As an audiophile and a business owner I have no sympathy for companies who inflate prices because of poor cost control. That is a part of being in business. If your business model assumes that you can have unlimited overhead and have the customer pay for it you are wrong. It is time that the audiophile industry comes to terms with the overinflated prices and adjust them accordingly. If not the industry will continue to shrink and become a hobby once again.

Excellent comments James.

Today is the day for specialty audio-video to find more value, more effectively. Too often however - the BEST, most expensive engineers and execs are let go to save money in the short term despite the vast talents they bring to the table.

A good example of this is GM closing their performance division - the guys that did the Cadilac XVT sedan. That's the ONE BRIGHT product they have and with the GVMT protecting them as well as chapter 11 protection this is the LAST division you would close. Audio companies do the same and if they keep it up - they will revert back to being a hobbiest product and that's IT.

Conspicuous consumption is out, and even rich people (worth much less than they were last year) are seeking value like everyone else. But especially w/ respect to high-end audio, the market is simply shrinking. Most high-end audio consumers came of age back when stereo was THE cutting-edge CE technology and listening to music was an active pursuit :). Neither are true anymore, music is background to other activites and portability, not sound quality, is king. Most audiophiles are deep into their 40's or older, and simply don't need another $5000 component with so many other priorities competing for their dollars and time. This excludes true hobbyists, but how many of them are left? Sadly, traditional audio consumers are leaving the market and they're not being replaced.

Hello Jerry,

I appreciate your site, and use it regularly. Thanks for all the great information.

After reading the article, "Can The Home Theater Business Re-price Itself", I wanted to express a few points relevant to my dollars.

For the past two years, it's been a widespread general practice of the reviewers of HDTV sets and players to focus intently on black levels, which is good, but to give almost a free pass on poor DVD scaling performance and other issues. Why pay $2,000 for a set, to have great blacks that pop, but have a distorted picture of a moire staircase? It's my opinion that black levels should be secondary to a clear picture and motion tracking.

Another free pass has been given to the disc layer change issue. Players that cost $2500-$10000 still have noticable 1 second layer change delays. Pioneers new Elite BluRay being one of them. It seems to be fated that our virtual movie experience be interrupted by a jolted layer change. If you are a videophile, how can that be acceptable?

For people paying money for performance which hopefully catches you up in the experience, that is a bothersome issue that $2500 should be sufficient to make disappear.

After 4 years, very poor DVD performance, poor layer changes, very poor operational and menu speed, HDMI handshake issues, lack of analog outputs for hifi, sub par handling of latest high def audio codecs, poor user interface for changing inputs for spouses, in some cases unattractive looks - Krell, you will never make a sale to any of the wives I know, Anthem, while I love the capabilities, you just have way too many buttons, my wife will not put that in the living room where the Primare sits. Classe, you are gorgeous, but you want me to do the EQ myself, so Denon gets the nod. If you are a stereo preamp, fine I'l do it. But if you are a $10k AV processor, you do it.

Put a Classe panel on an Anthem processer and you'll have my money.

For $10k, there are 'premium' AV amps that don't have enough inputs to play HDMI XBox 360, and Its mistake to think we don't want the best sound and picture for games.

My needs have changed. Where I used to have more time to listen to violin sonatas, I now spend time playing Gears of War with my son and want to hear every creaking footstep of whatever is sneaking up to tag me in surround sound.

Halcro, hey, I don't know if anyone has told you, but there is this thing called HDMI out now....PS I don't own a single piece of gear that uses S-Video, and you want to charge me a premium for 4 of them. I have 8 components with HDMI. If you want my money there are some changes that need to occur, and you've had years....

McIntosh, what is the deal with all the decals on the front panel? Are you suffering an image problem? There are so many decals on your AV panel one can no longer see the McIntosh branding for which I would have paid pride of ownership money. And again with the plethora of S-Video/Composite connections......my money needs to go elsewhere, like in an Anchor Bay Video Chip.

Dear McIntosh, if you want $10,000 of my money, include a Realta chip, 8+ HDMI inputs, remove the front panel advertising, and restore the clean look of yesteryear for me. If you want to sell me a $4000 player, buffer the layer change properly.

The latest round of speakers just don't cut it as living room furntiture, which is unfortunate. I was very sad to see Soliloquy shut it's doors. Those were gorgeous looking and sounding speakers, and they were very affordable.

Those are things I expect and desire from the market place.

Sincerely,
JDG