Current Trends In Home Audio

Integration of a nice 2 channel stereo will be one of my top priorities in my next home/condo search...I totally agree with Slappy about the new construction homes that have the tv "nook" off to the side of the fireplace in a corner...lame lame lame.

There are so many factors that go into this question of "where are all the high end rigs"

Eyeballman brought up one point...in certain parts of the country, real estate prices prohibit many people from affording many other luxuries...after all...more people financed their homes with ARM's last year than ever in history only to be able to afford the house that they wanted.

In mid Missouri where I live, real estate is cheap so the luxuries are abound. I detail cars for Dr's and pretty much all of them have one or more 2 channel rigs (the high $$$ stuff too) and many of them have high end home theaters to boot, so I see alot of systems.

In Los Angeles, where my father lives, we frequent the open houses in his neighborhood when I am there and there seems to be a mixture of high end and mass market...it seems as if it just a matter of priorities. One house down the block houses the worlds largest private collections of classical guitars...the family had always been musicians and yup...there was a high end rig there...on the other hand, some homes had a bose wave radio/cd player in every room...but you wouldn't want to ask how much the antique living room rug is worth...lol...cause then you'd get a case of sticker shock. I don't think the people are "hiding" their gear...most people want to show it off...even to prospective buyers if only to have their house seem that much more luxurious and worth the asking price.

just my nickles worth

Ellery

A friend's relative did really well financially when they sold their high tech company before year 2000, they build a 6000+ sq ft house in Saratoga in Bay Area. For those who does not know the demographic, the house is worth $7M+.

When it comes to stereo, they build a room for home theater and my friend naturally came to me for equipment recommendation. I showed them my SF Amati and suggested Cremona for speakers, their jaw dropped when they heard the price of Cremona. Funny thing is their front door cost $20k alone, enough to buy the whole Cremona set.

High end stereo does not get much publicity as other luxury merchandises, I bet more rich people know about Patek Phillipe than ARC or Rowland. For us to survive, manufactures need to advertise more not just in Robb's Report, but in News Week or Business Week as well.

Not surprised at all.

I've already assumed a small percentage of consumers will devote noticeable percentage of their disposable incomes toward a certain hobby. And, smaller percentrage of these will build a decent stereo system.

One problem is there are just too many damn expensive hobbies out there competing with hifi. As I read from one member's post on this forum, narcotics, alcohol, cheap sex and fast cars seem to take priority over his stereo. Tsk tsk.

I was selling home audio about 10 years back. I'd have to tell'ya you'd have to be pretty slick to turn an ordinary person into a malcontent audio video fiend. In my one year of service, I am proud to have done that to 5 individuals.

I think the internet will get more people into hifi, but the most brick and mortar dealers will never know it.

in my area, most of the nicer homes we have been looking at lately have had dedicated home theater rooms. for example, we have been to the 2 local home shows (first group of homes were in the $1.3 - $2.0 million dollar range and the other home show had 12 homes averaging around $700,000). 90% of these homes all had dedicated home theater rooms, some of them were pretty nice. most of them had seperate cooling systems, acoustical treatments, nice lighting systems, and the equipment was contained in its own seperate room.

A few years back I lived in a nice planned community north of Houston. Houses ranged from $100,000 thru many millions. Average was probably around $300k. I was seriously considering opening a high-end HT and 2-channel store. After much research, one comment kept coming up: "Disposable Income". Many of the people who live in these nice areas are not only financially house-bound, but the Beemer, and Mercedes wagon for the wife, plus the new cars for the kids to drive leave precious little money left-over for high-end audio. Sad commentary on society when we are more concerned on impressing the neighbors than on enjoying life the way we would truly like it.