05-11-2024, 12:51 PM
https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/d...ost-967163
Citation :Hello! This is Daniel Gullman here, finally decided to make an account and jump in to share some thoughts. It pains me to see speculation for things that I have the answers behind all this… so here I am, to hopefully clear things up.
The 95,000 USD price of the Cascade DAC is a disruption to MSB and to industry trends. Here, we have a DAC outperforming the Select DAC and we made the radical decision to sell it for less. Why?
I will happily provide some full transparency on the reasoning behind the decisions made. This is a real example of how “greedy corporations” can and often work, not us. We could have arbitrarily decided to sell the Cascade DAC for 165,000. That reality would see our customers unknowingly purchase both the Cascade DAC and the value of the Reference DAC all over again. Easy for us to offer 100% trade value as long as we could still find a way to sleep at night. A cloak and daggers method to deceive people. This is genuinely what industry folks asked us to do when we first revealed the pricing… it’s a thing. I hate it.
Let’s chat about the previous trade in program, and how it was different. For the Reference to Select upgrade: we gut and re-use almost all the parts of the Reference DAC. Because this is the same platform, we can do that and make the trade in actually work. Also, the price gap between the Reference and Select (73,500) is much bigger than between the Reference and Cascade (16,000). But now, moving to the Cascade, we have fundamentally changed to next gen architecture and we cannot migrate materials over. If we limited the Cascade to the Select platform it would have killed our most innovative product evolution yet. The Cascade DAC will have 90% trade in because similarly, we can migrate the actual DAC materials over to the new Sentinel DAC.
Now, let’s address modular design… the DACs are still modular and will still benefit from this. When/if new updates or input modules come out, they will be made available to existing DACs that are already 10 years old… and that will continue moving forward. The Digital Director for the Reference and Select is an upgrade we were able to implement because of this. This is the upgrade path to the new platform! Y’all made it! This is how products are supported. We will continue to do this! We are nerds and we want everyone to get their hands on cool stuff. We can service and fix our DACs longer than anyone in our industry because of this design feature.
Alright, sorry for the long message, last thing to discuss. Why 50%? I hear you, and you are right. Do not trade in a one month old DAC! That would be wild. This trade in policy is a price protection policy. It means in 5 years, your Reference will not drop below 50% because it CAN be traded in for the Cascade. Maybe even in 8 or 10 years!? If anyone wants to sell their new Reference DAC, the buyer can know that DAC has an established value. It is worth a hell of a lot more than 50% its original value. Let’s not get carried away praising the new DAC at the cost the Reference and Select DACs. They are still. So. Damn. Good. Every owner thought it was worth the money when they bought them, and they still are.
So, in the end, why choose 95k vs 165k? This is where the buyer wins, not the “greedy corporation”. I am terribly concerned over industry behavior towards charging whatever will be paid. Systems based on retail dollar values instead of the product craftsmanship. They say the audio market is slowing down, but I feel we are simply pricing out the people we do it for. We are engineers who have created a leading class manufacturing facility with advanced robotics, lean manufacturing, and clever designs to be able to offer our best sound ever at this price point. I am not disillusioned on the price, this is still expensive, but we are going to make sure quality from start to finish is second to none.
This is as honest as I can be. I am just a guy trying to make cool audio systems because I really like building them. I am not trying to screw anyone over. We made a decision that was best for the most people possible… and I totally get how much that sucks for some of you. For that, I am sorry. We decided not to gauge you… if you tally it up, it’s a better future for you too.
Cheers all! Glad to be here.