Comments on Profile Post by PacoTaco

I remember not that long ago $300 was a lot for a pair of headphones. $1900 could get you a very good pair of speakers. Things are just nuts now.

Maybe they're speaking in the context of speakers... which is silly.

You guys have short memories. The HE90 sold for $16,000 in 1991 which is $30k in today's money. The K1000 retailed for $1,200 in 1989 or $2,500 after inflation adjustment. The MDR-R10 retailed for $2,500 in the same year. Current headphone prices are nothing new, we just have more options these days.

I never have and never will spend more than $1000 on any single piece of audio equipment. Even with this restriction I feel like there's still plenty of quality and variety out there to choose from. I can get anything at dealer or often distributor cost, but I still would rather get older gear used. Current market is wild, hardly anything has been groundbreaking for quite some time.

For IEM pricing the argument makes more sense since not that long ago the most expensive IEMs you could buy were well below the $1,000 mark, and now $2,000 is kind of normal as far as MSRP goes. But big cans? The best of the best has always come with big price tags.

^Its not that its a high price. Its that at that price they are not calling it a flagship product/way below flagship price. My personal interpretation of flagship price is >1500 usd (which will have to change soon because some manufacturers are just increasing the price of their flagship rather than lowering the cost of the previous flagship and replacing it).

On the other end of the argument there’s the Sony MDR-R10, which was cancelled and never given a successor.