HiFi Subjectivist ¦ Audio Forum ¦ NVA User Group

WE ARE DIFFERENT

We are direct sellers. We supply everyone at trade price. This is 30 to 50% less cost to you than if we sold via Hi-Fi Retailers.

We sell through our shop at ebay, https://www.ebay.co.uk/str/nenevalleyaudio and the new shop https://www.ebay.co.uk/str/NVAhifi?_trk ... 7675.l2563 for anything not listed at ebay through our forum www.hifisubjectivist.org

We operate 2 schemes to give no risk access and demonstration in your own home and system of what NVA does for your music.

1/ all UK sales have free delivery and a 30 day trial period with a no quibble return at the end of it if you are unhappy in anyway.

2/ if you do not wish us to hold your money for a month and still want to try NVA then we do a loan scheme, operated from our forum hifisubjectivist, you will find it here viewforum.php?f=30 this is only for UK customers and limited officially to 7 days, but we are flexible if time is needed. In this case you have to pay for fully insured shipping both ways.

We then operate a no loss upgrade scheme so you can start anywhere in the range to try and see, and upgrade for no loss up to two years from purchase. And at a negotiated price after that.

We want you to hear NVA with your music, and our many customers have written reviews on both loans and purchases. You will find them here viewforum.php?f=31

WHO ELSE IS DIFFERENT

I need some help here, I see some people building things as a sideline who might well be supplying at non rip off prices, but they are insignificant in sales. Is NVA the only company that does as above in the OP. As I have said there is a darker side to this where you may think you are paying trade because the item is sold on line but more often than not you are getting a double ripoff with both trade profit and retail profit pocketed by the makers.

I would like to know who else we think is being straight with you and I will investigate the product and estimate what a real trade price would be. This will be contentious but we need to point.

Do any of you care, or just happy to be ripped off.

Course we bloody care! But in the UK, 'we' mostly buy used I thought! Rega apart, the mid priced market via retailers is pretty dead right now and even the lower top end which Linn and Naim now try to occupy and bought by better off people 'my' age and older, ain't doing too well either I gather right now, although the whole 'Brexit' uncertainty may be having an impact.

OK, one or two here have expensive dealer bought? DACs and so on, but it's my feeling they're the exception, but I could be wrong.

For small vendors, maybe Longdog's model is worth it to them - some items direct and others sold via a distributor?

With regard to DACs many dealer bought ones are competitive against direct sales, even when exported with additional costs (I am thinking of the likes of Chord and Audioquest). This implies that directly sold DACs are being sold at retail prices, but it would be difficult to proove.

It is not difficult to prove you send me a photo of your Chord inside, I will cost it and you will see what a rip off they are. FFS I have a DAC (used with £50 power supply) that costs £5 from China that according to those who have compared is up there with the Chord even if some think the Chord is better. You cannot justify that, *you* try as you have invested a lot of opinion in the Chord, but step back and look at reality *you have been ripped off*, now you may be happy for that to happen, that is your choice, but reality IS reality.

I agree about 2nd hand Dave but even there we are now approaching rip-off territory with some sellers, as they compare with new prices and hike the prices on 2nd hand, and of course you have the people who are simply crooks, but they have always been there on eBay, they are just getting more silly price.

Used prices by private sellers, especially on forums, don't 'seem' as bad as professional second hand retailers such as Emporium and Audio Gold? I do agree that prices have gone stupid on better known used stuff over the last fifteen years or so.

That Chord DAC is all intellectual-design-property not reflected in the material costs I reckon. The Qutest at £1100 or so probably has little more inside it than say, a £85 Topping, but 'someone's' got to pay for the extensive R&D in the chip programming - and I believe it *does* spec and measure exceptionally well, whatever you think of the cheeky looking little black box with sweets stuck on it - It does look gorgeous in a dinky way in the flesh though... I just used that as an example, as you can buy DACs for tens of thousands, which apparently measure abominably, don't sound all that hot despite the price and all the money is in the clothes you see, rather than the tech you don't. Put it this way, it appears that most affordable DACs these days *measure* orders of magnitude better than most conventional amps do, so the need to spend shedloads on one is more about status and front panel functions than anything else - the generic fiver DAC was tested (can't remember which version) and although it wasn't state of the art, for CD and basic streaming use, it was bloody good and again better than most amps out there, the only negative (if you can call it that) being a lower output than a full feature model...

I used to know what some maker's markup's to trade prices were, but not so sure now and probably these markups vary as to the model hierarchy the cheapest more volume-selling units making less money per unit than a top-line one?.

As for mid line new gear, Denon still do a handful of cheaper stuff and so does Onkyo. Yamaha too, but watch the spec claims (their cheapest amp claims 100WPC, but into 4 ohms at 10% distortion FFS!). Don't know what happened to Rotel, Chinese Audiolab and even Arcam (now Harman owned) seem to do very little now. Much of this was sold in Sevenoaks dealers in latter years but they seem to be quietly closing stores one by one while the nearby Richer Sounds still manage brisk business.

Apologies - off topic.

Complete and just excuses to justify the rip-off. My design process has gone on continuously for over 40 years so how come I can do it. We all have intellectual property.

All just bullshit excuse for rip-off

I am still waiting for someone to point me at another company that does the same as me.

How about Glenn Croft? He did have a spell working in partnership with some company or other but it didn't suit him and he's now back on his own I think.
http://www.croftacoustics.co.uk

Ah, actually looks like he does sell via dealers, my bad.

Also a very nice bloke. I had some of his gear at one time and stupidly damaged it. After speaking to him I returned it, he repaired it and sent it back with a bill that must have barely covered the postage!