Spatial Audio Raven Preamp

@slinco A $2500 pair of headphones really deserves a dedicated headphone amp IMO. 

Big +1 @lynn_olson @atmasphere @donsachs I speak as a finance/economics person this tariff thing is patently insane. It’s not gonna help US manufacturing in the least and is just gonna hurt hard-working folks by making them have to pay more for audio products and for stuff at Walmart, Target, etc.  It’s just nuts. 😖😖😖  Wasn’t this guy largely elected to lower prices?  I can’t even. 

What irks most Canadians is that it was Trump who signed the last free trade deal with Canada and Mexico and the next review is set for 2026.

I think this bears emphasis.  Trump said whoever made the trade deal made a very bad deal when in fact it was HIM who did it! 🤪🙄😖  I was born in the US, and I find it insulting to the point of being disgusting that he’s even floating the idea Canada becoming a state.  That’s just utterly pointless and does nothing but harm and absolutely no good.  I’m pretty middle of the road politically and don’t like to even bring it into the conversation on this site, but this is really just ridiculous and frankly absurd.  Peace out. 

Well.... here we are. It happened. We now have a tariff war and I happen to know a number of parts in the Raven come from Canada. Others are European so let’s hope the USA doesn’t get into a tariff war with Poland or Belgium. There are some American parts too..... Like everything else, the Raven contains parts from all over the world, but it is built in the USA.

I was hoping Trump was using tariffs as a negotiating tactic, but it appears that very unfortunately he’s gonna implement them. Much like the recent government spending freeze that may have been well intended but not at all thought through and ultimately having to be rescinded, this tariff thing will have significant ripple effects not only in the audio industry but across our economy and not to our benefit, especially if you were hoping for prices to decline from here. Financial capital, like water, flows to the area of least resistance and forcing it to flow here through tariffs will have significant ramifications. As just one example, there are very sound economic reasons why many cars are manufactured in Mexico rather than here or in Europe. Trump appears to be looking back to the era of President McKinley’s use of tariffs but seems to fail to realize that this is a far more globally-oriented economic world than it was back then, so while their goals may have been similar and well-meaning in fostering US business interests the unanticipated and far-reaching negative consequences of employing broad-based tariffs today will be considerable and very painful especially to us as consumers. Please know I’m not saying these things from a political perspective at all but as a finance person and purely from an economic perspective. What Don has said above will ripple through countless other industries and products we buy here, and I sincerely hope this tariff thing gets reconsidered and/or renegotiated before it does some real and considerable damage to both our economy and our personal bank accounts.