I'm thinking that headphone prices are going up because everyone is now more worried about having ones with a fancy brand name like Beats or Skullcandy instead of how they actually sound.
Prices are rising because the demand is there. Flagship cell phones, headphones, and in-ear-monitors are a couple of electronics devices I can name off the top of my head which are constantly increasing in price because demand keeps rising. If the market won't support it, they wouldn't charge it.
What if Volta GTX 2060 is faster than Vega?what if vega can indeed compete with volta?
I'm thinking that headphone prices are going up because everyone is now more worried about having ones with a fancy brand name like Beats or Skullcandy instead of how they actually sound.
We might see 3x TITANS this time so nv fans can be happy.Every 6 months new TITAN for everyone!
TITAN V
TITAN VX
TITAN Volta or whatever
Yeah but he saves money driving a Malibu.Best AdamK47 impersonation:
When the Titan Volta comes out, I will buy it and use my Titan Xp as a cheap backup card.
Yeah but he saves money driving a Malibu.
Best AdamK47 impersonation:
When the Titan Volta comes out, I will buy it and use my Titan Xp as a cheap backup card.
Malibu!
...wait, that's a different guy, right?
The cable management is bad and whoever did the cable management should feel bad.
I'm thinking that headphone prices are going up because everyone is now more worried about having ones with a fancy brand name like Beats or Skullcandy instead of how they actually sound.
I'm talking more about the fact that the $400 dollar range was considered high end for decades, from the early 1990s till 2009 the Sennheiser HD600 was considered the flagship headphone in western markets. Then Sennheiser debuted the HD800 at $1699 in 2009, and started the high end headphone horse race. Like the old saying goes, supply creates its own demand. Today you have multiple flagship headphones in the $4000-6000 price range from major manufacturers, in just a span of 8 years, and some of these headphone manufacturers can barely churn out headphones fast enough to meet demand.
It's been a long time since I have sold Senn headphones. They used to be 35%-40% GP on their high(er) end headphones. And that was in the US where, due to economy of scale, retail margins are a lot higher than many places in the world. Unless something has drastically changed, I think you might be mistaken.This might be a bit revisionist, and it also completely ignores the differences in the industry. GPUs and other tech benefits from (mostly) regular improvements that greatly increase the efficiency of said products. This improvement does not come for free of course, but given the healthy margins the leading companies in silicon are running with, it's very obvious that the increase in cost currently out-accelerates the cost of the the products themselves.
There's no such driver for headphones. Improvements are very infrequent, and only occur after a great deal of investment. The market (especially at the high end) is extremely small vs. the GPU / CPU sector as well. It's also very important to note that the margin you speak of does not really exist with the manufacturer, but with the dealers. For instance, many higher end Sennheiser headphones are sold at 3-4x what the dealer purchases them for. Your reference would work better if NVIDIA were selling these Titan XPs for $500 and the retailers were selling them for $1,500. I'm told this is not even remotely the case.
Lastly, "flagship" headphones have existed in the multi-thousand dollar category for decades, including electrostatics from STAX and AKG. The HD800 most certainly was not the headphone that opened that market up. It did however exploit a market between the $500 and $1,000 categories.
I have 1 friend who does some of the purchasing for a larger audio store. He noted that something typical, like the HD 598, costs the store roughly $60, while they'll be sold between $160-$180, depending on promos. The margins on something like the HD 800 are even higher, as would be expected. So I'd say yes, perhaps things are different from when you last sold them. Due to the success of relatively inexpensive to manufacture, but extremely high margin products like Beats, I'm told other manufacturers have had to lower costs to retailers to make themselves more competitive for shelf / warehouse space. It still costs more than ever to run a retail store, and when you can sell Beats all day, something has got to give to keep Sennheiser products on shelves in front of the average buyer's eyes (the average buyer who has no idea of the difference between a Beats headphone and a Sennheiser headphone).It's been a long time since I have sold Senn headphones. They used to be 35%-40% GP on their high(er) end headphones. And that was in the US where, due to economy of scale, retail margins are a lot higher than many places in the world. Unless something has drastically changed, I think you might be mistaken.
Now, margins on computer components are often in the 10% GP range. So margins for high end audio are 3 to 4 times that. Maybe that's what your information really talked about and you've confused something? I don't know. I'm just guessing here.