Do you suppose that audio equipment will get better and cheaper with time? I see the price of TVs drop after a while but with rising technology, can we really match quality together with cheap cost?
gofar99 Messages: 1955 Registered: May 2010 Location: Southern Arizona
Illuminati (5th Degree)
Hi, IMO there will be both a yes and no answer. The yes is that modest gear will get better in performance and either stay the same or go down slightly in price. High end gear will go up. First, new technology almost always has an up front development cost. Second it will initially have low sales. Both of these will tend to drive the cost up. When that gear is no longer the best available the price will drop and the circle will start over with the next great thing. I am actually surprised at how inexpensive a lot of great gear is now. If you figure the quality of it vs what the inflated cost now is compared to stuff from the 70s or so it comes out cheaper. The Marantz amp just above my PC that I'm listening to at the moment (via phono) was $200 in 1969. In today's dollars it would probably be 10 times or more that much in cost, but for performance it can be duplicated for perhaps only $4-500 with modern gear. So while the present costs seem high they really are not. I remember back in 1969 having what I thought was a decent salary of $8500 per year. Now that is far below poverty level. BTW I figure the really inexpensive stuff (as in cheap) now will still be about as cheap and perform in the say way cheap stuff does now.
Whenever I'm shopping for audio equipment, my fear has always been whether or not the same item will be relevant after a few years, or whether it will be obosolete. On the other hand, I don't mind going for something pricey, as long as it is worth it.
I think that we will see the prices of most audio equipment falling with the rise in new technology just as it happened with the phones, TVs and computers.
I believe that it's very likely that we will see a significant drop in the prices of all things electronic as time goes on and cheaper materials are found and technology advances.
I think the price of comparable equipment will drop. You can get the same quality now for much cheaper than it was ten years ago. However new high-end equipment takes its place at the top of the price range, so you still have to pay a lot to get the top new releases.
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