What's happened to the used high end market recently?? Sales are tough....:0(
The heading says it all!! What do you guys think is the reason that the sales in the used high end market have gone soft?? Prices too high? Economy too slow?? Stock market too volatile?? Something else??
Since he's joined the site recently, Michael Green brought tremendous insight and refreshing perspective. Obviously, no one served on the front lines more than Michael, and so many of us took cues from him over the years to improve our systems. He often makes the point here of the high-end audio business taking a turn in the mid-late 90s, and falling into decline since.
I perceived that same shift myself at the time. And since...
The manifestation of that fall is something that always struck me as being off-kilter, but sounds logical to so many that my trying to refute it over the years normally fails to resonate with folks. It goes like this...a dealer or manufacturer states it takes just as much effort to sell a $100 item as a $1000 item. So, in the vein of working smarter, not harder, I focus on customers interested in the $1000 item, as opposed to the $100 item, as I'm working 10X less. Seems reasonable and smart, yes?
We normally bypass the disproportion of that, in that the $1000 pie is far smaller than 10X than the $100 pie. Anyway, that's the way the market, and we now need to multiply these $100 / $1000 numbers by an order or two of magnitude to represent the current state we all lament for the sadness and smallness of the market / business / hobby. Combine this path of pricing with the backfill of lower cost HEA components with tweaks that strike most outside the hobby and many inside as sounding both ridiculous and impossible, and should any of us feel surprised how this morphed into a lunatic fringe of the lunatic fringe?
I'll contrast what high-end audio has become with an article I read in the late 90s about a guy who blasted on the scene, creating a fortune running a bank modeled after McDonald's and The Home Depot, instead of the normal bank and Post Office. It was all about low cost and convenience to the customer. The bank stayed open in the evening and on the weekends, including Sunday. Regardless of what you think of McDonald's food and service, or this banker as a person, his analysis into the success behind McDonald's struck me as brilliant. Again, he made an absolute fortune, though impropriety caused the powers that be find a suitable bank to take over, aka TD Bank. I think we can find a similar pattern and important lessons to learn in not a lot of $20K tube amplifiers getting sold, but certain companies dealing out more fuses at $100 a pop than we could have believed a few years ago
I'll extend your position by mentioning Amazon Alexa. My sister's family and my best friend's fall into my demographic, mid-late 40s. Neither has an audio rig, though my buddy put together an Onkyo based system in the early 90s that one could argue represented HEA at the time, albeit at the lower end. Both families really love music, so it's not for lack of interest. Both now have Alexa in their home, with speakers across several rooms. Whenever I'm at their homes, most of the time music is playing, preceded by, "Alexa, play me Steve Earle's best songs." I can't tell you how many other people I hear talking about using Alexa in the same way
advance in music format such as streaming have some part of the issue. Why pay for a fiscal format if you can stream it with a nice DAC you will have very similar effect. This affects the front end of the equation. The Younger audience is not interested in HEA, because they mostly were not exposed to it.
A) the economy sucks for most people except the rich B) the rich are more interested in fads, like Sono, Bose, etc C) there's way too much HEA out there already D) the few younger, poorer audiophiles (like myself) are having a great time exploring vintage audio. Why spend $1000s when $100s on craigslist can get you an incredible system?
It’s going to be cool to see what happens with dsp. There are so many things that can be done with it. I’m looking forward to the endless tweeks that a system of 10 self powered “audiophile” quality dsp enabled speakers will provide.
reason sales are soft ?? true audiophiles are slowly becoming extinct. I grew up listening to vinyl and analog tape since I was 5 years old, now I’m 56 and the formats are ingrained in my psyche. my son is 19 and listens to everything on his Iphone with earbuds. the only hardcopy he actually may play is a CD in his car, but it’s usually Sirius radio stations. the only record player he had, was a vintage one I bought for him, for show and tell in 1st grade at school, using 45’s. I have a ton of vintage gear, offered him to pick/choose a setup of amp, speakers, turntable, tape deck for his apartment- he politely refused- refused a free stereo system worth over a grand that sounds great. as we older fellas die off, there is not an unending stream of newcomers into the market for stereo gear. talk stereo imaging and disappearing speakers to these kids, you may as well talk about UFO’s and the Loch Ness monster. you get blank stares or laughter. eventually high end gear will be sold for pennies on the dollar, as the older generation dies off, the next generation won’t even know what it is, or even care. it’s like the model T’s that used to bring big bucks at auctions, now have to be given away- cuz all the old timers who grew up driving them, and would pay big for them, are dead. stereo has become obsolete, it’s a 1950’s music medium delivery system. it’s days are numbered. if you have gear to sell, sell it now, for whatever you can get. the prices are only going to go down with time. really, if I kicked the bucket tomorrow, my wife and kid would be selling my vintage tube stereo amps and solid state amps for $10 each, or giving them away, or dumpstering them- along with all my reel to reel, cassette, 8-track decks, and turntables they wouldn’t know any better. nor have the time to market them correctly on the net. the local markets for stereo gear are nil. wake up and smell the coffee, stereo gear is not fine art. it takes a technical mind to understand and appreciate it, and the current crop of youngsters is severely technically dumbed down, when it comes to home audio. their home audio is a android phone or iPhone, that sounds like a 1965 transistor radio with an earbud. these corporations like Microsoft and Apple, have succeeded in dumbing down the consumers tastes to bare minimum, so they can make it cheap, sell it high ($1000 for new IPhone 10), and use cheap offshore Chinese labor to manufacture it. then import it into the USA by the millions and sell it at Walmart. that's the state of home audio today.
I don't think there is any question that the trend is downward. But, the question is abut the current cycle. Sales are very slow, possibly slower than they were after the financial crisis in 2008. How is that possible? I personally believe that most sellers are wildly over-optimistic in setting their prices. I am always surprised to see items I sold 7 or 8 years ago routinely listed for 50+ percent more than I sought. Part of that is the growth of dealer listings. I do see well priced, popular items selling in a day or so.
If you are not in that category, well, you might as well be playing the lottery!
Not only are we dying off, but the up coming generations are going deaf early from blasting their ears out with earbuds. HEA, LEA, a good chunk probably don't have the ears to appreciate it
roberjerman Fewer people are listening to two-channel audio. Television viewing and on-screen gaming are more attractive to younger folks. They don’t just want to sit in a dimly-lit room listening to music from a pair of speakers! They look at this as an old geezer activity!
Fewer people are listening to two-channel audio. Television viewing and on-screen gaming are more attractive to younger folks. They don't just want to sit in a dimly-lit room listening to music from a pair of speakers! They look at this as an old geezer activity!
Audiophiles are starting to wake up to the benefits of active speakers and are holding out for some of the manufacturers to start building the upper end speakers as active.
I have noticed, the audiophile is selling less here as most of the ads are from audio retailers who have turned to Audiogon to sell because they have little to no foot traffic. I am tired of seeing the same ads for equipment by the same seller at 3-4 times a week. You click on "new today" and you have 60+ ads from TMR that were the same they posted a day or so ago. I am not picking on them as I have bought from them 3 times and have been extremely satisfied with them but they and like 6 others make up the bulk of the Classifieds.
A lot of people asked me why I sold a $1970.00 Tuner for $400.00. The simple answer was no matter what Blue Book and Hi-Fi Shark said, 400.00 is all it was really worth in today’s day of streaming and internet radio. Most sellers here including the pro ones are pricing the equipment way above what their worth is. If you are selling an amp you bought off someone who made maybe 5 of them and is now deceased, you can’t expect to get 5K for it!
I used to look at the ads daily. Now, it is 3-4 times a week as the ads are mostly the same. I stay here for the forums now and to learn new things & sometimes argue.
mapman, are you wearing your “engineer’s” hat when you make that statement? I’m sure the newbies are eternally grateful for your diligence and watchfulness. 🤡
High end audio may also have a bit of a credibility problem especially with newbies given some of the nonsense that goes around in forums like this. This can't help.
Millennials. I don't think many of them buy new or used HEA. The older generation audiophiles are dying off. Most of the younger generation I talk to have little to no interest in HEA. They like music mostly of the portable variety and seem to listen more as a distraction than anything else. I do believe there are a few younger ones out there that like HEA, but no where near enough to support the hobby. JMHO.
Yes, the size of the market continues to age and ebb away. It’s not gonna get any easier. In fact with the economy rolling right now, this may be as good as it gets by far.
Some new blood is coming up from the high-end headphone crowd, but it’s not feeding into 2ch staples like speakers and monoblocks (maybe just DACs, at best). And Audiogon lost a good chunk of its traffic to the site rewrite some years ago -- older folks don’t like to adapt to tech, and get easily/permanently frustrated. Maybe they should’ve kept both systems up while they refined the new site (which I do like, now that the bugs have been worked out).
But also, a lot of sellers don’t seem to have a clue that they’re pricing items way too high. You gotta be realistic, and the #s you find in the BlueBook/etc are often FAR off a sellable price. And the worst trap is getting stuck holding the bag with at item that was a "flavor of the month" flash in the pan. A couple years on, and you may find you can’t even give it away.
The HEA of the 80's can't realistically survive in 2018-forward. It's decline has been happening since the mid 90's, no surprise here. I can't imagine folks thought the over built over priced hobby was going to interest the modern Audiophile.
Audiophiles are getting out of the trophy collecting and into their listening, movies, games or whatever. I'm seeing an increase in the hobby, just not the way over the top build hobby. It's not the early 90's where the magazines pulled off that amazing revolving door of plug & play. That was insane, literally! The pitch was "My system doesn't sound right so I'll buy another component". That's pretty crazy but they managed to sucker folks into it. Now after a couple of decades of that (whatever that was), hobbyist are not buying into it anymore, why should they?
Has been discussed regularly on Audiogon. Here are some prior responses/thoughts: 1. Culture places less importance on musical activities, thus less demand for HEA 2. Listening has migrated to streaming and quality is sometimes unavailable, sometimes not of interest 3. Listening styles have moved away from demanding content (such as classical and jazz) to pop and hip hop that requires less HEA 4. Americans have less disposable income (paid your health bill recently?) 5. Younger generations are visually oriented and prefer video games over straight listening sessions 6. And get ready for the "no everything is great and HEA is thriving like never before" responses -- worthwhile checking to see if these are made by industry people...
Depends upon what you mean by "recently". Seems like it has been a buyer's market for several years now, and perhaps worsening with time. Has it gotten much worse particularly lately?
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