Sir,
O/T - Sorry [I apologies to myself]
P.P. [Patek.com]

has 100 % right to charge what it does - 100 % logical - when we meet, I will make you understand why ?
I have not been to the new [relatively] Leela Coffee Shop - is it that EXP ? Rs. 1/- K for a coffee ? [maybe more - it in ND & Chanakyapuri]...
Sure! Recently I turned down a meet from another forum at a coffee shop where the prices were in Rs.hundreds, let alone thousands. On the other hand, if I go to posh hotel, I know that I have to pay "posh" prices. Actually, I enjoy posh hotels --- but I've also been known, when staying in one, to go and drink chai on the street, as much for the flavour as for the price!
Bhagwan, there is an underlying message in many of my posts about PCs. I can explain it again like this... The boundary between audiophile and audiophool is ill-defined and will continue to be a topic for controversy as long as there are people like us who like to talk and discuss hifi, but, if we liken it to the boundary between two countries, then PCs are not even on the same continent and, simply, do not allow of the same kind of thinking. There are down-to-earth factors such as quiet cooling and power supplies (electrical and physical), and, in the hifi context it is certainly valid to spend our thoughts, time (and cash: one of the most expensive things in my PC is the CPU cooler!) on these. What is not appropriate is to think if a networking flylead might "suit" a PC or not. A NIC is a NIC; a flylead is a flylead, and so on.
There are many who are much more hardline than I am on these things, who would readily extend that even further. As a pro engineer friend of mine once said to me, "Thank god the pro audio world is not like this."
I guess, fashion/ lifestyle works totally different. Its not the cost of leather or coffee beans or glass, they have a 'premium' attached to it. It is believed to add 'pride' for the customers using them.
In hifi world, audiophiles don't respect premium as much as quality and VFM. Just my opinion. They won't buy if they don't hear a difference. But yes, as long as there are buyers, we cannot go after sellers. Even if we 'prove' them to be unethical, some of their own customers will jump for their support since they believe in them.
I agree about the economics. I even agree about the hearing. I even agree that quality and value for money might be the concious aim, but I do not think that "audiophiles" take nearly enough account of the
unconcious. We should try to know
why we hear some things, and it is not at all necessarily because of pure sound. When professionals admit and study this, why not "audiophiles?" Why do they so often run to to rubbish such ideas, even when they are voiced by designers/engineers of the very equipment they value so highly? Why do people who may not even be engineers make, for instance, such a fuss about the composition of a cable when they won't even look at the composition of the mind?
Such ideas tend to be unpopular here. Perhaps it's unfair and wrong, but I'd say that this forum is more on the subjective than the objective side of the line. The paradox is that I only became interested in these things since I joined!
