I wish audio advertisers would stop . . .

I took a semester off from college back in 1980. I worked for an A/V distributor who had been, just a few years before, in partnership with Earl "Madman" Muntz building big screen televisions which were, in reality, a Sony Trinitron, a bunch of mirrors, a rear projection screen, and a big cabinet. "Dim the lights," the copy read, "watching Theatrevision is like going to the movies!" Also, you couldn't see the damn picture with the lights on.

 

My comment was a tongue-in-cheek response to the idea that manufacturers of high-end audio equipment are somehow hard done by. In the grand scheme of things these dudes are not coal miners. I have nothing but respect for hard work and dedication to craft, but pretending like most established brands (even very small ones) are not highly lucrative businesses is naive. I don't begrudge anyone their success, and the more profit they make the more power to them, but let's at least recognize that they sell luxury products at relatively huge markups and make lots and lots of money doing so. Not hatin', just statin'.

 

I really have to congratulate a company like Rogue, Emotiva, Zu, Devore and other who make an effort to produce a quality product with support and service here in the US.

I have three of Rogue's products, several of Emotiva's (mostly made in China, but now they are manufacturing in the US), and a Pair of Zu speaker's.

I do have other vintage gear that was made in the USA by Fisher, Scott, Wharfedale, and Altec.

It is a shame that they are not around any more!

 

The Tube Store for their PHALLIC tube between the boobs banner. Thanks!!!! NOT!
I got spoken to at work NOT for my use of the computer but for apparently looking at a woman tit-****ing a tube!
Ridiculous! Should I really have to explain my way out of researching an electronics project for kids at a library????

 

I don't think that nay company like these that were recently mentioned are "highly lucrative businesses". The market for their products is highly specialized and with a lot of competition from all around the world.

Overhead and labor today will kill any thought of profitability in a heartbeat.

Providing service and technical support, which these companies do is a very expensive proposition.

Compare a company in America to a similar operation in China.

Locally produced parts in China are going to be far less expensive than locally produced parts would be in the US.

Labor rates in China would also be far lower than in the US.

Employee benefits in China (non existent), compared to in the US.

There is no way in hell that I would ever want to operate another brick and mortar business in the US.

I don't no anybody, and this goes for my entire life, that has owned and operated any small business that has not struggled to pay the rent, keep the lights on and make payroll.

Those who have jobs where they show up and collect a regular paycheck will never come close to understanding what it is like to operate a business.

 

As they say, my friend, YMMV

 

I'm in the first-world, therefore by definition, *every* problem is a first-world problem.

 

[GINOVANNELLI]...and tell ya what I feel about ya, baaaabe...[/GINOVANNELLI]

 

Here are a few things a manufacturer has to deal with!

Low volume- means higher parts pricing since end column pricing probably isn't available.
Reviewers on the take.
Magazines that require advertising else you're going to get a bad review.
Advertising prices. A typical half page color ad is $1600 to $4000.00 for a single placement, depending on the magazine.
Getting noticed. No notice- no sales.
Surviving until you're noticed.
Getting a decent website set up that doesn't look like it was done with CrayolaWrite 1.0
A space to make everything.
The Gummint- and all that implies. Just pushing the pencils for the state and the IRS can be a full time job.
Meeting EU requirements to get the CE mark- or whatever other mark is needed.
Finding out that a part was sunsetted- and now what do you do to replace it?
Having reliable vendors get bought out and thus go south in a handbasket- resulting in costs, delays and possible loss of sales.
Finding out the hard way that a part is failure prone due to no fault of your own- 6 months after is seemed to pass bench tests just fine.
Shipping.
Too many high end audio shows. But when CES was the only game in town by no means was that the good old days.
Dealers that stock your product so that no-one else in the area can get it but then don't sell it either.
Finding how much cheaper the competition looks like inside after to take the cover off- and they get away with charging more.


I can go on for quite a long time about this. Having been in the industry a while, I can tell you that most manufacturers are in it because they enjoy music. There are some that get in to get rich. The latter always wind up making mediocre product. No-one is perfect though; we all make mistakes.

 

I wish audio advertisers would stop. (Period).
They always make me discontented with my mid-fi stuff.

 

I always thought it was juvenile. It's an ad often on Audiokarma.

 

Yes. With the statement: The Perfect Pair...

 

I do not care for no pricing on products. Any other seller of products includes prices.

 

You can add Ravin Audio to the list of US made quality products, with lifetime backing and support.

 

Don’t forget dealing with employee HR issues, OSHA, haz mat, fire codes etc. No shows at work. Major piece of equipment goes down, call repair place, have to order part. Workers comp insurance, parking lots, facility housekeeping, liability insurance, vending, utilities, on and on

 

I wonder if the advertising really does anything or is more by necessity, so people know you are still around. (There used to be a professional convention that I quit attending- I asked a colleague why he still went, since it seemed almost pointless- he said 'So they'll know I'm not dead").
Websites- many are horrible, not confined to audio biz.
Some look like they were put together in the days of the Commodore 64 by someone without any eye or taste- cluttered, cheap looking, like the back of a comic book.
And the really slick looking ones- don't you think: geez, these folks spent mucho dinero on a website, I wish they'd just spend it on products, and not on glossy marketing materials.
I don't much read the magazines any more and rarely click on a web ad. How many of you are prompted to pursue a product by reading an ad? Anybody?
I suspect it is reviews, both professional and online from users and owners, as well as word of mouth, no?

 

Which is why Audio Note is annoying.

"Oh, the PRICE? Shhhh. It's a BIG SECRET...."

(what are we, five-year-olds now?)
.

 

I don't really don't recall many of these for real businesses out there any more. Most web site's do what they need to do, Which is mainly, to provide product information, and a telephone number.

I think that as long as a web site is simple and easy to navigate, it has served the purpose that it was intended to serve.

My problem with these "really slick looking" web sites is not that I think the companies are spending to much money on them but that they suck at what they should be there for.

It seems, that every time that some new web technology comes out, a company goes out and grabs hold of their Internet guru's and says or web site is old and stale, I want something more exciting and dynamic like I see on other sites.

This usually begins with Waiting for the home page to load, because instead if a static graphic, You have to wait for some "Flash" presentation (or similar) to load.

Then as you scroll down a page, or at least attempt to scroll down the page, these large horizontal bands appear across the page and instead of being stationary, move as you scroll.

This is the latest annoying trend that I'm seeing on web sites. It serves absolutely ZERO purpose, is distracting, and is completely in the way of me attempting to concentrate on the content that I am trying to look at.

A web site only needs to be simple and functional, nothing more.

The less is more kind of thing...

 

As I have noted in the post following yours.

The entire reason that I go to a manufacturer's website is to get product information, including the PRICE!

When a company does not provide me with pricing, I say goodbye...

 

They do that so their dealers can set there own retail price. I suppose different dealers may have different overhead costs do to their location, etc.

 

Something else to consider, and that is, that perhaps many people who were buying CD's were doing so, because that was the only way that they could have personal access to quality music.

The radio has only so much quality, the musical selection is determined by another party and there are advertisements that can not be avoided (though it does have an advantage of being free).

Before CD's there were cassette's, and before that, there were records.

Late in the 60's 8-track tapes were popular. The only reason for their existence, was that they were a portable format. If you bought an 8-track play, you could listen to your music in your car. You could also buy a player and listen in your home. If the player could also record, they people could make a recording of their record's on an 8-track cartridge and listen to their "record" in the car.

Both Ford Motor Company and General Motors, were involved in the development of the 8-track.

"Stereo 8 was created in 1964 by a consortium led by Bill Lear of Lear Jet Corporation, along with Ampex, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Motorola, and RCA Victor Records (RCA - Radio Corporation of America)."

The cassette was invented in 1962 introduced to the public in Europe in 1963 and then America in 1964. So both tape formats were introduced about the same time.

The major differences was that the 8-track was stereo. Four channels, of 2-tracks on each channel. It was on a standard 1/4" tape, that was the same size that was used on a reel to real tape recorder. Noting here, that people bought R2R tape recorder's mostly for the purposes of recording their own tapes. Back in the beginning, there were little or no prerecorded movies and people were buying VCR's mostly to record TV shows. The 8-track tape ran at a speed of 3 3/4" per-second, which was a standard speed that was available on R2R tape recorder's, that people often recorded music on.

While 8-track players were mostly for permanent installation in a car. Cassette's were designed to be a portable format to be used in a portable tape recorder/player, for the purpose of recording voices. It was an double-sided, mono tape cartridge, which ran at 1 7/8" per-second, which was half of the 3 3/4" speed that 8-track recorder's and player's used. The tape was also half the width of an 8-track tape.

The main reasons that 8-track tapes became the favored medium for music systems in cars was that It was backed by the car industry, it was stereo, it had better quality and since it was a continuous loop, you didn't have to turn it over.

As cassette's became available in stereo and their quality increased and surpassed the quality of 8-track tapes, 8-track tapes faded away.

Since the cassette was already a portable format from the beginning, in addition to cassette player's replacing 8-tracks in the car, there already was a market for portable cassette player's, first mono, then in stereo. This gave birth to the "boom box" and personal cassette player's like the Sony Walkman (which was invented back in 1979).

When not in the car, people could listen to their cassette's on their boom boxes on the go and plug them in to the AC when at home.

Since most people did not record their own cassette's from their record collection, people were beginning to favor the cassette format over records and record purchases suffered a major decline in sales and were all but dead by the time that the CD caught on.

This simply illustrates, that people had no loyalty to the medium. Their loyalty was to their music. When CD's came out, cassette's went away.

Like yourself, there is an audience out there who do prefer to own their own music and perhaps this always will be.

This is why your CD continues to grow and mine does as well, abet more slowly.

So, it really isn't any "surprise" that CD sales have dropped off sharply as digital player's have come into favor. These particular consumer's had no more loyalty to CD's than they had for cassette's, 8-track's or records.

For digital music that I own, I also own the CD that I ripped it from. In the past, I would buy a player and could store about one hundred digital albums on a tiny 32GB memory card.

Today, people have Internet on their smartphones, so consumer's can listen to their music by streaming. This gives them the advantage to having greater access to media, without having to buy a physical copy. It also affords them a viable alternative to listening to music on the radio.

I maintain, that there is a segment of the population that bought physical media, simply because they had to, if they wanted to exercise a choice over their personal music selection. They really didn't "abandon" it, they really didn't need or cherish it in the first place.

Growing up in the 60's, many people did not own physical media. They listened to music only on the radio. In the 30's and 40's, people had fine radio's in their homes. In the 50's and 60's, these were largely replaced by TV set's.

"Video killed the radio star...".

But there are people who will want to own their own music in a physical form.

I think that this has to do with a rebirth of interest in vinyl. I doubt that the new audience is going out and buying $2,500 turntable set up's and then investing in thousand's of dollars worth of downstream audio gear, just to experience "vinyl" quality. I think that with even inexpensive turntables and "record player's" people can have a different listening experience and that is what is happening.

If people put on a record and it sounded exactly the same as as CD or streaming music, I doubt if these dame people would be going to the expense and bother to buy record's.

These people are experiencing actually holding a record, placing it on a physical player, looking at the album art and interacting with their music in a way that they have not done before, by streaming music.

This is the same part of the listening experience that audiophiles hold sacred, where it is the physical act of listening to a record or CD. They are also experiencing the physical act of owning media, perhaps for the first time.

Given this, I wouldn't discard the possibility of a future upswing in the ownership any form of physical media.

 

When you don't see a price, there's a really good chance that the equipment being sold also has overseas distribution. Those overseas distributors have to pay additional shipping costs (if the equipment is build domestically, like our stuff is) and also import duty. The internet being what it is, overseas customers could see the US retail and get turned off by the markup the distributor has to make to keep the lights on.

A simple solution is just to call the manufacturer and see what the price is. Its not a perfect solution - nothing is - but that's the internet (and the death of brick and mortar) for you.

 

That is a good point.

But, overseas customer's already see US prices and they already know and understand the import duty thing in their own countries.

That is the same for the VAT that is in effect for EU countries.

I don't ever call or email a manufacturer, concerning a price. Sometimes I read a online review of that product and the price is there, in which case I do make a notation as to the date of the review.

Whether it is a review or info from the manufacturer's web site, describing a piece of gear without a price, is completely meaningless.

Al the while, both the manufacturer's site and the review is praising the "DAC" as being..., well, are they speaking of a $200 DAC, an $800 DAC or a $2,800 DAC?

And it's up to me to take my time figure this out? Thanks, but no.

 

That's the thing- quite often they don't see US prices. And if they do, then they want to pick up the equipment for that price. Often they don't think about shipping, VAT and import duties until a bit later. What happens then is that the distributor might lose the sale and the customer winds up paying nearly the same price or more (assuming he was able to find a US dealer that would make the sale, and 235V operations isn't a problem...) as he would have with the distributor. Just say'n - its not a perfect system!

 

Look at the member's of this forum. They live all around the world. There is not any of them that are not aware of the import duties and VAT's on even locally purchased products.

No matter where you live, that search engines are out there and pricing of most products is out there. People all over the world are able to see prices that are in effect in America. If you live in Australia, you certainly do understand that pricing in the USA is going to be different and less expensive of a product that is manufactured in the US and sold down under.

There very well may be people out there that will be confused, that is not my problem.

If I go to a manufacture's web site, I expect to find pricing information.

If the manufacture declines to provide pricing information for the products that they manufacture and or sell, that is entirely their decision. I don't really care one way or another.

But, if I can't find the pricing or other information that I am looking for, I will leave that manufacturer's web site and will not be considering purchasing from them. That is my personal position. Other's may do as they wish.