Not because the product might not be worth as much but because the rivals might be offering very similar (if not better) performance with much cheaper price.
I'm not planning to join the race to the bottom. I recently ordered a Topping D30 DAC from Amazon. It was sold as "new" but had clearly been opened, used, and returned. It wouldn't even turn on. That's what the cheapies look like, so I'm really not concerned. I don't doubt that Topping can deliver a good product (you can find measurements of the D30 on this forum), but my experience was pretty bad. It meant I'll be attending Burning Amp with a $25 eBay DAC rather than a decent DAC (I'm not bringing my $1100 RME ADI2 DAC for this!). Good products need to be backed by a good distributor network. I developed a lot of connections for that while I was at RMAF.
Pricing yourself too low to start can ruin a brand as well.
For sub $400 HPA-1 would be so easy to recommend. $899 + shipping + taxes = the final price is over $1k.
If you find your taxes to be too high, you should take it up with your government. Canada has trade agreements with many countries, so the customs duties should be fairly low. In many places (Canada, EU, likely others) you will likely have to pay your local sales tax or VAT on import. Such is life. I pay taxes too.
Anyways it will be interesting to see how well HPA-1 will be doing in 1-2 years from now.
That it will. I think I have a strong marketing message around delivering well-engineered products, manufactured on a quality process, backed by science.
I suggest you read some of Restorer-John's posts. He sees amps of varying quality levels from a repair guy's or restorer's perspective. Building an amp that lasts and holds up to years of use is a challenge, and many of the cheapies on the market don't follow the manufacturers' recommendations regarding mechanical support of the components (headphone jack and volume pot in particular). They are guaranteed to fail over time. But the amps are so cheap, that the manufacturers rely on you just buying another one when the amps fail.
Neurochrome is in the premium market segment, he could never manufacture in the $400 price range. It depends on what you want.
Exactly!
I can go two ways from the HPA-1: Up in price (so fancier chassis, more features, more premium) or down in price (less fancy, fewer features, not as premium).
Going up in price is more fun, because I can be more creative in the engineering, which would allow for a true statement amp (which is what the original HP-1 was supposed to be, actually).
That said, I am intrigued by the "down in price" route as well. You would have to give up features. No differential input for you! No fancy Alps pot. You get the li'l green Alps RK097 instead as that's 80% lower cost than the RK271. Maybe only one gain setting... Lower output power. I think it would be nice with a $300-400 amp as a stepping stone on the way to the more premium products.
That said, I should probably sit down and think long and hard about this from a business strategy perspective. Perhaps ask my advisors...
That's very true but again. It's it that much premium to justify the price difference?
Let's see what will future bring.
Yeah. I suppose you can always hope that I go down, so you can be left with the various cheapie products.
I plan to stick around, though. Someone will always want a quality product and that's what I intend to deliver.
Tom
