$56k wow, the first Trinity amps, pre and phono, before the new casework ,had a RRP of Euros 8k.
Keith.
I believe pre and phono are 24k euro in Europe, with only the DAC and poweramp beeing more expensive.
Trinity probably is not the only brand that had adjusted the pricing while establishing the distributor network. I remember that when the darTZeel poweramp was first shown on CES back in 2002, it was only $9000. Before the first review came out the price was already $14000, and after the US distributor was setup, the price went up up to almost $20k. And that was still great price for the product, considering the build qulity and sonics. I belive the current retail for NHB-108 Model One B is more like $30k.
Lumin was $3k when first introduced, and now is like $8k.
Trinity at least decided to give sth extra to the customer - which was the new box, milled form a slab of aluminium. So it is not the same product. I remember Dietmar complained to me when I have met him in Munich, that it costs him over 2500 euros for one box - the reject ratio beeing so high (from a reputable German manufacturer; for this reason he recently changed to a Swiss supplier - now all the boxes are made by the same company that also makes Nagra and Soulution enclosures). So if you use the most common BOM (Bill of Materials) to retail product ratio, which is around 20%, the milled aluminium box alone would contribute to nearly 12500 euro retail price increase. So even if you add those (claimed) 8k euro to 12k, you are already at 20k. So the current 24k is not that far off.
Anyway, the whole discussion is a bit irrelevant right now. The price is what it is. The most important thing to me (and probably other customers) is how it compares to the other top dogs in a similar price range in terms of sonics and build quality. To my ears it sounds better than the $70k dCS Vivaldi Stack (DAC + upsampler + clock) or $45k MSB DAC IV Diamond with Galaxy Femto Clock. It is also better built than MSB.
