The new HEA $$$$ market is fading and has been since the mid 90’s. in the last 5 years the decline has been accelerating. That’s not a bad thing, just reality. Those companies that have dealt with the decline successfully have found a nice following. On the flip side budget HiFi is doing great and getting stronger. Audio itself is heathier than it has ever been and growing faster than it ever has. We simply live in a different place 2018 vs 1993. You can’t expect that the way audio is presented or sold today is going to be the same as back then. At the same time the different camps of the hobby are going to have and will maintain their own special portion of the action, but it won’t make a dent in the mainstream, nor should it. There are those that say "look at the shows" as evidence, but in reality I’m sure mainstream audio sells more in an hour, than all of HEA does in a year. That is probably me even being generous. The engineers from mainstream audio stopped looking at HEA as a reference in the mid 80’s to mid 90’s, and once the mainstream caught up and past up HEA technically that left HEA out of the cutting edge race, again, for the masses. When the CES became the CTA (Consumer Technology Association) HEA all but dropped out of the picture. There was a time when High End Audio was the teacher, but that was brief. Electronic innovations move so fast, it’s like 1 Hi-tech yr = 15 HEA years.
I saw this profoundly with the progress of CDPs. HEA didn’t have a clue how to do CDPs. In fact 5 years ago you could pick up a $29.00 CDP that out performed most of HEA’s competition. We conducted these listening tests ourselves on TuneLand. Any time you see an audio group have to go backward in technology you know that they were not able to move forward. Vinyl and tape aren’t better than digital, HEA just hasn’t conquered digital. Digital doesn’t have the same ingredients as vinyl or tape, but HEA treated digital like it was the same language as analog. So, certain parts of the process went horribly wrong. For example: you can’t throw a big transformer in the same chassis with digital parts (chips and laser), so no wonder these "Low End" players beat the tar out of the audiophile ones. When CDPs came into play some High-enders (including myself) said "don’t do that", but the reviewers and market didn’t care. Evidently they just wanted to move boxes and never took the time to explore the new parts and pieces that makes the reading and conversion function in regards to fields, Ooooppps!
When you make BooBoos like that, that are obvious, and more, you are no longer the leader. Ultimately Hi-tech audio is going to put High End Audio’s lights out. Not with turntables and tapedecks, but pretty much all the rest. And this is why you are seeing so many of the big ticket items popping up for sale all over the place. Honestly it’s a lot like the big laser disc. Once Hi-tech moves in prices and size go down, performance goes up and the laser disc and big tube TV’s become collectors items (hopefully). HEA is going through the exact same thing.
Michael Green
www.michaelgreenaudio.net