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In the 70's Yamaha made an impact with excellent sonic engineering, clean/functional Bauhaus inspired metalwork, and, importantly, only slightly higher pricing than their mass-market Japanese competitors. At least in the US Yamaha audio components seem to largely disappear sometime in the 2000's. Ahem, shame because they were hi-fi overachievers and quite beautiful to gaze upon. It's wonderful to have Yamaha making a comeback within the U.S. audio scene. The thing, perhaps, many like myself have noticed is the prices when even adjusted for inflation may be a bit shy of what one would call readily affordable. It's also true that within electronics retail industry one could expect more performance per dollar over time often keeping pricing of consumer electronics rising at rates less than many other consumer goods. This seems not to be case here as these new Yamaha components have what approaches luxury pricing. My first thought is I can't believe in the age where Millenials prefer portable BT based audio Yamaha re-emerged with their evolved yet traditional audio range. Bravo I must say, and then it hit me. Without the large market of yore and the resulting economies of scale these kind of components will never sell in the numbers they did in the 70's heyday of component Hi-Fi. That explains the pricing of these as well as Technics recent quite higher priced turntables. We should simply be glad they exist and remember that some of the best of the chase to audio supremacy always involved striving to one day afford coveted gear. Therefore the intrinsic value is quite high on these beautiful audio components.

For $8,500, we can buy the Mark Levinson 5805 integrated amp/DAC/with phono-stage, reviewed by Stereophile ...... Close in price with the top model Yamaha A-S3200 integrated amp :-) .......

..with a Yamaha engineer at a high-fi shop many moons ago. Learned a lot about critical listening. That being said in this day and age an integrated amp without a built in DAC seems like an oversight although to be fair it would make it an easier thing to upgrade down the line.

As others have noted the cost of these A-S series components is not cheap. I have the AS-2100 from last year and admittedly would not have paid $4k for a new one. I was lucky to get a used one and saved a pile of money and I have to say I love it; it really does sound great.

I think it's too bad that people are quick to write these components off because they are 'just' Yamaha. The build quality of these are superb. If it said Luxman, McIntosh or Mark Levinson on the chassis instead of Yamaha no one would think twice about the pricing.

That said....for the kind of money that a AS-3200 costs, I would be hard pressed to buy it instead of say a Luxman L509X. For me personally, the Luxman is the complete package, beautiful aesthetics and brilliant sound.