What's going on with the audio market?
55,40,0 I too am finished, I think. I buy used gear, usually without hearing it first, so I have been through quite a few changes in equipment- solid state to tubes and back again. I found I like Dynaudio, bought some C1's for a great price, have a music server with some 200 gb of music and a turntable with a good phono pre. I also have a decent headphone setup. And my hearing isn't getting any better. |
Interesting examination: 57, 35, as soon as this next system hits pay dirt! Why the quest? Why not? I've had what i call a scratch the surface system. Combo 2-channel/ home theater. Anthem AVM 40, Anthem MCA 20 and 30, OPPO 95, Paradigm Studio 100s v5 and Analysis Plus Solo Crystal cabling. Been so busy the last few years fell off the audio map and to be honest was quite content with the sound of things. I like the Studio 100s so when I came across pictures of Paradigms 30th Anniversary Tribute speakers which I did not even know existed till a few months ago I was smitten as in lust! Would their sound justify the upgrade cost or just look fresh like a new girlfriend? Long story short found a new pair and bought them (no audition). Set up the Tributes and while not night and day the outstanding difference was in the open top end of the Beryllium tweeters. The bells and cymbals stood out but were also silky and not harsh. Broke them in pretty good and cranked them up a little one day with a SACD of Steely Dan's Everything Must Go. The tight slam of the bass and drums made the hair stand up on my neck! Wow that is impressive! Gotta move and get a dedicated room for this! Now I'm waist deep in the forums and like they say be careful what you look for cause............boy those Pass Labs amps get great reviews across the boards! Are my pockets deep? Not so much. Then why is there an X250.8 on the way? Like Chevy Chase said in vacation before he skinny dipped with Christie Brinkely.....this is crazy, this is crazy. I'm pretty sure (and so is my wife) that I've opened a not so small can of worms! My kids are too busy to look up from their iPhones and tablets to notice. I really hope the law of diminishing returns is not too hard on me. We'll see |
rippet - Your observation certainly applies to me. Key lies in being satisfied. Weed expedites that transition but it can be accomplished without as well. Going all the way back to the penny stock days, we see that the driving force behind or hobby has been dissatisfaction with what we own. That dissatisfaction is now focusing ever more on the whole predatory exploitive industry that evolved to exploit our dissatisfaction in the first place. Come on out to Colorado and grow your own tweak. It's a better DIY than tube rolling or making your home brew cables. Speaking of brew, Colorado was the birthplace of the home brewing phenomenon that grew into the craft beer industry. I would suggest that it is the best state in the country. And if those who don't agree stay away, we can keep it that way. Nice to have RMAF in your backyard too. |
You are all right on. IMHO I am 53, 35, forever into eternity (God's system rocks!) My first, full-time job out of high school was in an audio showroom. I took a "raisin' kids" break for 10 years, due to limited $$$, but have now looked to rebuild a system. It has been bizarre. First instinct was to return to what I had-ish. Old school media, etc. Due to a major shift in musical taste I booted my entire content at the 10 year ago point. This means, now I am both old school (in muscle memory) and new school (in building EVERYTHING from scratch). Options like Class D amps, MQA encoding, $15/mo unlimited content and Roon Labs to play it, etc., is cramping my memory muscle. I have ended up returning to what I knew, more so, especially as the new is REALLY new and I want no to live on the bleeding edge. Yet, I wonder about just how good the old stuff I have bought still is (not an engineer, DIY type). I look at the bottle of De-Oxit I bought and wonder if I want to learn how to use it at the expense of my $4000 Audiogon system (McCormack, Azur, Inifinity, Transparent -- to give you a sense) or, just wait for the "next-fen" gear to purchase. Frankly, the real rub seems to be that in no way can I imagine ever buying the content in traditional media to support a "best system" -- even if the system were given to me free in a will! That media would have to become much less expensive than it is now, especially in it's currently inflated "fad stage". This said, I will admit a great challenge I see in the subscription service (MQA) option is being able to know the source. Honestly, I think therein lies the great opportunity of this age. To make an MQA encoded digital content library worthy of the old school, class A, gear. A library provable as drawn from the purest spring and put in a digital pipe to drink. Whatever gear elegantly serves both ear and pipe fitting will do just fine in the market place. Next to all that, but entirely separate, is the great recession we are only now beginning to come out of. Twice a century, a major business cycle event happens, such as we have just had. In the last 100 years, it was the great depression and the great recession. Following such an event the recovery tail is MUCH longer than the normal 3-4 years of a standard business cycle. It can be 10-15 years before an economy "returns" in all ways. This is a correct statement to the record of the last 700 years! Where we are now, two things are real (historically and I believe also today) the upper 20% of the population sees around 5% growth in their wealth (mostly from investment) as the markets recover first. The other 20% have a flat wealth experience during the flatter main street recovery tail. Two results in behavior: 1. Luxury items are ON HOLD! 1. Populous politics rule. SO. Audio is experiencing a metamorphosis in content form and delivery. Wallets owned by the masses are closed for another few years. Folks with last gen gear/content are in a season where they should enjoy the music and put me in their will. (Am I joking?) "Enjoy the music"! Lan BTW, I like Hans Beekhuyzen's reviews! |
I forgot to mention that living in Colorado gives you legal access to the least expensive, most effective audio tweak I've ever become familiar with. My county is 70% public lands and still remains sparsely populated with just 150,000 people in an area of 3350 square miles. My property taxes for this year are $487. No audio stores other than Best Buy but I have no reason to care about that. Clean air and incomparable scenery. Ideal location for solar panels. Maybe relocation would make this topic moot for some of you. Worked for me. Grannyring - Thanks for the up vote. |
I used to need audio to relax and refresh. I have discovered something else that does a better job of this, so I don't "need" it. In addition, this something else also works when I sleep. I wake up totally refreshed(at age 64). If I do something now, my time and money are better spent on this "something else". |
"The high end market started to fade in the DC metro area I’d say about 1985 when Excaliber in Alexandria shut it’s doors, followed by Myer Emco, Audio Associates, Paragon of Sound (in MD), a few in Maryland suburbs the names of which escape me. AFAIK there are only two left, Deja Vu and Gifted Listener Audio, both in VA. Did I miss any?" geoffkait, JS Audio, Command Performance and Well Pleased A/V are 3 you missed. I worked at Excalibur from the start, miss it. |
There's another category --- me. I'm almost 69 years old (August). I bought my first system in 1973 and I will only buy anything again if it means recapture of funds or significant compactualization of the physical setup. Why? Because I don't have much interest in listening to music in a trance like I did for so many years. The new stuff mostly doesn't interest me and the older stuff is little more than an infrequent exercise in nostalgia. Plus, it has been overplayed in elevators, supermarkets, classic rock stations, movie background, etc. Enough already. I listen to KVNF out of Paonia, Colorado. They have good taste, no screaming car dealer/cell phone/tanning salon/whatever ads screaming at me, and the element of surprise. When I play music, I know what is coming. When I let them do it, each selection surprises me. I'm an old hippie who likes the radio medium when well done. Everyone reading this has a computer which means all of you can stream thousands of radio stations from all over the world. Give it a try. It can be fun and it is free. Sonics will please everyone who isn't bound by the dissatisfaction that negates so much beauty. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. |
Russbutton: But if it weren't for those "anal-rententive people with too much money... [who] KNOW they are entitled..." you wouldn't benefit from the trickle down in the used market, would you? I've benefitted, as you have, from the used high-end market. But, no need to be angry with those who have money or spend it carelessly (in your estimation). There's always somebody richer, better looking, etc. I've made peace with that. |
65 20 5 The hi-end audio business has ALWAYS been lame. You've got a market depending on anal-retentive people with too much money and who are never satisfied, no matter how good it sounds. That and those who have too much money and just KNOW they are entitled to "the best" in whatever it is they own. Then there's the rest of us mere mortals who are careful as we can be in trying to get value for our limited audio dollars. The biggest problem hi-end audio has is not only are brands competing with each other, they're also competing with themselves. That Rowland Research amp which sold for $10,000 20 years ago is still every bit as good as the day it was new and you can get it on the used market today for $3000 instead of buying the current model which is $18000. I love the sound of Avalon loudspeakers. Their top-line floor standing loudspeaker a few years ago sold for something like $25,000. That same speaker today can be had on the used market for $10,000 or less, whereas the current top-line floor standing loudspeaker is selling at nearly $50,000. You can't tell me it's $40,000 better. |
Perhaps I’ve missed it, but I haven’t seen in this interesting thread any mention of the reasons I think account for the death throes of the audio industry in America. 1. I live in a city with an MSA of a million people. In a typical issue of Stereophile magazine, not a single piece of equipment reviewed can be auditioned in my city. If one piece does happen to be on display in our one remaining stereo store, none of the others will be, making comparisons impossible. 2. The published specs for audio equipment are meaningless. Virtually all amplifiers, integrated amplifiers, and receivers can reproduce the entire frequency spectrum. So can virtually all CD players. Speakers are more variable, but they all can go higher than I (or most people) can hear. The low end does matter, but there are scores of speakers out there which go lower than any orchestral instrument (except piano and harp and pipe organ). But the fact that a piece of audio equipment can reproduce a note, tells you nothing about how it sounds. They can all reproduce a middle C; so can a car horn. Therefore, auditioning is essential; indeed, people like to advise you to trust your ears; but as noted in #1, there’s nowhere nearby to hear anything. 3. Well, there are online sellers who offer free trials. So, for example, I tried a pair of Ohm MicroWalshes, didn’t like them, the company kept its promise and refunded every cent I paid for the speakers – but shipping cost me $50 inward (a bargain) and $180 outward, for a total of $230 for my free trial. Larger and more expensive speakers would cost still more to ship. Let’s say you fancy a pair of Harbeths, which have a fanatic following. The three middle models are around the same size and run from around $4,000 to $7,000. There is nowhere within 500 miles of my home to audition these speakers. Home trial? I would need to find a seller willing to ship me three sets of speakers knowing he would get at least two sets back; I would need to lay out, say, $15,000, and spend many hundreds of dollars to ship them all back if I didn’t like any of them; and as the company does not sell direct in the U.S., I would be at the mercy of the seller’s solvency – if he went out of business, I would not be able to return them, indeed I would have no recourse if some of them arrived damaged as UPS and FedEx will only deal with the shipper to make claims. 4. Finally, there’s the “progress” of modern architecture. When I retired to Arizona, I brought with me the speakers I had lived with for 35 years and loved – a pair of Klipschorns. I discovered to my horror that modern houses have no corners, often no walls between the living room, dining room and kitchen. I did find a house with a few walls – I refuse to have a noisy refrigerator in my living room – but my living room has but one corner, the other should-be corners occupied by the front door, a back patio door, and an archway. In fact, as the walls are made of dry wall (cardboard, really), the single corner isn’t really a corner at all from the vantage of a K-Horn – sound doesn’t reflect off cardboard. 5. Finally finally, the audio magazines and catalogues are filled with superlatives which, applied to everything on offer, have no meaning at all. This amp is ideal, that one is perfect, that one punches well above its weight, that one sounds better than it has any right to at its price (which may be more than your car is worth, but when you hear it – which you have no way of doing without actually buying it – you’ll realize it’s really a bargain). Music has played, and continues to play, a large part in my life. I can afford to indulge my hobby, and I have – since I culled my record collection for lack of room, I have acquired thousands of CDs. If I can’t upgrade my audio equipment due to lack of opportunity, I am scarcely surprised that young people – I’m much older than anybody in this thread – won’t even try.
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I'm 55 and have always had a system. I have actively bought and sold gear for ten years, but slowing down now and enjoying my music more. There seems to be a large number of gear manufacturers fighting for market share. This competition is good for us I guess price wise. Plus there is a healthy used market of quality gear to choose from. I have a turntable and many albums but I tend to be leaning toward smaller and smaller gear that gives me good sound. I'm excited about technology and the positive changes it will bring in terms of form and function. I no longer aspire toward a 90 pound amp, etc, but I'm not quite ready for a Bose Wave yet! I think we are living in an exciting time for our hobby. I'd like the US to manufacture more and provide jobs, etc, but I'm not well versed enough to pontificate on the subject. I'm thankful for Audiogon and all the help offered here. It helps me buy smarter and learn about new gear rather than learn from only advertising. |
I stopped watching the news and politics and the world kept on turning! I am 59 and started serious buying after my wife passed away in 2012. Nothing calms and puts things in perspective like a quite room with a good system and great music to listen too. We have the ability to change very little in life, outside of our community, many will argue that but I have been so calm since I learned to let the train wreck continue on without me. I guess you could say I went over the top and off the cliff buying audio gear, it was the perfect storm , depression, insurance money and a rediscovery of great music and systems again. One day I was looking at ebay, I have never payed much attention to the computers, and I discovered vintage audio gear:):):)! 6 Macintosh amps, numerous tube amps and 22 sets of speakers later, I am calm. I am raising two grand kids, since birth 14 and 15 now, they know what heavy amps mean ,what large effecent altec and klipsch speakers are and why size matters ,differences between tube amps and ss. They are home schooled by me , we are learning electronics as one of our studies, if your going to have it you need to be able to fix it. They like what we like, they will continue on and all I did was expose them to it and take cable tv away throw the video games out and set them up with their own systems. They also had to have a few months of disbelief and come to terms with no one was coming to save them and their spoiled life they had been living. Did I mention the installation of two wood stoves and now we heat with wood, another shock but now they look forward to cold weather, yes we cut and split our own wood:). I have a bedroom I turned into a stereo storage room, more like a store, we all change our systems about at will, we go shopping in the store. All this was made possible for about what some people pay for a good bass boat, or a fraction of what that latest greatest new car cost. I hope this does not come across wrong,I am just so happy to be able too show my kids there is so much more to life and it's all about choices we make along the way. I think audio today is suffering because the youth today does not care about great music , any old music will do on the phone or computer. I have down loaded music off line , when I burn them to cd and put them in a great system the play back is less than stellar. I have used other computers and have cd's people have made for me, I just think the quality of mixing and recording has suffered because it's just not that important anymore, they will buy anything! |
First the target market is slowly diminishing. Gen. X and Y and Millenials are using iPhones for their primary music source and show no signs of changing. Only the Boomers care about this stuff anymore. Second, the value proposition that many audio company's offered 20-30 years ago has been abandoned. I am pretty certain, having listened to them side-by-side, that today's turntables, cartridges and tonearms are really not any better than the 1980's versions...in fact in many ways they are inferior. When you can go on Audiogon and buy a dead man's set-up for 10% of the cost of a new rig, and it sounds as good or better, why see an audio retailer at all ? Third, the price of SOTA equipment in 2016 is astronomical......$100K for a pair of loudspeakers is ridiculous. Just because one can build a speaker cabinet entirely out of CNC high-speed machined aluminum billet doesn't mean that they should, or that they will get better results than Paul Klipsch or Roy Allison or Roger Vandersteen did 30 years ago. Finally, the audio business is not really offering any technology improvements to materially improve the home music experience to speak of. It has NOT embraced multichannel when it has shown to be clearly more realistic then 2-channel audio, and every improvement to digital playback since the original CD player in 1982 has been met with lukewarm sales at best. SACD and DVD-A SHOULD have taken off, but when audiophiles sat on they pocketbooks, the die was cast and the BIG players said "those old SOB's don't care so why should we ?" I remain skeptical of digital downloads....the numbers aren't even close to CD sales TODAY, much less at their peak, and the selection is more "austere" than SACD's. Digital streaming (TIDAL, etc.) may have a chance, but...who knows. Let's see what happens with MQA.....can anyone remember the last great digital "sonic breakthrough ?" (Hint, it was called "Pono ?" As is Phono.) Not even Neil Young could sell needle-dragging, vinyl-loving Boomers on that one. |
People don't have as much discretionary income or time.....healthcare; taxes; food; rent; etc. takes up a large part of most peoples income. Add to it that young people have not adopted the hobby or enjoyment of listening to "actual" music for quite a long time. The passion for music has been lost in a formulaic business model that pushes the most mundane BS as music at MP3 quality and most people dont even know the history of music. Does anyone need a great system to listen to the garbage created by the likes of defjam or skidrow? No!...just a car with juiced up subs and a penchant for expletive laced egocentric nursery rhymes for criminals! What do you hear if you leave your windows open? There are still alot of good bands making great music for the sake of the music and I love them for it....but their audiences are nothing like the audiences of 70s rockers who created the whole reason many of us cared to go to shows, buy the records and then buy the systems to listen to them as they intended. Classical will always be a small piece of the pie despite the passion those listeners have to put money and time into their systems. Its going to be very hard for audio engineers to continue to fund their research into better sound...the well is running dry and its a shame that the wealth of music we have is ignored by so many who listen to "noise" without heart and soul and think its cool. Meanwhile, noise is on the rise and ask yourselves this: When was the last day you didnt hear a machine? |
Ok fellas, I think you guys all make valid points in the audio direction as far as gear and sales. I'm a young 43 I been in the hobby for the last 8 years. I went to the top of the heap pretty fast I went from gear to gear. I heard Dave baskin's half million dollar system. Raidho and solutions. Blew me away. I've heard top of the line cabling and other gear. There is great stuff being made. But I'm done. I'm keeping my kr audio va 900 integrated. My gato fm6 my Parasound cd1 and resonessence mirus dac. I use high fidelity, mavros and clarity cables. I'm happy. I change my music not my gear anymore. It's about the music. Not Obama, free speech etc. No rants just happy smiles when you hear the notes being played. Don't talk just listen. Enjoy all! |
I am 67. I purchased my 1st system in 1968 ( Dual 1019,JBL SA 600, JBL Lancer 99's) and still have it. Have bought several other systems in last 10 years using Legacy, Merlin and Klipsch speakers. I listened to the music when I was young with friends. It was a shared passion of my generation. Now I often sit alone with a SME turntable, tube phono amp feeding a tube preamp into a 450 watt per channel amp into 6' high speakers each with three 15"woofers plus a massive sub. My step daughter told me politely she did not wish to hear it because she might not be satisfied afterwards with her MP3 device and ear buds. My wife primarily listens after a live concert so she can hear what the artist should have sounded like. Music is now basically free and sound quality not very important . It's background music when doing something else . I can afford this stuff now but much of the meaning is gone. Note that many of the albums advertised were recorded decades ago. I don't see big footprint , high dollar, physical media music purchased by the new generation in large quanities. |
You don’t protect your 1st Amendment rights anymore than I do. After 50 years on this earth I’ve learned to stay away from, not talk to, or simply ignore people that I perceive to be like you. Unfortunately, Audiogon doesn’t have an unfriend like Facebook. This will be the last conversation I ever have with you again. |
Dear all:(from Santiago,Chile) excuse my english. I am a old surgeon,72, near retired,and I am in this crazy world since near 50 years, At this time,I knew a pretty Bang Olufsen receiver(B&O 1000) and a reel to reel Tandberg,valvular. I was amazed a long time with my first stereo audition,and then beguin my concern for to buy all the not news Bang or Tandberg that I would see at the newspapers and now in ebay... Nobody of my son like for his or her house this device...I have in the basement a room for personal audition,plenty of loudspeakers,old german valvular radios,transistors receivers,etc. Y think that,I must not buy any new or used device¡¡¡¡¡ Thanks for yours input |
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I can't speak to the initial post question cause I haven't a clue.. I'm a 72 year old oxy-moron... Retired musician. Since the late 1960s I've always had a meat and potatoes system. Kenwood, Sansui, Pioneer, Yamaha, Marantz or Onkyo.. with Braun 810s and Thorens TD 125 Mark something (I forget the rest). Upgraded over the years to more audiophile stuff when CDs came into being.. When I turned 70 and discovered SACD I had a realization.. I have a ton of available credit. My present debt will never get paid in my lifetime. I'll make my payments, but never finish. I decided who cares. Call it all the interest paid over 50 years. I was thinking, after standing in front of Marshalls on 11 for 50 years, Why would I wanna wait until I'm wearing a thousand dollar hearing aid to listen to $18,000 speakers. So I took the plunge. Not a hobby, but a one time top line system buy. Spent $40,000 plus of the banks money. I'm talkin' just 3 pieces. Integrated amp, sacd player and speakers. S*#t, I spent more on cables than I ever did on any single piece of electronics or speakers in my life. I've never ever heard music as I'm hearing now. So the point is if you are over 70 you have more 'disposable' income than you think. Just charge it. don't worry about interest. just make your payments, enjoy your music and then eventually die. Simple. Of course you can't do this at 50 or 65 years old. You'd have too much time left. But at 70? Do the life math. Who cares. |
If you were to look inside the gear sold today and see the parts quality used for the prices asked, assuming you know about electronics and parts, you would begin to feel as sick as I do about the industry. No reason for the prices charged on many high end pieces. No reason other than only a relative few of us will ever buy this stuff. I can no longer support this dying model as I have decided to enable it no longer. $1 resistors and $10 capacitors in $15,000 speakers and on and on! Again, I know we have exceptions, but we need open our eyes as we are being charged ridiculous prices for what is actually inside the gear. Yes, including R&D etc... We do have some companies selling nice sounding gear for reasonable prices like Emotiva and others. These are genuine great values that we should take notice of and there are others. |
No, many of today's high end products are seriously overpriced. Some great values like never before, but lots of exaggerated, hyper dollar stuff being pushed. Some of it sounds fine, but not worth the price. I suppose I am so turned off that this colors my view of the industry in general. Bad service is also rampant and really upsets me. The gear quest has stopped for me. I am on a new music quest! |
I'll go out on a limb and say many of those young people streaming music from phones and tablets today will be doing something similar in 20 years or so but also to a very good sounding home setup ranging from good quailty powered wireless speakers to things as good or better than anything around today depending on their goals and discretionary income. |
merrillaudio4 posts05-27-2016 9:53amHere is my 2 cents from a manufacturer. ...only need to know location and even if you do, it's worth LOTS of LOTS of money to settle so profit not guaranteed or highly jeopardized. Otherwise sales... Don't even think of dealing high-end components unless you snatch a nice storage unit for cheap or sweep through tempting estates. Ordering new high-end products and selling via retail store -- WASTE OF TIME and MONEY no matter whatcha do. Dealers need retooling. retooling implies expenses that should be ALWAYS part of equation. 1. The older buyers are downsizing. ...the new products are better and cheaper isn't true at all. compared intro prices 10 years ago and found 40% increase in average. don't find new products ANY better at all. They're just advertised better and nothing more. |
I think there's a recent shift in emphasis on what high-end audio manufacturers are making, which may leave some of us old troglodytes (64 in my case) behind. Flavor-of-the-month seems to be music streaming as opposed to physical media, the latter being what most of us grew up with. My theory is that younger buyers, fewer of whom are audiophiles, are more focused on convenience and portability than actual audio quality. (Some of the blame here might rest with the advent of the MP3 format, the first time in the history of recorded music that the public demanded a LOWER quality of sound). While there remains a dizzying variety of traditional equipment still in production, I agree with many previous posters that prices have butted their heads against the ceiling of affordability, and the market is at or near saturation. In my area (Northern California) there are still a fair number of high-end audio stores and they show no signs of distress yet, but most concentrate on home theater which is where the money is at the moment. |
A good example of "cheaper". Is the Bel Canto C5i integrated I picked up recently for my second system. It has everything in one small shoebox sized package and the sound would satisfy most anyone I suspect with most any speaker used. 60 watts power is its only limitation. It goes loud but not to real life levels some might want with less efficient speakers but loud and clear enough for most. It's all the hifi 99% of folks out there would ever need or want. Nice headphone amp as well. |
I've always scratched my head when I read that the advertisers target the younger crowd. I'm 62 years old and have a LOT more discretionary income than about 99% of those "gen whatevertheyarecallednowers". Back in the late 70's/early 80's I worked at some high-end audio shops and the ebbs and flows in the sales cycles defied reason. Yes, we were prepared for a slowdown in purchases during the summer vacation season, but I'll never forget watching NBC news, unemployment ticked down, interest rates ticked down but for some reason people stopped buying audio equipment for the next 2-3 months. High-end audio is such a niche market, I don't think the larger trends in the economy effect the sales of this sort of equipment so much. |
Interesting perspective merrillaudio, that is a different view from where I see it. I have to question your point number 2, as I see "better" as subjective, faster I can agree with, though this isn't necessarily always a good thing, but cheaper? I don't see this. I have seen companies go in two directions, cheaper, and more expensive. It's the middle ground that seems to be disappearing. Companies like Wilson, ARC, VAC, Vitus, Nordost, Tara Labs, etc., are making gear more and more expensive every year. So I have a hard time seeing that new products are cheaper. Maybe cheaper to manufacture, but the list price still goes up. |
Here is my 2 cents from a manufacturer. 1. Sales are good. 2. Dealers have to retool for many reasons that I will list separately. Dealers that don't retool, are closing down or having a hard time selling. 3. There seems to be a seasonality to sales, along with economic swings with are counterintuitive. Dealers need retooling. 1. The older buyers are downsizing. 2. The new products are better, faster and cheaper. 3. There is a lot going on in the Audio industry that even manfacturers are finding hard to keep up with. 4. There are many new entrants from around the world. These products are excellent. 5. Asia likes large, bulky bling products. Europe likes sleek designs. US likes both. 6. The trophy buyers are shrinking fast. Dealers selling trophy systems for the highest profit, other then NYC, are being challenged. 7. Newer, younger buyers are looking for value, performance and use. For example I am chided by the older users for the LED VU meters and liked by the younger users for the LED VU meters. 8. The internet! 9. Headphone users are the next generation of Audiophiles. This is a huge market of Audiophiles growing up. The above is not all of equal weight and seen only through my lens. So I am sure there are other views also. The economy is good, so there is a lot of confidence in the buyers and a lot of purchases that stretch budgets. That is good news. I suspect that there is also pent up demand that is a little confused with so many products now coming out, and seem to be changing fast. Computer, Vinyl, Tape. Also note that when the economy is good, there is more of other activities, hence less time for Audio. I see business owners spending more time expanding and less time with Audio. Employees working harder with more cash but less time for Audio. |
58 20 Until I die.......or until I can no longer hear! At this point I am looking more at a designated listening room than equipment. From there my next upgrade will be speakers and then perhaps an additional amp for bi-amping. I think there are ebbs and flows to this hobby and maybe we're just in an ebb. |
"There will always be plenty of good sounding gear to buy. More so than ever. Because technology and things in general move forward. Its not as hard these days to get top notch sound as it was years ago. Only a few still scrape and claw at every last possibility at any price. Most people are just listening to their music and loving it. Including old timers like me that live and learn. I've bought into some hype and maybe even a tad of BS in years past but am better these days. So the days of living with old ways of the past for the industry may well be very limited but the ones that continue to truly innovate and adapt will continue to fill the market with good products that can keep most everyone happy one way or another. Consumers will be fine, including those seeking the best possible sound." I agree. |
Calvin- don't lose faith. You don't have to feel that way- this hobby can still be fun and lot's of good used gear, DIY, interesting stuff if you are willing to invest the time. The music- yeah, that's really the purpose, but we tend to rationalize all the gear-mania by claiming that it's getting us closer to the real musical experience. I feel like I've gotten off the treadmill, and while gear still interests me, I'm probably more interested in set up, the design, the "why" of it, and the history, rather than the bling. And buying records- much fun there to be had, you can have stuff coming in constantly from web purchases- great to look forward to, to explore and hear new things (or old things that you haven't heard). I enjoy my system now more than I ever did; I still buy stuff, but I'm not caught up in any sort of competition, and I have fun experimenting. |
