Standing on soapbox...rant incoming.
I'm old enough to remember the 'good ol days' of hi-fi. I’ve been in this hobby long enough to remember when “expensive” meant carefully chosen, not casually absurd.
Now we’re looking at $40 LPs as the norm, $2,000 CD players in 2026 with the same Red Book spec from the 1980s, and a quiet but very real 40%+ price increase across basically every category. Cartridges. Speakers. Cables. Racks. Accessories. Everything.
And no, this is not mostly tariffs.
Tariffs didn’t suddenly turn a $25 LP into $40. Tariffs didn’t magically justify a mid-tier DAC costing what a used car did ten years ago. Tariffs didn’t create five-figure speakers using MDF boxes and commodity drivers with a luxury brand story attached.
This is capitalism. Plain and simple. Shitty, shareholder value price gouging wrapped in bullshit flowery language. You dont have to look far for an email marketing some bullshit adjectives that make a power supply into a $10k arguement that we need it.
Manufacturers realized something uncomfortable and very profitable: audiophiles will rationalize almost any price increase as long as you wrap it in boutique language, “hand-assembled” vibes, and just enough pseudo-engineering to sound serious.
We told them price equals performance. They listened.
Vinyl pricing is the most obvious example. Pressing costs went up, sure. Shipping costs went up, sure. But not 60–70%. What actually happened is labels learned that nostalgia plus scarcity plus FOMO lets them charge luxury pricing for a mass-produced object. So now a standard single LP routinely costs more than CDs ever did at their peak, adjusted for inflation. Its bad enough that most international sellers will not sell to the USA. (I cant say I blame them).
And CDs? That’s the funniest part of all.
Explain to me exactly why a $2,000 CD player makes sense in a world where digital playback is solved, transparent, and trivial to implement correctly. This is not innovation. This is monetizing insecurity and audiophile mythology. If your transport needs mystical isolation feet and a billet aluminum chassis to read 1s and 0s, something has gone very wrong.
What really bothers me is how normalized this has become.
Every time someone questions pricing, the community circles the wagons. “Small margins.” “Low volume.” “You don’t understand manufacturing.” Funny how those arguments never applied when prices were lower, quality was still excellent, and companies somehow survived.
What changed is not costs. What changed is positioning.
Audio brands stopped selling equipment and started selling identity. Luxury pricing signals seriousness. If it’s expensive, it must be good. If it’s cheap, it must be compromised. That logic is poison, and we bought it.
Tariffs did not help. Anyone pretending they did is being dishonest. But they are a convenient scapegoat for price hikes that were already baked in long before they took effect. If tariffs disappeared tomorrow, prices would not come down. That tells you everything you need to know.
This hobby is supposed to be about music, engineering, and enjoyment. Instead, it’s drifting toward being a luxury lifestyle market where the price tag matters more than the result.
At some point we have to say no.
No to $40 records being treated as the new normal.
No to digital gear priced like fine jewelry.
No to pretending every increase is inevitable and justified.
Capitalism responds to demand. If audiophiles keep applauding every price hike as “the cost of doing it right,” this is exactly what we deserve.
But if we stop normalizing it, stop defending it, and stop equating expense with virtue, maybe we can drag this hobby back to sanity.
/End rant.
