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WOW! I didn't realize I had hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of raw materials in my shop! I'm RICH!! :bulgy-eyes::yawn:

Seriously, though.... $485.00 for a freakin' knob?!? How much for the pot?!? (Haven't asked that since college...:hypnotized:)
 
I am sayin' typo.

If I were to hazard a guess, I think they either meant $48 or $85 since the "$" key is part of the "4" key and right next to the "5" key. It could be any combination of those numbers though... 45, 48, 58, 84, 85, and then you could always factor the decimal into it too... 48.50 and so on.

Of course there is always the possibility that they are really proud of these and they actually meant $485... But I think they will be sitting on them for quite a while if that's the case.
 
Not only is the price correct, but the market that will pay that price is very, very real - and well populated. Keep in mind that these folks are running stereo systems, some being full-on custom units, that cost several thousand dollars. The knobs might some of the less expensive replaceable components.
 
The knobs are only 7% of the Signature Potentiometer - I'd say the price is real. Good for them! Maybe I should contact the company and offer matching writing instruments.
 
I looked up the cost of the unit the knobs are designed for. It is essentially a pre amp that goes between a CD player and the amplifier. It costs $6,850.00. Yikes!!
 
pianomanpj said:
WOW! I didn't realize I had hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of raw materials in my shop! I'm RICH!! :bulgy-eyes::yawn:

Seriously, though.... $485.00 for a freakin' knob?!? How much for the pot?!? (Haven't asked that since college...:hypnotized:)
Click to expand...

AHA, but did you inhale?!?!?:devil::smile-big:
 
Well, if you're willing to spend $485 for the difference in sound that a knob makes, then you have way more money to blow than I do.

Maybe someone could manufacture matching curtain rods, doorknobs, and switch covers with the same special acoustic lacquer because surely they would sound better than metal rods in your listening room.
 
It's a real price...went to a different page on the site, and found the 'options' for the potentiometer...or whatever it's called.

Finish
Oak Wood ($0)
Mahogany Wood (+$960)
Oak Wood/Black Stained (+$400)

They also have analog RCA cables, 2m long, for about 1500 bucks!

So for a small box, to stain it black costs 400 bucks, and mahogany costs about a grand! Now I'm all for artistic integrity, and charging what the market will bear, but that's highway robbery!!
 
Haaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

OMG, that's killing me! (sniffle, snort, guffaw)

Wow, some people will buy ANYTHING. A wooden knob on a potentiometer makes the music (which has NO interaction with the knob whatsoever) sound better?

Even (stepping outside the realm of possibility for a second here) if it could make a difference, is it one that our lowly human ear could discern? Methinks not.

Hee hee

Wow - some people will buy (literally and figuratively) anything!

What was it that PT Barnum said? ;)

LOL

Cheers!

Gary

P.S. Sincere apologies to any fellow Pen Turners who may have purchased a $500 knob ($1500 in mahogany! LOL) for their stereo....

P.P.S. I'm all for high-end audio and all. My stuff is all Onkyo and Polk. But it just occurred to me that wooden knobs would look like shite on my stereo.... I'm still laughing.

Snake oil! LOL
 
I have a custom amp (guitar) building business. We lo-fi builders always poke fun at the hi-fi crowd. That price is about right....I mean a single patch cable in the hi-fi world can run into the thousands. :rolleyes:
 
chriselle said:
I have a custom amp (guitar) building business. We lo-fi builders always poke fun at the hi-fi crowd. That price is about right....I mean a single patch cable in the hi-fi world can run into the thousands. :rolleyes:
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GaryMadore said:
... and having 24k gold-plated ends on the patch cable really does make everything sound better, right? :D

Cheers!

Gary
Click to expand...
I read an article (don't remember where) about an experiment to see if the very expensive Monster cables were really that much better than the cheap ones. After all was said and done, the consensus was that the best sound came from the speakers that were attached using metal coat hangers.
 
Monty said:
I read an article (don't remember where) about an experiment to see if the very expensive Monster cables were really that much better than the cheap ones. After all was said and done, the consensus was that the best sound came from the speakers that were attached using metal coat hangers.
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That's great! My front closet is a gold mine!!!
 
A friend of mine is a seasonal salesperson for an electronics store. He was trying to sell me on an expensive set of monster cables for my new TV. I just looked at him and said "it's a digital freakin' signal. It's ones and zeros. The cables will make no differance in quality as long as the ones and zeros make it to the reciever. The $15 cables will work just as well as the $130 cables." He just looked at me sheepishly and said "Yeah, but you're not supposed to know that."

It just goes to show whether it's cables or knobs the uniformed and their money will soon be seperated.
 
My bro-in-law is a sound engineer for Dolby. His job is to make sure the movie theaters have the best possible sound for the red carpet premiers. He uses lamp cord for speaker wire.
 
DurocShark said:
My bro-in-law is a sound engineer for Dolby. His job is to make sure the movie theaters have the best possible sound for the red carpet premiers. He uses lamp cord for speaker wire.
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As do I, and even that is overkill.

I buy it because it's cheap, available in bulk, and because the insulation is marked such that I can (usually!) remember which terminal to screw the wire to.

Sorry, gotta go: I'm supposed to be out in the shop turning knobs ;)

Cheers!

Gary
 
I think the high end cables (and knobs for that matter) only add to the perception that you're hearing a better sound....I know if I paid $500 for new knobs I would convince myself that I couldn't live without them! It's amazing the power of peoples' perception. For that matter, anyone could argue that it's rediculous to pay hundreds of dollars for a pen when you can buy them in a 20 pack for $5 at Walmart.....touche!:rolleyes:
 
GouletPens said:
For that matter, anyone could argue that it's rediculous to pay hundreds of dollars for a pen when you can buy them in a 20 pack for $5 at Walmart.....touche!:rolleyes:
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No, no, NO!

Brian,

People pay hundreds of dollars for "fine writing instruments" and not mere pens.

PLEASE try to remember this ;)

Cheers!

Gary

P.S. I'm doing some calculating here.... I can buy an 8 foot long x 3/4" diameter maple dowel for peanuts. Lessee, that's ... 96 inches. Figuring on 1/8" waste per cut, and cutting 1" thick rounds means that I'll be cutting 1.125" per disc. 96" divided by 1.125 = 85.3 discs. Figure on 10% wastage for mistakes and unappealing discs, that's 76.8... Let's call it 76. Drill a hole in 'em and the discs become "knobs." Now, I'm going to way undercut the competition and offer my knobs for, initially, $350 each. 76 x 350 = $26,600. Folks, that's $26,590 profit for about 5 minute's work and a little creative marketing. Of COURSE, we all know that genuine Canadian Maple is the truest conductor of potentiometer knob signals and boasts a SNR of near 100%. I figure that, even on a bad day, I can cut up 100 dowels (500 minutes = just over 8 hours), which means a daily profit of some $260,000. Wow. I'm retiring! Retiring rich, even! Who wants in?

Once we corner the Maple Knob Market, we hook up with Dave and offer genuine Chinese unpronouncable wood knobs starting at, say, $1,000,000 per unit....

heh
 
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bad said:
said "it's a digital freakin' signal. It's ones and zeros. The cables will make no differance in quality as long as the ones and zeros make it to the reciever.
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OK, the EE in me has to speak up... :rolleyes:

The above is true but a gross oversimplification. I'm not justifying the Monster Cable brands or any of the other puffery. But, digital transmission requires higher bandwidth and at least a reasonable attempt at proper transmission line theory to get it right. With more oversimplification and hand-waving, this is because to get a sharp 0-1 or 1-0 transition (single-ended or differential signaling) you need to be able to pass signals without distortion at frequency at least 3-1/2 times the highest bit rate you expect to transmit but more is better. :) Got that? So to pass 1GSPS (GigaSample Per Second) digital you need to have at least 3.5GHz bandwidth but more would be better. Seriously, it is the physics of electromagnetic wave transmission. Go fast enough and digital transmission needs to be done with the same sort of attention to detail as analog. You start getting into problems with the characteristic impedence and thus VSWR and signal power losses of the cable-to-connector interface which can only be cured with more precision manufacturing of both the cable and connector.

All that rambling aside, it isn't hard to calculate this stuff and mix up the right forumations for the insulating materials dialectric constants and then create the dies to extrude things with the right dimentions to at least be within 10% of perfect. So even cables that can pass multi-GigaHertz without distortion are inexpensive at the component level, $1 or $2 per foot in 10,000 foot quantities.

You should be able to get a decent 3ft or less HDMI cable for less than $25 mail order.

But for audio band where nothing of consiquence is above 30kHz, all this doesn't matter. I get a real kick out of the nonsense that comes out of some of the audiophiles when they start trying to justify the cable costs of "oxygenated copper" and how the skin-effect makes a difference at audio frequencies (it doesn't)... Lamp wire is fine so long as the gauge is sufficient for the RMS current you are expecting to carry to the speakers. Get the gauge too small (gauge number to high) and you will experience power loss through resistive drop which if severe enough will sound like some kind of distortion. But unless you are really pushing the power or running your cables for hundereds and hundreds of feet, 14ga and 12ga should handle nearly anything you can send to the speaker(s).

I feel better now.
 
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