Why cables can be expensive

Music will never die, but the pursuit of better audio reproduction as a concept has already died, except for us dinosaurs.

 

But not if their business model is predicated on selling at 25% off. They have to sell it at below trade simply to move it on. People get wise to this very quickly; buy the product, return it and then buy the 'ex-demo' model.

 

pretty horrible way to treat retailers.... break a box on purpose.... but I guess it does happen yes, rarely though surely.


Lets face it if you want ex-dem prices you only need to call round a few places anyway..

 

It was our repeated inability (as both industry and enthusiasts) to grasp any lifelines thrown at us by the music business. Shouting about how good LP was when CD purchases were outselling LP by a factor of 350:1; how about buying some new LPs to prove 'them' wrong? Demanding better than CD formats and then completely ignoring them when we got them (if we'd sided with SACD or DVD-Audio when they were going concerns, perhaps we'd have had something better, but it was only when DVD-Audio basically disappeared and the SACD project was all but closed down did we get interested in the format war).

We're doing the same with downloads now. Is it any wonder no-one gives a damn?

 

We are not dinosaurs, the old method to market is the dinosaur. There are always people who look for excellence, yes the market will be smaller more specialist more nerd based. Many industries are going through this even computers, people still want to build their own, direct sales and Ebay leads the game again.

This is the beauty of on-line, small markets that cannot survive with the costs of the traditional way to market thrive on-line. Hi-Fi will just become another of them.

 

The accusation doesn't arise and hasn't because until this thread thread there has been no mention at all - in fact I've still not mentioned the company so about 90% of readers to this thread still wont have a frigging clue what we are talking about. For the record I have no financial connection with 'it' - it is Simon's baby but I do assist where I can when asked.
In fact, such is the sensitivity of the issue that I purposely recommend other people's kit here on ZG!
But whatever you do you cant win.

I agree markets are changing and everyone should reassess from time to time. But if the UK audiophile community aren't the market then you have to use the old methods, for now at least. The old ways will die in time for many products but I'n not convinced that they'll disappear entirely as some folk will always want to go touch and listen before parting with cash.
The used market is different and people will spend large sums on vintage kit but then there is little risk. If you don't like the thing it can be shifted on with little financial risk.
But would I for example, order a pair of £5k Quad ESLs brand new over the internet?
No way - I want to visit the dealer and have a bloomin good listen to ensure that I'm not buying a pup. I might also want to try a variety of amplifiers with those speakers and the logistics of sorting all of that isn't easy or practical using direct methods.

Anyway, after the DAC bake off at your place you are welcome to borrow a pair of 'them' and have a good listen for as long as you like. Absolutely no strings - offered in the spirit of good will.

I shall say no more.

 

The search for excellence in audio ended with the iPod. Music is a commodity now, little more than an App. The iPod and iPhone are capable of producing excellent performance, but it's a performance left unrealised and ignored by those who use them.

"Yeah it's better, but it's only music" is being carved into the audio industry's headstone as we speak.

Track your sales Richard. Find out how many of your products are sold to people born after 1975. You need fertile soil to grow nerds. And audio is barren.

 

Sorry I design and build my own speakers, you will have to put up with them

 

The demography is fine, many 30's and 40's in it but no teenage and very few 20's. But that is what I expect as people only come to this when they have been through the normal dross and find they want to improve. It has *alway* been a small share of the overall market, it is just getting smaller, my bet is that at some stage in the future we go retro and it will all come back again to a degree and everyone will be saying I wish I hadn't sold it or thrown it away, as a lot of people are now saying with vinyl.

 

Im sure they are fine - that wasn't my point.
In fact knowing that we both love AR and Alison speakers I'm very keen to hear the Cubes.

I meant borrow them some time after the event for your own private curiosity. Try them for your own pleasure, unless of course you hate them!

 

That's the problem. Those twentysomethings used to buy cheap systems and get on the first rung of the ladder. They'd reach out to the specialists in their 30s and 40s when their first hi-fi began to look a bit shabby.

The twentysomethings aren't getting on the first rung of the ladder anymore. They are your next set of audio nerds, nerding in on something that isn't hi-fi.

And you think this is 'fine'?

 

Yes they are, they are all on the trains going to work in the morning with earphones, even some are going for headphones, which seem to be making a comeback. The Ipod generation, they will move on, when they get the time.

"I was once like you are now, just relax, take it easy, your so young, its not your fault, there's so much you have to know" the cat knew!

Ach! it happens in every generation

 

I think part of the problem is the format changes.
Back in the day, good inexpensive hi-fi was stand-alone - the audio system had nothing to do with video, there were no internet feeds and multi function 'home entertainment' systems didn't really exist.

So instead of hearing a song on the radio, buying the record in the shop and playing it on the hi-fi, today that same song forms part of a video and the listener will ether buy it on dvd/blue ray or watch an internet stream via their home entertainment surround system.

The budget audio separates market has been largely swallowed up by the AV market.
I popped into Richer Sounds last week to buy a DAC and it was wall to wall AV - multi function boxes from the likes of Denon and Pioneer that you hook up to your large screen flat TV. Prices of this equipment are falling by the day.
Contrast that to say Laskys on the Tottenham Ct Rd in the 70s where you had wall to wall hi-fi. Nothing high-end but lots of decent affordable kit - and of course no AV market.

So I think that we must closely relate what and how we sell to what (especially younger) people actually want.
Doesn't mean giving in and accepting defeat, but it certainly isn't an easy battle.

 

The iPod turned music into a background pursuit. Something to do while you are doing something else. You work out to your personal soundtrack. You drown out the daily commute to music.

People who spend their lives dipped in music don't tend to place any great value on listening to music as a pursuit in its own right. It's why musicians who spend the day practicing and playing have such lousy hi-fi.

But the key words are "when they get the time". When. When does this time magically happen? Do you mean that nanosecond between tweeting their friends about what fun it is to blink and changing their Facebook status? Or the time when they are at home supposedly relaxing but having to learn Conductor because some guy in the head office is too mean to pay Oracle for another year? There are two kinds of people today; "Cash rich, time-poor" or just "poor". The former don't have time to spend sitting in front of hi-fi for a few minutes a day, the latter can't afford the hi-fi.

Either way, hi-fi is screwed.

 

Sorry people grow up, people find their space - the cat knew. Every generation says the new one has lost it, yet somehow they always find it, and some of them will find us. We have always been some of us.

 

Maybe, but you'll end up spending many a long year twiddling your thumbs waiting for the current generation to latch onto to something in which they presently have no interest. That might give you some time to dream up some more hippy-drippy psychobabble, but when you start ordering potentiometers and find they stopped making them ten years ago due to lack of interest, who are you going to call on then?

 

That's very true, real hi-fi has always been a very small minority interest.
I recall back at Secondary school in the late 70s and early 80s I was the only kid in the class remotely interested in hi-fi.
I remember submitting a science paper to the Head of Physics on JVC's automatic Bias, Equalisation and Sensitivity system for tape decks.
Who mentioned nerd?

 

I was at school at the same time. I had no interest in hi-fi at all then. But I bought LPs and singles. When I got into hi-fi later, those LPs and (some of) the singles were all rediscovered anew on my new audio system.

That avenue of rediscovery is lost now.

 

If I were you I would shoot myself
Doom and gloom is always a fun pastime, the world will always end tomorrow. I see nothing different to my father, who had his own jobbing semi pro dance band (Dicky Dunn and his Dance Band ) he used to bore me silly telling me how the 12 bar blues was the deathknell of music, and live music was dead with all these kids with guitars, 'cos how can anyone listen to that racket.

 

The joy of being a miserablist is things always live down to your expectations.

Then you die.

And from the perspective of a big band, your dad was right! I don't see Radiohead crying out for a bandleader. And also Rock 'n' Roll's ultimately self-destructive nature did sow the seeds of its own destruction and with it the music biz (and hi-fi).

No one gets out of here alive, remember?