Innuos, who have been making servers for years, exhibited a new range of products in May 2022 and listed them for sale. Even with existing supply chains, so far only one has become available. If it’s difficult for them, it must be a lot harder for people seeking components for a completely new product.
That would be a 700 US$ (and 2000 AUS$) uplift on what Paul projected. Is this normal for Australia?
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I’ll try and tackle this if you don’t mind. I believe the MBL is $26k-$30k the MBL 1621a is a transport no internal DAC. The Gryphon Ethos is $39k and is a cd player/Dac. The unit has several inputs for external digital devices like Streamers. The MBL can be found on the preowned market for $11-$12k range. The Ethos $25-$30k on the used market. I don’t think either come up for sale often. The DAC on the Ethos is superb and the best by far I’ve had in my system.
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So if the Ethos will be still better than say the Airlens + the TSS (probably still 15k cheaper, but I’d donate this gap to the Gryphon’s exterior design), I’d start to transfer the individual comparison to a general statement about drives vs. streaming 
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With the Ethos I haven’t heard anything streaming Qobuz, Tidal, or local drive that hasn’t been bested by the CD playback DSD or PCM. It’s extremely good if not the very best I’ve ever heard.
Fascinating…it’s finally just another DAC (sound wise)…and there are much more expensive and reputable ones around. Doesn’t mean I doubt anything…it’s just strange.
Hi, we certainly need to pay extra due to currency conversion, import tax and the like, but, no, we don’t usually see the US price doubled, when goods retail in AUS$!
It made me think that if this preliminary pricing information holds, either Australian customers are likely to pay quite a bit more than US customers, or the AirLens itself has got more expensive to build.
One thing I find fascinating if not strange to me is that prior to Ethos Gryphon makes and still sells a stand alone DAC the Kalliope. Both Gryphon states as does George from Kyomi and @aangen confirms and verifies that the best DAC Gryphon makes is in the Ethos CD player. Better than the stand alone Kalliope! It is a fantastic DAC and Gryphon claims upgradeable. Personally I’ve had some major system upgrades and it’s hard for me to pin point which has the biggest impact. The P20 the REL Subs and borrowing the Ethos. I’m sure if I remove any of the 3 my system will suffer.
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To give you an idea, a P20 here in Australia has a RRP of $16995. The median wage in Australia last year was $65000, while in the US it was $34000 (average wages of course being much higher in both countries).
That makes a P20 26% of the median wage in Australia and 29% of the median wage in the US. So while we have a poor exchange rate and the tyranny of distance for shipping goods (especially heavy ones), sometimes our higher earnings in number terms mean we actually do pretty well. For balance, that’s 18.5% of annual wage in Australia and around 10% in the US, but the US figure is grossly distorted by the high number of high earners. Reports suggest a more realistic average in the US would put a P20 at around 16% of average.
The upshot is that in Australian there are a lot of instances where prices seem to me to be very fair, if there is such a thing. We also pay less for some luxury European goods than you do in the US. A Focal Utopia headphone, for example, is about 6% cheaper here.
I hope that provides some context.
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At the start of development the FR30 (AN30) were estimated to cost US$ 6000, quickly after that estimate they rose to US$ 9000 and we now know they ended up to be US$ 28000. I cannot imagine PS Audio is fond of following the same path with the price estimation of the air lens.
However the AirLens is not released yet, so pricing is not fixed yet.
And yes, import prices seem to go wild, with importers blaming tariffs and transport costs, where today they seem to add for more and more uncertainties. I have become extremely cautious as prices are going up so badly that we simply need to make choices.
The industry will soon learn that increase in sales price will have an adverse effect on revenue. With all sectors digging in to the market, all people will need to make choices sooner or later and sales numbers will drop. The feeding frenzy cannot be sustained by the market.
Unless you manage to dig into the market of the „1 percenters“ that benefit from the feeding frenzy.
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Careful about the “1 percenters” line - I know what you’re saying, but I dare say a majority on this forum are in the 1%. I think the number is around $32000 USD to be in the global 1%!
No the „1 percenters“ are chasing power and more money. The people on this forum seem to be hard working people that have a passion for music and technical details.
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Like I said, I know what you’re saying, but maybe we need a new term. “Black hearted, money grubbing SOBs” perhaps?
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Gryphon Owners.
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Yes, them. They should be ashamed of themselves when they could have bought Soulution.
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Or Realistic.
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What we are talking about here is commonly referred to as “First world problems.” Which is more in line of what I think people are trying to say here. Many of us are not rich, but do work hard and spend much of our extra money on our hobby. It is a higher end hobby, but it what we enjoy. Yes my friends think I am nuts most of the time, but I am at that point in my life where I have expendable money (Finally) after working for 32 years in IT. I am enjoying and I feel its a reward for all that work.
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You should probably consider the population subset of Audiophile’s; their wealth that maybe more directly related to expensive component purchases. But for many good sound quality can be obtained at surprising low cost.
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Completely agree. Many other forums out there catering to that exact thing. I will go out on a limb and say this is NOT one of those areas. Except for some tweaks the members post…but they are tweaks to very expensive things.
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Pray. 