if it’s not a lot of money it must not be good so let’s just make it 3000 so they know it’s good. Every product suffers from this and this is an issue we create and they hone in on
Companies like benchmark zmf etc started a business to make a nice living selling something that they created or engineered so a lot of these things don’t apply to them. The business schematics discussed does apply, but if a corporation bought that business you would see prices get hiked way higher. They won’t do it overnight but slowly and if it’s not that start to cut corners and compromise quality to keep the prices the same.
There’s a lot going on and it’s all bad for everyone. Prices are going up on everything yet for a very high majority of us or incomes will not change.
I say consistently if you don’t appreciate the measurements or anything Amir does the reality of his work and publications is so we the consumer do not get ripped off. Hypothetically speaking I don’t give a damn if a chord Dave is 30% better than the best topping dac when it’s 2000% cheaper lol
You be your own judge. If you got the money and don’t care you do you we ain’t mad at you just don’t tell us we are wrong for believing something backed by evidence.