Quote:
Originally Posted by Kal Rubinson 
I know one.
I know one.
OK. We'll just take the R&D costs and amortize over the number of units sold. We have one pre-order. Let's call it an even $100,000. Another one would cut the price in half. Do I hear two? Two pre-orders going once... going twice...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kal Rubinson
Part of the reason is that there have been so few mch players that would justify them. OTOH, this raises the issues of bass-management/distance adjustments which are usually accomplished in the player (but not for HDMI output) or in a digital processor. Another can of worms.
Part of the reason is that there have been so few mch players that would justify them. OTOH, this raises the issues of bass-management/distance adjustments which are usually accomplished in the player (but not for HDMI output) or in a digital processor. Another can of worms.
The source typically has primitive adjustments compared to a good SSP. However if you only ever listened to one source, you could probably make it work. But with multiple sources you would have to have a silly amount of redundancy. So the only way that makes sense is to use a great SSP.
Finally with Blu-Ray, there might even be a justification for making a great SSP. With the compressed surround formats, it was the equivalent of listening to 5 channels of 128 kbs MP3. Why spend $10,000 or $20,000 for an SSP to listen to MP3-quality audio?
But even with the uncompressed audio of Blu-Ray you are still stuck with the quantity versus quality dilemma. The $30,000 Mark Levinson processor didn't have volume control circuits as good as their $8,000 stereo preamp. I figure that if we made an SSP that performed as well as our $3,500 stereo preamp that it would cost at least $15,000. We might even build something like that simply because I think we could make something better than what currently exists. But the problem is that the darned things are so complex that it would take two years to develop it. And by the time we released it, it would be obsolete. That's what happened with the original ML No.40. By the time it came to market it was obsolete -- no HDMI capabilities for one thing.
I really think that the only way that a specialty manufacturer can make something like that is to "piggyback" on the product of a high-volume, low cost manufacturer. That is what we are doing with the Oppo. With Oppo we can get away with it because they tend to have a very stable product line. They don't change their lineup every year like the Japanese majors. I don't know of any SSP "engine" that would fit a similar job description.
