lpv said:Thank you. Wow..£400 for a box with cable and volume knob? Rip off Icon Audio.. same thing can have for £10 - £20.
davedotco said:lpv said:Thank you. Wow..£400 for a box with cable and volume knob? Rip off Icon Audio.. same thing can have for £10 - £20.
Not Quite.
A fairly decent 'pot in a box' can be had quite cheaply, but the real cost is first casework, to make a 'presentable' product and if you want remote control you need either a motorised pot or a digital display (of volume) and crucially a power supply.
The moment you introduce a power supply, costs go up massively, for all kinds of reasons. This is the killer and you have to have power for a remote control device.
Your reaction explains why such components are relatively rare.
lpv said:davedotco said:lpv said:Thank you. Wow..£400 for a box with cable and volume knob? Rip off Icon Audio.. same thing can have for £10 - £20.
Not Quite.
A fairly decent 'pot in a box' can be had quite cheaply, but the real cost is first casework, to make a 'presentable' product and if you want remote control you need either a motorised pot or a digital display (of volume) and crucially a power supply.
The moment you introduce a power supply, costs go up massively, for all kinds of reasons. This is the killer and you have to have power for a remote control device.
Your reaction explains why such components are relatively rare.
.. fair enough, but the trouble is Icon Audio ask £400 for the model without remote. The one with remote is only £50 more.
lpv said:. . . fair enough, but the trouble is Icon Audio ask £400 for the model without remote. The one with remote is only £50 more.
davedotco said:lpv said:Thank you. Wow..£400 for a box with cable and volume knob? Rip off Icon Audio.. same thing can have for £10 - £20.
Not Quite.
A fairly decent 'pot in a box' can be had quite cheaply, but the real cost is first casework, to make a 'presentable' product and if you want remote control you need either a motorised pot or a digital display (of volume) and crucially a power supply.
The moment you introduce a power supply, costs go up massively, for all kinds of reasons. This is the killer and you have to have power for a remote control device.
Your reaction explains why such components are relatively rare.
davedotco said:lpv said:Thank you. Wow..£400 for a box with cable and volume knob? Rip off Icon Audio.. same thing can have for £10 - £20.
Not Quite.
A fairly decent 'pot in a box' can be had quite cheaply, but the real cost is first casework, to make a 'presentable' product and if you want remote control you need either a motorised pot or a digital display (of volume) and crucially a power supply.
The moment you introduce a power supply, costs go up massively, for all kinds of reasons. This is the killer and you have to have power for a remote control device.
Your reaction explains why such components are relatively rare.
andyjm said:davedotco said:lpv said:Thank you. Wow..£400 for a box with cable and volume knob? Rip off Icon Audio.. same thing can have for £10 - £20.
Not Quite.
A fairly decent 'pot in a box' can be had quite cheaply, but the real cost is first casework, to make a 'presentable' product and if you want remote control you need either a motorised pot or a digital display (of volume) and crucially a power supply.
The moment you introduce a power supply, costs go up massively, for all kinds of reasons. This is the killer and you have to have power for a remote control device.
Your reaction explains why such components are relatively rare.
You explain it well. The guts of a 'passive preamp' is a twin gang potentiometer, yours for under £3 and maybe a couple of 47K resistors at 25p each. The sockets on the back will cost more than this, and the fancy ally box many times more than this. With the costs of putting a small run together, I doubt the manufacturer is going to retire on the profits of selling this item.
Agian, this illustrates why small volume manufacturers in the hifi biz will disappear.
To be honest, it is not so much that this box is expensive, it is that high volume consumer electronics are unbelievably cheap. Back when doing my degree, we plotted a graph of the price of a transistor over time. In the early 80s, we marvelled that a chip could have more than 10,000 transitors on it, and that each transistor cost less than 0.1p Modern CPUs have over a billion transistors in them. The transistors are effectively free.
Al ears said:Agree, the introduction of a powered pot would complicate matters no end in the 'noise' department.
Sometimes not getting off your bum is going to cost you.... *biggrin*
davedotco said:lpv said:Thank you. Wow..£400 for a box with cable and volume knob? Rip off Icon Audio.. same thing can have for £10 - £20.
Not Quite.
A fairly decent 'pot in a box' can be had quite cheaply, but the real cost is first casework, to make a 'presentable' product and if you want remote control you need either a motorised pot or a digital display (of volume) and crucially a power supply.
The moment you introduce a power supply, costs go up massively, for all kinds of reasons. This is the killer and you have to have power for a remote control device.
Your reaction explains why such components are relatively rare.
Overdose said:davedotco said:lpv said:Thank you. Wow..£400 for a box with cable and volume knob? Rip off Icon Audio.. same thing can have for £10 - £20.
Not Quite.
A fairly decent 'pot in a box' can be had quite cheaply, but the real cost is first casework, to make a 'presentable' product and if you want remote control you need either a motorised pot or a digital display (of volume) and crucially a power supply.
The moment you introduce a power supply, costs go up massively, for all kinds of reasons. This is the killer and you have to have power for a remote control device.
Your reaction explains why such components are relatively rare.
A DIYer can buy complete remote controlled preamp modules for less than £30 retail, add another £30 or so for connectors, sundries, a case and 'wall wart' power supply and you have all the components needed. This is retail rice too. Factor in a bulk buy and trade prices for a manufacturer of small runs alone and the prices are going to be 40% less.
A complete passive preamp with remote, really is not to be too expensive to create.