"Damn the torpedoes full speed ahead"
Elliot Goldman -- Sun, 05/25/2008 - 14:05
The High End Race To Insanity, how did it happen and who is to blaim? The realtionship between the designer/manufacturer, distributor, dealer, end user/consumer and the reviewer, how this race effects us all and how will it effect us in the future? Will it bring in new customers or chase them away? Does the race to be first, to have the first review, to be the first to own or display take away from service, reliability, the finishing of the development of the product and of course the real price? Will there be places in the future for us to see and hear what we buy or will it all end up online?
Do you like what is happening today and what can we all do about it?
Internet sales? Too much product? Too expensive? Changes too often?
Does the race cause products to be released before they are ready? The price to change after a review? Yesterday hero's are today's trash?
Damn the torpedos full speed ahead!
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:twisted:
Steven Stone
Contributor to The Absolute Sound, EnjoytheMusic.com, Vintage Guitar Magazine, and other fine publications
Not completely sure what insanity you refer to. As a consumer and audiophile, I love the range of choices that audio manufacturers serve up. I do wish that it were easier to hear some of the more esoteric/high-priced gear -- not because I want to spend the money, but I'd like to know if it is a good investment for me. In a large city that isn't NY or LA it is hard to find some of the top-line products. I don't blame my dealer for that, but it would be nice to know of a few "national" showrooms that my local dealer could send me to.
Now, I am the bread-and-butter audio customer. I have a hard time imagining some of my friends spending money on audio the way I do. Not because they can't afford it (they can). But they don't want to come up the learning curve and figure out what they want. They need well-known and trusted brands, and it would be better if these were at the system level. B&O, Meridian, and Bose are the only companies that come to mind that approach things this way. In my view, B&O and Meridian seem overpriced for this crowd, and Bose is a bit pedestrian. Interesting gap in the market?
The insanity I refer to is the overproduction of 50k, 100k and more products. THese products are built for the friends you have that can afford it but have little interest . There are no "bose" of the high end in the sense that most high end products have little brand name recognition outside the audio community. Perhaps there is too much spent on making products that no one will see and hear? I agree things for the large population would be better presented in a system mannner. It would work better just as if they sold luxury cars in parts very few would want them as well.
Well $50-100k products are out of my league and my friends wouldn't even consider that. But I don't mind that those products exist (just like I don't mind if Ferrari builds the Enzo for $600k). I'm missing the connection between the existence of ultra expensive products and reaching well-heeled quality-oriented folks.
Dear Disc,
The connection is simple who do you think can buy those products you like to read about? Where do you think those products end up?
Ferrari sells every single car they make and they make relatively few. Porsche makes only 28000 cars for the whole world. The big difference is everyone knows those brand names. When they make an Enzo its a few cars ( if I remember correctly under 20) and they are all sold before they are produced.
I'm still confused, sorry. I would guess that people with lots of money buy very expensive products. As an audiophile, I'm just missing why that is a problem for people on healthy but smaller budgets (say $5k to $20k in audio terms). To follow our analogy, it would be a bit like saying that no one can build a Lexus or Porsche because Ferrari makes the Enzo. Clearly that isn't the case, since in audio there are lots of products at every price.
Maybe what is bothering you is that there aren't famous brands in high-end audio (I say high-end because certainly JBL, Bose, Klipsch and a few others are well known)?
Dear Sir,
The issue is not whether you as an audiophile enjoy reading or listening to these expensive products. The issue is whether the industry in the future will be healthy enough to keep making them. The pool that is the High End community is very small and with prices rising everyday that pool can only absorb so much of the product. If the industry is to grow it needs to expand and bring new people into it especially at the consumer end to allow this to happen. Please remember that to make the product is only one issue, if the companies are to be succesful they need to sell them to someone. Porsche or Ferrari would not build these cars if they could not sell them! In the high end product most clients progress up to better and better products whether they are cars, clothes, watches, audio etc and this is the idea however if new consumers are not brought in this "swimming upstream" s impossible.
People with a lot of money know all these brands this is not true however in audio.