Usher in the house!!!

Hi Vinny,
I am very much at Bangalore, you can follow my other thread "Lets go for basics" in introduction.
Infact one of our forum friend is planning to drop in this weekend, you too can join if you wish.

Bernard:)
 
Folks
more intro pricing information

X-718 intro priced at Rs 55K + VAT
X-719 (identical to the above speaker but much lower bass) intro priced at Rs 58.5K + VAT

BE-718 intro priced at :eek: Rs 87.5K + VAT. I can tell you folks that this price will be hard to maintain. At this point this speaker is discounted 22% from US Retail and folks, this is the speaker to beat at this price

CP-6311 intro priced at 86.5K + VAT.

If anyone wants to take a listen at ARN (Bangalore) tomorrow (being a holiday), pls feel free to contact me...I plan to be there the whole afternoon and evening, in any case, you can always walk into ARN anytime.

CDP, sub, R6-0, etc pricing still to come

cheers
Sridhar
 
Thanks to Raghu for pointing this out, in my previous post I meant to say that the bass goes down to a lower Hz (and not lower bass in terms of less bass). The X-719 goes down to 38Hz compared to the X-718 which goes to down to 42 Hz (both points at -3dB)

cheers
 
Hi,

First of all Sorry for the delayed posting ! Am attaching the pics of the Ushers that I took some time back.

Regards

P1020494.JPG


P1020495.JPG


P1020496.JPG


P1020497.JPG
 
Hi,

Yes it is !! I wanted to edit all this and post some clean pics but since it was an emergency I posted with any photoshop magic !!


Regards.
 
Soundsgreat, thanks for taking the trouble. The white finish has 11 coats of lacquer! You have to see it to believe the finish. He didnt have enough time to get the photos as well as he would have liked, but i can see he did really well with the few seconds that he had, maybe next time we can post photos of the stands as well. On the last photo, below the Usher tag is the front port (its not round port as is usually the case). The MA you can see I believe is an RS 6.

Take a look at the woofer closely, anything that strikes you?

cheers
 
Hi,

Cammon buddy its no trouble this is least I can do !! Ya my mistake it must be RS6 ! was in a hurry when replied !!

You are right sridhar didn't have much time but will deffently take some solid pics with and all

Particleman good job !! but let me post the real close and ultra enhanced pic !!

Close-up.jpg
 
Very nice pics. And these little speaker DO look good.

And those marks on the woofer cone make me think they are strenthened paper cones (used in some high end designs).

But I am little mixed up here. Soundsgreat and Particleman cross posting or something :confused:
 
Ranjeetrain and others
The woofer is very similar to a scanspeak. The story goes that the chief designer of Usher went to Scanspeak many years back to comission scanspeak to make 20,000 drivers for Usher. Scanspeak laughed them out (or didnt take them seriously) as they found an unknown company asking for such a big order. Usher then went on to make drivers that exemplify scanspeaks strengths and later added symm motion and other innovations. Nevertheless, Usher drivers do look like scanspeak. This driver is the top of the line Usher for this size and supposed to be a step up from the 8545 (or 8945) scanspeak driver, dont remember which now.

Ranjeet, you are right about the strengthening aspect of the driver cone material.

I was trying to see whether anyone would catch the similarity in apperance with scanspeaker....thats all

cheers
 
Hi,

Ranjeet whatever gave that impression ?? We are not cross posting its just that Iam the one who took the pics and posted !! it was required to enhance the pic ( as it was bit dark) particleman did it,but it was still not that clear,since I had the original pic (3678x2780) I blew-up the woofer alone and posted thats it !

I noticed sridhar but then thought since even the Odessy's sport the similar drivers and so does the most of the top of the line speakers,it must common to all of them !! so only didn't bother to comment.

Also very strange to hear that Usher went to scanspeak for drivers !! according to my knowledge the ushers started off as driver manufacturer (even now they sell raw drivers) then graduated to manufacturing of speakers and now to electronics aswell ( including the standalone CD player)



Regards.
 
Soundsgreat,
you are right, they do make drivers and in fact some of the drivers are direct scanspeak replacements. The story that I mentioned is quite old, before they started doing this...

cheers
 
Hi,
I think prices for Usher products should be much lower than 10% from US price list because basically these are Taiwanese speakers and sells for much less in other Asian markets.
We cannot compare prices of every other country's products with US prices.
I think USA is the main culprit in pushing the prices up for High end audio products worldwide which makes it difficult for Asian buyer who do not earn in dollars and pounds or Euro's.
This is the reason High end Audio does not attract masses even though the sound quality is much better.
Even the chinese products marketed by US importers are getting costlier.
But the enigma is that unless a product is recommended by Stereophile or TAS or anyother US website no body feels confident in buying it. And they (US importers and press) know it very well.
SKR
 
Hi,

SKR you've hit the nail on the head !! bullseye !! My friend you are 200% right without a ounce of doubt !!

Something or someone has to do something bout this :mad: !!

Regards.
 
Well, well, this seems to be a sore point for everyone, so may be I can shed more light on this. As a customer I would like it to be 50% of the price....sure, why not. As a dealer (or an associate of a dealer) I am also realistic on what is possible and what isnt. At some point it has to make business sense also.
I understand that some people may be overcharging for certain products, its up to the customer to decide who they are and what products these are. I do happen to know of a few such products available in India and know personally that dealers can sell them for much less and still make a reasonable margin, how they want to run their business is up to them.

Now, specifically for Usher and other products made in China/Taiwan - a lot of western high end audio companies also have their equipment manufactured in these places but still charge many times over, so its not only about where the product is made. Distributor pricing is different for different vendors, some vendors operate only on volume, some operate on a fixed price, some are graded, etc. If I can order $200K worth of Usher products in one go, then the pricing would be different, very different, but alas, thats not the kind of committment that I would be willing to make, if anyone here is willing to do so, lets talk :) The volume of business in the US is way way huge, compared to what is even remotely possible here, hence they are probably getting volume discounts that I can only dream of and even then we are on many instances lower than the $US pricing.

SKR, I assume you are knowledgable about the business based on your comments, are you aware of the shipping and customs duty costs in India? There is absolutely no point in comparing with other countries which have different import/export charges from ours. If you look on other threads, other dealers and people who know this business have already replied on the costs and its all out there for everyone to see. Its a myth even in the US that margins are huge, once you factor in rentals, inventory costs, salaries, there isnt much left. Many stores have closed down.

In any case, some of our Usher products are on par with $US pricing, some are lower by as much as 25%, so it really depends on the component. If you dont want to compare with $US, lets pick Singapore and make that comparision. Is Singapore cheaper, hell yes, they have an import duty structure that is in low single digits (compared to ours) and yet our pricing is very close to theirs on certain products, also dont forget that our VAT is 12.5%, Singapore is 7% if I am not mistaken. For a moment, just think what we could have done with pricing if the Gov did away with the huge import duty...

While I cant speak for others, I can tell you that the products we are bringing in are excellent value for the money. Some products we are able to bring at reasonable discount, while some we cant. We can also do this since for ARN, the retail business is not their bread and butter. If it were like it is for most dealers, it really scares me how some of them can survive. Dont forget the cost of doing business along with rental spaces, demo rooms, in places like Bangalore, bombay, Delhi. I have recently had the option of carrying an excellent line of products from a US company but had to turn it down since based on their pricing it would have worked out nearly 50% more in India.

BTW, I asked in a separate thread a few weeks back as to what people thought would be a good price for components in India as opposed to US pricing, and if I remember correctly, not a single person replied to it.

Sorry if this came across ranting a bit, but as I mentioned before I have seen both sides of the coin, I wish more dealers would post on this topic.

cheers
Sridhar


Hi,
I think prices for Usher products should be much lower than 10% from US price list because basically these are Taiwanese speakers and sells for much less in other Asian markets.
We cannot compare prices of every other country's products with US prices.
I think USA is the main culprit in pushing the prices up for High end audio products worldwide which makes it difficult for Asian buyer who do not earn in dollars and pounds or Euro's.
This is the reason High end Audio does not attract masses even though the sound quality is much better.
Even the chinese products marketed by US importers are getting costlier.
But the enigma is that unless a product is recommended by Stereophile or TAS or anyother US website no body feels confident in buying it. And they (US importers and press) know it very well.
SKR
 
Sridhar,

Thanks for the detailed reply to the forum. I can see that you had tried to explain how the different factor adds up to the end price. Unfortunately that??s the harsh reality in India and I'm sure, many genuine dealers like you are struggling with this push-pull situation!

Regarding SKR's comments, that is in a more general sense, imo.

Best regards.
 
Last edited:
Well, well, this seems to be a sore point for everyone, so may be I can shed more light on this. As a customer I would like it to be 50% of the price....sure, why not. As a dealer (or an associate of a dealer) I am also realistic on what is possible and what isnt. At some point it has to make business sense also...

Sridhar, I get what you're saying. It seems like the "blame" (for lack of a better word, or perhaps burden?) for this pricing inequity lies with the manufacturer. They ought to consider the points you have raised, the constraints you are operating within, and give you, the dealer, better pricing so you can pass on savings to us.
 
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