Shunyata Research

[GuillaumeB]

I wish they (all brands, but Shunyata particularly looking at the photos of the almost empty inside) would put these things in simpler, cheaper boxes, and make them more accessible.

I've no doubt they work in terms of filtering mains noise, but do they really need to be so expensive?

The cost of an aluminium box really doesn't add much to the manufacturing cost. I'm sure if they sold thousands of these things the price would come down considerably. Unfortunately we (hifi enthousiasts) live in a world of small sales numbers and diminishing returns. it's a fact of life we have to live with.

Some posts on CA, particularly discussions about the Sonore signature power supply, stated that one of the main costs of such units was custom casing. We know from the cost of an expert vs the internals cost that the case is a lot of wedge. For a box that sits on the floor with power cables, it just seems excessive.

I guess I'm just jealous. I'd really like to try one but £5k for a power filter just isn't justifiable.
Maybe I'll pick up one second hand when the next lie come out. I've potentially got an isol-8 integra lined up to demo, but I'm sure that's in a different league.

It's actually more like £4k but I take your point.

A few points - Shunyata work on a BOM basis with their pricing. That is when they set their retail prices these are based on the costs of materials and production and not on what the market can take. The retail cost also includes the distributor and dealer margins, which in the case of Shunyata are considerably less than the competition or at least some of the bigger names out there. In my case (with importing to the UK) I need to pay VAT, duty and shipping which is higher than average due to their remote location on a island about 2 hours away from Seattle! So this all adds to the retail you see, hence why there is parity between dollar and pound. Let's not forget the pound is weak too!

Production runs are pretty small - Shunyata's turnover last year I believe was in the region of 8M USD, this is based on global sales. This is with staff of 25 or so, a fully equipped factory, warehouse, testing facilities etc. Shunyata uses its own trivial terminals and custom manufactured parts, has its own cable built to spec (as opposed to buying loom from wholesalers) and everything is tested properly over a period of days: for cosmetics, electrical continuity, electrical short, 2000 VAC HPOT test etc. In addition all cables and power conditioners are run in before delivery which adds to the time it takes to produce.

When I was there in October they showed me a ultrasonic welding machine they had just taken delivery of, the cost of which was in excess of 30k USD. There is a huge amount of testing equipment which doesn't come cheap.

The components inside the Denali are absolutely SOTA and derived from the research carried out in medical applications. A huge amount of time and effort have gone into producing (and patenting) these technologies, whether the new CCI filters or QR/BB. Just because they are small in terms of footprint doesn't mean they haven't been costly to develop.

Guillaume