"
Your question was answered in post #4.
Post #4
"Yes...$300 in parts. Plus the cost of labour, plus the cost of the building they are made in, plus the cost of the property tax, plus the cost of maintenance of said building, plus the cost of utilities (water, electricity, heating) plus the cost of shipping the parts involved, plus the cost of employee benefits, plus the cost of..."
A condescending reply about manufacturing costs (have quite a bit of manufacturing experience under my belt albeit not electronics manufacturing so the costs of doing business is not lost on me
A real answer finally appeared by post #110
"The REDDI is actually unique as it is the only tube DI currently on the market so far ( that I know of anyway) that uses a
real single ended output transformer. The primary side of the transformer is used as the AC load on the tube and has to pass DC current. This necessitates a larger and inherently more expensive transformer than in the typical circuit used in these boxes which is a resistor loaded tube, capacitor coupled out to a small transformer to balance and drop the output impedance (like the SVT-DI or the Demeter for example). Off the shelf transformers of this type run $200+ and typically don't have the extended low end response of the one in the REDDI. Good low end performance requires a lot of primary inductance and you need a large core and lots of wire to get that in a transformer with the air gap between windings required to pass DC and that gets expensive. I suspect that even at volume discounts that transformer probably costs A-Designs 200+ per unit. Then factor in all of the other parts and I'd bet that $300 is on the low side for that product. I've been working on my own unique tube direct box/preamp design and the price of any kind of custom case or even an off the shelf one would put you in the horrors. I'm looking at $120 for a Hammond half rack box, barely big enough to fit the thing into and I will have to do my own machining. Even at 1000 volume, a custom case would cost over $100.
At any rate, whether the REDDI's performance suits you or not is highly subjective but I don't think it's fair to dismiss it as "just" a tube buffered DI box, just as it's not fair to dismiss the P15 as "just" a B15 clone. I say this as a potential future competitor for both.
Out of all of these upscale DIs, the Avalon is still by far the most common, followed by the REDDI in my totally anecdotal experience. Every studio I've been to in the past 10 years has a U5."
