Sorry man! You’re not expensive enough … M2tech, PrimaLuna, AH! Njoe Tjoeb …

Huh? Yes …, not expensive enough! I thought it was weird when I got that comment for the first time on one of our products.

I remember we were producing and selling very successfully our AH! Njoe Tjoeb cd player. That product was mainly intended to be a “direct-sell” product. No dealers, no distributors. Until a certain Mr. Kevin Deal called me several times and “got me”. Fine. Another (high-end) distributor contacted me and bought a sample. He was very enthousiastic about the product. It reminded him of the good old California Audio Labs players, but … it was not expensive enough. He thought he would have a hard time to sell the product as nobody would believe their ears … Can you please double the retail-price he asked … Our answer was NO and we sold between 6 and 7 thousand units worldwide.

Another time PrimaLuna was sharing a room with a very, very famous loudspeaker manufacturer. I think I can say they were the first to be mentioned 15 years ago if you were mentioning really high end loudspeakers. The demo’s with their speakers and our PrimaLuna amps were  turning out great and we received a lot of positive comments. The combination of PrimaLuna and the here “unnamed” loudspeaker manufacturer was arranged by our distributor and he was also happy. When we left the show to travel home, we said “good by” to everybody and the manufacturer’s representative  said “Pity your products are not so expensive, otherwise we could team up worldwide on shows as the sonic results are so unbelievable good!” We left a bit in unbelief … We did not raise the retail pricing and PrimaLuna feels good about that.

M2tech received these days a user comment on the performance of their YOUNG DAC and I feel it falls in the same category of stories as the ones I just described.

“Thank you Marco for clarifying the switch issue! The power supply makes such a difference in the overall musicality of the Young DAC, that it should be considered an essential upgrade … the VanderGraaf/Young combination sounds right at home in a 60 thousand dollar system!!  And I have other systems that have 10 thousand dollar DACS and honestly those DACS don’t sound much better than the Young …”

“I think that one thing that is working against you, is that the pricing for the two units is low (3 thousand together) … that low price scares audiophiles (such as me) and they think “there is no way it could be that good at that price” … They are wrong and I was wrong … incredible achievement!! Thanks, Ted Neff. PS Anyone interested to know more about my system, just ask.”

No further comments needed …