It’s sad, i agree with that, but many hifi dealers were not very good business people and didn’t run their businesses very well. Some have really awful attitudes and treat customers badly.
What happened to all the highend stereo shops
What happened to high end stereo shops I mean real high-end stereo shops. I am 78, my father bought me my first stereo when I was 12, I have been hooked ever since. I remember the days when you can go to a nice audio store and not just audition what they had in the store but if you saw a couple of tuners, preamps or some cables that you liked, you could give them a blank check and take the equipment home to audition on your system. Bring one or both back Pay for what you want to keep or get your check back. I don’t understand how someone can buy an expensive piece of audio equipment and not audition it in their system first. Many places today, you buy it and your stuck with it. OH yes you can sell it on Audiogon or eBay. Reviewers are nice and give good reviews but the problem I have is the equipment they are auditioning is on their system in their treated music room which is going to be different than what you have.
If you can read this message, Thank a Teacher.
If you are reading it in English, Thank a Veteran
- ...
- 126 posts total
@thefile Salient points....all. I would add the disposable world. It permeates everything and drives a cheapness and impermanence. A side product can be a caustic customer bereft of civility. I've owned certain audio pieces for decades because they were/are simply that well engineered and built. They were also expensive initially. But then, not really when calculating their cost divided by service years. Who does that today? I've a friend who runs a B&M audio shop for over 20 years and has experienced customers in the store listening to equipment and ordering it off the internet by cellphone before exiting. That's healthy. So these customers do not want a longterm business relationship as it's too taxing, beyond their capacities and skill levels of interaction and go for the nickel bag fix. It's sad, but seems to have irreversible momentum until extinction of that species many of us have known and loved; the consumption of great music with knowledgeable purveyors of stunning equipment and media to excite our senses. Soon enough we'll be left with Taylor Swift and Apple as our only choices and in the vernacular of middle schoolers "that sucks man".
|
If I still lived in L.A. I'd still be frequenting high end shops and actual record stores & musical instrument shops. I made myself a nuisance in them, and so did my dad. In any event, now that I've moved to a small town in the middle of nowhere, with the closest high end shop at least an airplane flight away, I've been obliged to take to the aether when component shopping rears its ugly head. But hey, thank goodness for streaming! The world of music at my fingertips... |
The demand for HiFi and Hi End audio is diminishing. The younger generations don’t spend large sums of money on this hobby. Yes there is a turntable guy here and there, but the ones they buy to spin records are not high dollar investments in tonearms, cartridges and isolation. It is more a hip trend than a serious hobby. Plus I don’t think they have the money. If they do they spend it on other things...they don’t buy expensive really old vacuum tubes, they buy expensive coffee from Starbucks. One year I bought about $750 in tubes for my newly purchased tube amp. Do you know how many chai tea lattes with soy milk... one can buy for that kind of money? |
- 126 posts total