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New York HiFi Show: Tubes and Turntables

I was at the New York HiFi Show today.  It was hard to find many CD players, despite one with a price tag $40,000.  Virtually every room featured turntables and tubes. Sonically, it was a definite improvement over shows in the past.  Not too much sizzle and boom, although a lot of systems demonstrated big bass. Natural sounding components were the rule.
There were hardly any systems affordable by the average audiophile.  $100,000 rigs were not unusual. It seems demonstrators were prone to showing their best.
 With all the myriad of exotic stuff, I’m sorry I can’t remember too many names, but the re-introduction of sophisticated treble and bass controls and room-conditioning processors were impressive.
Of course, streaming was featured in many displays.
It wasn’t a large show, so it was comfortably do-able in one day.
rvpiano

Showing 2 responses by audiotroy

audiotroy's avatar
audiotroy
3,916 posts
 
Guys as a dealer participating at this and other shows here is some perspective.

The show was small

Part of the problem is the lack of business being generated and the high costs to do a show.

Show promoters are doing a terrible job of bringing notice to the non audiophiles

Imagine a show with thousands of people who dont know about hi end audio were suddenly introduced to the experience that we take for granted.

Did you see coverage by the new york times or forbes or local papers?

High end audio is like a great secret that most people dont know about.

As per affordable the Legacy Calibres wtth built in amps were $6700 add a streamer with volume and you got a killer rig for under $9k okay not cheap but still reachable and the baby Legacys sounded fantastic.

A full Technics set up is about 5k

Cambridge Audio was showing 

$1299 floorstanders and $599 monitors
With a  $899 amp.

So there were actually a number of great setups that were affordable.

The Cambridge setup was amazing.,

Dave owner
Audio Doctor NJ
audiotroy's avatar
audiotroy
3,916 posts
 
EBM totally agreed Chester sucks. They said they had some sponership on WBGO I wonder what that meant.

Seeing the same old faces is both great and horrifying. One person commented that they say no one under 40 yikes!

The industry is doing a piss poor job of educating the public that hey there is  world beyond Sonos and Bose. 

Whart I disagree, hifi was in the 50, 60,70 and to some extent the 80's and 90's was everywhere.

When I was growing up, kids had stereos in their rooms and a house had a couple of TV's people listened to music. 

Now between the internet, and a new generation of kids that listen to music through crappy headphones and think this is great this is why we are makinng new audiophiles. combine this with cutting of music eduction in high school's  leads to where we are.

Did you see CNN, New York Times, Forbes, Business insider? Did you see underwriting with the local progressive music stations, WFMU, WFUV?

Nope and Nope, High end audio is a heavily American industry that most people if given a change introduction might be interested in moving to some kind of better system.

Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ
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