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Sony's Signature Walkman and Headphones Are $5,500 of Ridiculous (theverge.com)
Vlad Savov, writing for The Verge: Like a grand old dinosaur that's being left behind by the evolution of the tech industry, Sony is in desperate recovery mode here at IFA. The company has new phones, a rather nice pair of noise-canceling headphones, the imminent PS VR, and... a truly outlandish combo of music player and headphones that costs a mighty $5,499.98. I guess there had to be some outlet for Sony's classic wild-eyed grandeur. Sony's new Signature audio series consists of the gold-plated NW-WM1Z Walkman, which weighs in at 455g (1lb) and $3,200, the $2,300 MDR-Z1R closed-back headphones, and a desktop headphone amp whose price I haven't even dared to look up. First impressions? The portable media player barely qualifies to be called portable. This new 256GB Walkman glints beautifully under IFA's bright lights, and its hefty case is machined to a perfect finish, but its weight is overwhelming. I simultaneously love it for its looks and hate it for its impracticality. Typical Sony, then!
You're supposed to marvel and stare in awe while you buy the 200-dollar-value setup for 500 bucks and consider it cheap, for you have seen the one that costs 5000.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
... it better have tubes and the internal wiring better be from the people who make Monster cables look cheap.
Either Sony is an idiot or this is the "top of the line steak they never plan to sell" that makes the "real" most-expensive item look affordable.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Take this reviewer's commentary with a grain of salt. As with all "audiophiles", he bases his opinion on just plain subjective emotion associated with product brands, individual tastes, and nationalistic biases, not any type of fact. He doesn't like the $5,500 Sony headphones? Then why did he like the Sennheiser $55,000 headphones (yes, that's right, $55K headphones) or the Focal $3,999 headphones? And I really hate to bring this up because it's ugly, but maybe his review comes down to simple nationalism? The reviewer (Vlad Savov) is based in Europe, and Sennheiser is from Germany and Focal is from France. And Sony is (duh) from Japan.
The trick is to pick the best speaker seeds. Plant them in luxurious gold sprinkled soil, Tenderly watch over then every day as you feed them love with direct disc music playing all around. The newly grown speaker drivers must be picked at exactly the right time to ensure proper impedance matching and optimum efficiency. Nah. The real cost is probably about $50 to $75 is just gouging people, I reviewed audiophile gear in the early 90's for two publications. A home made cable, using oxygen free copper that was a single crystal, sounded just about as clear and clean as silver cables. The hand made stuff was always sinfully expensive, while Parasound's made in Taiwan monoblock amps were a good value with near zero distortion. People mock audiophile listeners. The one thing that sets their gear apart from high priced Best Buy stereo equipment is lack of distortion in every component leading to an enjoyable listening session at any (reasonable) volume level.
Don't knock it: "oxygen-free copper" is a "thing" once you realise that as far as elements are concerned there's a bit of everything in everything (mum jokes aside). So it's perfectly possible to make a batch of copper with less oxygen than another batch, and there are purity grades that specifically address this. But the key point is whether oxygen in the copper changes the electrical characteristics in any meaningful way...and the general consensus is that it doesn't.
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NotAPK
it's called a veblen good. It's something you buy to show people that you can. Apple does it too. They've had this stuff since at least the 70s. The difference is with the internet you hear about it, whereas before you had to be pretty well off to even know it existed.
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Yes, it's not completely applicable, but still classic and cathartic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...