Network Acoustics and Sablon Audio are pretty mysterious and there is no apparent science or reason for their prices and one of them makes a lot of profit. Don’t know CAD.
I use Puritan and have spoken to Mike Lester. It’s a proper business, sales close to $1m. He uses known and proven technology to make really effective products at very good prices and no marketing costs. He must do it for love as his profits are low. I replaced a Shunyata Alpha A10 with a Puritan PM156 - the Puritan is one third the price and better. I also use his floppy cables because no one else makes anything as practical.
Dr Sean Jacobs is a serious scientist with a doctorate in robotics and control systems. He does bespoke cables and a lot of bespoke power supplies. His cable prices are very sensible. I think he and his wife work simply to fund their climbing and cycling, although their family has recently expanded so that might change a bit. I needed a pair of RCA cables for my phono stage, 1.25m long with special locking plugs as the sockets are slightly small, and extremely well insulated, which he made for £272 delivered - a fraction of the cost of all the other fancy cable companies.
Sean’s power supplies are expensive, but use the best quality components and wire available, and you won’t get such high quality DC supplies anywhere else. There was always a market for high quality DC supplies (Naim, Chord etc.), but his has increased dramatically with digital/streaming.
15 years ago there was a small industry of people making bespoke servers for audio use. Nuno was one of them, he was called LIV Technology at the time. A lot of them stopped because there was not it much money in it, some people did DIY, or you could just buy a QNAP or Synology.
Thanks for the infos, I had the opportunity to exchange emails with all of them. Scott from CAD is a very kind person (and his wife too), Rob from NA was so honest to suggest me not to buy one of their products that couldn’t perform at its best in my system and sent me at 0 cost a cable to try (just to have back a short comment from me), Mark from Sablon was very responsive (less generous about demo but I can understand), Sean from Custom HiFi Cables was spectacular and competent and detailed, Nuno Vitorino from Innuos sent me lots of emails to answer my questions, etc etc Maybe only Mike Lester from Puritan never answered my emails (but I bought their PSM 156 and a few cables).
Smaller companies (also Galen and Bob, we all love and respect, from US Iconoclast for instance) are all very responsive and I’m glad to have a direct contact with owners. Not to mention the owner of this forum, even though I can’t consider PSA so small indeed. Larger companies… meh! They don’t answer or have a customer service that sometimes answers in poor short ways.
I like more that kind of “artisan” approach.
I’m not qualified to understand science behind the products (am just curious)
I’m just interested to try products at home (in my system) before purchasing them or at least getting a 30 days trial opportunity
I read comments from trusted members forums that own or use or try the products (not comments from people that judge products without personal experience on them)
If apparently science materials/specs are bad but I like the sound, I buy that product, after having considered all the points above mentioned, of course
I’m not qualified to judge prices, if not affordable to my pockets I simply stay away
I buy products to enjoy music, so when I have tried one at home, I have read good comments on forums (or professional reviews at a lesser degree), I have talked to the designer, I have found it affordable to me… and I like it… I’m happy, that’s all.
I surely never judge and most of all never write comments about products that I have not listen to before.
I don’t always think people want to rip me off, this is a hobby and must bring me joy, so I tend to have a more positive attitude towards my interlocutors in my passions as well as in life in general. Even if sometimes I wasted money, that’s the risk but in my opinion is part of this wonderful journey.
When people like Nuno started making servers 15 years ago people knew the component costs, so they were priced at components + labour + bit on top. Even when I bought my Innuos Zen 4TB almost 5 years ago it still cost me only £1,900, just over €2,000, and it’s a great product that I can’t imagine changing. That was before the Sense app. The new Pulse range are about double the price of the Zen range, which reflects partly the software and partly their success and brand value.
In the UK returning a product is not an issue, nor is getting a dealer demonstration. There is no need to take risks.
I don’t have many cables. Speaker cables from OePhi in Demark. Power cables from Puritan, half an hour away. Two pairs of XLR and a DIN phono cable from Mark Sears in the UK. He trades as Vinyl Passion (he makes the famous Dustbuster) and Missing Link. He is a turntable man and has been refining silver cables (materials, treatment and construction) over about 30 years. A mix of serious science and practical application. There is a small product range and it’s quite clear, the more you want the more you pay.
I use his Alaqueia XLR for my DAC to amp (about £150 / €180) and a more expensive Link Cryo from my phono stage to amp (about £400 / €450).
The only thing roughly similar I’ve seen is from Revelation Audio Labs and is about 3 times the price.
I have products from large and small companies. My Reed 3P tonearm is a hand-finished work of art and brilliant performer, from a small business in Poland. My Luxman integrated amplifier is mass produced to a high specification and performance level at an incredible price. Very similar products from Soulution and Gryphon cost two or three times as much.
These are my Missing Link (UK) cables, Reed arm (Lithuania) and RCM phono (Poland - a large company with small production). My turntable was one of about 30 ever made, in the UK, by a specialist machining company.
I like companies that design a product and only change it if there is a good reason to do so. There are plenty, including PS Audio. I do not like companies like AQ that have endless upgrade paths and product “upgrades” every 10 minutes.
You are a good man Luca.
Small business niche component pricing is fairly simple.
If there’s 4 people on the payroll and they all expect to make a descent wage that’s roughly $300k+ per year in payroll expenses.
Add in rent for a commercial space @ $50k to $100k / year, property taxes on real estate or personal property @ $25k / year , utilities @ $15k / year, health insurance @ $50k / year (4 employees ).
Add in another $10k minimum for vehicles and insurance for the vehicles.
Add in the cost of machinery, inventory items, maintenance costs on the machines, tooling, fixtures, software, workstations, etc @50 to 100k / year and it’s easy to have $500k + / year in fixed costs that have to be paid and then you need a rough markup of 40% in order to make a profit and keep the company profitable. That moves the break even number to $700k
So if you are selling 100 items a year there is $7k per item minimum cost just to keep the business going.
Of course every business is different but these numbers are valid in the USA and are accurate for my company.
I love to support the smaller businesses that offer high quality products and don’t mind paying the price of quality work.
I’m like you a owner of a small 15 employees publishing company.
Even though the average Italian costs are lesser… making a right proportion… your calculation makes sense. Every market has its rules, if your prices are wrong you cannot sell enough products, if your sales are growing enough it is possible to apply processes according to different economies of scale.
I think that is the market to define a business model: loyal and satisfied customers can buy (and re-buy) your products, poor quality products cause loss sales. Happy customers make your business more stable, so you can invest more resources in research to elevate the quality and innovation of products.
There are no shortcuts, serious companies come from serious people, with no chances to continue any business without serious products. This is the world of small companies. For bigger companies is different, quantity vs quality and marketing count more.
Not to mention passion, bravery, fantasy and a positive attitude towards the future and people you need to possess in very large quantities.
Good luck Paul, Nuno, Mark, Rob, Mike, Sean, Bob and Galen… don’t give up!
Well said. I am glad you understand how small business works and are able to keep so many people busy. It is a challenge that isn’t always easy to do.
We are primarily a prototype machine shop, customer machinery repair services, jig and fixture design with lots of CNC equipment and the software to support the machinery.
I have spent the better part of 40 years showing up at the shop at 5:00 AM or before, making morning deliveries before 6:00 AM, working a full day, making afternoon deliveries before 5:00 PM and being back at the shop to close up around 6:00 PM or later depending on backlog and current workload.
You obviously know the drill and both supply a quality product but expect to pay for the same quality.
One other interesting point is we have been able to prosper on local sales only, no website, and never advertised.
Puritan’s accounts are online. They have a 50% gross profit margin, rent a workshop and have a total overhead of about $180,000, including 2 employees. Makes a small profit. Their annual expenditure on advertising, PR and entertaining was $8,000. It’s difficult to see how a business could offer their customers better value.
Okay, another update.
In my “takes a cordless drill with a phillips bit and a bit of effort to remove the protective steel cover panel” from my network demarcation panel I found some idiot had installed a 10/100mb switch. He is good looking and means well. But what a dope.
I replaced the switch with a "Unicorn 20i Best Audiophile Gigabit Switch Ever (Master Edition)” switch. Now my network is Gigabit start to finish.
The MUON Pro is now properly connected and sure enough, it sounds better. Blacker background, more space around instruments, soundstage improvements and all that.
Most importantly, No buzzing at the start of that Billie Eilish song!
For clarification, are you using the MUON Pro filter with their Ethernet cable? I remember that you recently said you were using Inakoustic everywhere.
The Inakustik Lan cable is better than a computer cable. But it’s nothing exciting. A Furutech Lan cat 8 NCF is the way to go if you want something more and the costs should remain manageable. In order to get a further increase, a considerable sum must be invested, more expensive does not always mean better! I would describe the Furutech Lan as a benchmark against which the competition has to measure itself. A better cable for the price will be hard to come by.
Does anyone here think there would be any benefit to adding an Eno between my modem and WiFi router? Or would that be completely useless?
For reference, I currently use an Auralic Aries G2 streamer over WiFi since there’s no ethernet cable in my listening room.
The best piece of filtering/conditioning device should be the last piece that connects to the streamer. That general rule holds true for my network tweaks experiments so far.
After 3 stages of filtering, in general, additional spending on filtering devices will hit a massive diminishing return in my system.
I hear ya! But since I’m using an Auralic WiFi enabled streamer, I’m wondering if there’s any point to cleaning up the ethernet-based noise that might exist between the modem and my WiFi router? Or would this be completely useless since that ethernet-based noise won’t be transferred by the WiFi router over the air to my Auralic streamer?
I had read a similar question regarding the noise in another forum dealing with fiber optics and SFP modules. There it was assumed that fiber optics do not cause their own noise, but that the disturbances are viewed as a signal before conversion and are also transmitted. Try it out and decide for yourself.
