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High End is Dead?

Browsing used audio sites such as Audiogon and the Marts, high end gear ads are dominated by several dealers. Non-dealer ads are usually people trying to push 15+ year old off-brand junk at 60-70% of MSRP (when they were new). They don't sell anything. You could slash Wilsons, Magicos, etc, 50% off retail and no one will buy them.

No one buys if it costs more than 1k. It's not that they're not interested -- the ads get plenty of views. It's that the asking prices are just way over the ability of buyers to pay. Fact is, if you see a high end piece for sale it's probably by a dealer, often times trying to push it at 15% off retail because its a trade in, but also often they are taking a good chunk off the price 30, 40 sometimes 50% off. They can be famous brands with a million positive reviews. No buyers.

Are we just poor, and that's all there is to it? 
madavid0
ghasley
382 posts
 
Most of ads on Audiogon is for old and/or off-brand gear for less than $1000. Wilsons and Magicos are a tiny minority of listings and they're all from dealers. In reality no one is buying high end. I went to AXPONA this year, and I didn't see many (any?) people discussing a purchase with the dealers -- come in, listen for a minute, than leave with a pamphlet.
@madavid0 

Like many of us who start out on this site, you have been given the benefit of the doubt repeatedly with your posts and the "conclusions" you make based on incomplete or faulty evidence sited. High end is doing very well but it is doing very well by doing it differently than in the past. Your quote above is respectfully off the mark. What is off brand? The biggest flawed conclusion you draw is since "nothing" is for sale on Audiogon, High End is doomed. Maybe its my "poor understanding" of economics but if not much is for sale that interests you I would submit that maybe those items find satisfied users in the new retail market (they keep the gear) or the used gear that does come available sells quickly. The absence of inventory/items for sale actually indicates a healthy market...not just with audio but with the economy in general. There was alot of high quality gear for sale for peanuts during the recession of 2008-11 but did that make High End healthy or no? Because you walked around Axpona and no one was hauling home the show gear in your presence means High End is in trouble? I don't go to shows to buy, I go to shows to research and hear alot of different gear in one place during a concentrated time frame.

Now to the threads you start, the following are just the past 5 you have started. High end is dead? Schiit not that good? Isolation stands: Snakeoil? Integrateds: Why do they all SUCK? Mapleshade isolation: Does nothing? 

But if I only stop with your last 5 threads started, I would have missed out on these beauties: Cartidges: Complete Scam? Synergistic Research: Scam?  What is your agenda and why the negative posturing and fear mongering?

High end isn't dead just because you didn't see a guy tossing cash on the floor in front of a dealer at Axpona any more than Schiit is bad because it didn't measure up, in your opinion, to an Esoteric stack in the next room. Everything is relative.  I'll go back to my original opinion that while you might not be an actual troll, you have troll-like tendencies as displayed by your repeated introduction of thread topics similar to a 7th grade coach who also is forced to teach a civics class and today's topic is economics. Peace.


audiopoint
131 posts
 

@raigl59


Thank you for the recommendation and I'll give it a listen however I prefer Sinatra...


"It's a real good bet. The best is yet to come."


and I am pretty sure I’ve been living here on this planet a bit longer than you ⌣

Robert


wolf_garcia
4,650 posts
 
A couple of things…many young people attend concerts in droves (actual droves), and not just for electronica, so there’s that. Also, "high end" has always been dead in the sense that the amount of people who "actively listen" to recorded music has always been minuscule, and alleged High End "salons" have no idea how to sell the stuff to anybody but the already interested. Local legends Goodwin’s High End (it’s in the name so it must be good…good…win…high end) doesn’t have a mailing list for events, doesn’t do live music at their shop (a travesty…you can get a great jazz trio to play for less money than the cost of a used cable), and is staffed with both nice people, and self absorbed "experts" with minimal 2 way conversation content absorption skills. "We don’t sell Linn belts (true thing), but here’s a great $5,000 turntable for ya." The good news is that companies like Schiit and Rogue and others prove all night that less precious gear can sound astonishingly good. I run sound for live shows, and attend things when I’m not too lazy to get off the couch, and last weekend saw the Brad Mehldau trio, and the weekend before that saw Yo Yo and the BSO…any reference for my home rig? Hell no…my home rig is tweaked and assembled for me only! Note that Goodwin’s should open a "middle end" and "low end" biz.
michaelgreenaudio's avatar
michaelgreenaudio
643 posts
 

Hi Guys

I was gone for the last couple of days but was looking forward to reading more on this topic. First, why I was gone was because some of the members here asked me to help them with their "final" system. I find that interesting that they made the point of saying "final" instead of first or another. The Harry & J Gordon audio kids are in our late 50's-80's. The HEA revolving door lost a lot of it's steam, and fun to be honest, because the magazines were keeping us under their spell. When the magazines started loosing that hip generation of reviewers I think many of us began thinking "is the end near". After the mid 90's the industry had a different feel to it, which I mentioned earlier. When I read some of the comments made, the image in my head is the guy driving on threads yet still trying to pump air into those over used tires.

The Kool Cats to me are the guys who have enjoyed this hobby for what it was and what we have explored together with all of the great personalities and products. However we have also grown in wisdom and discernment as listeners. We are the guys who lived through the golden era of HEA. The quest of making it better, was a different one from those with one foot in the polish and the other in the bucks. There are younger Kool Cats out there now, but I don't see them all that interested in HEA. A great sound in their room yes (still having dedicated rooms), but no interest in the same language or chassis. The younger newer guys (and gals) have no desire to go to the HEA shows. Why? Because they have their own shows of advanced audio. I did a system for one of these younger gents just 3 weeks ago and it was killer, only he didn't call it a listening room or a home theatre. The name for this room was "the gaming room". The focus was on sight & sound but no huge amps sitting on display along with their hard to drive speakers. We did a simple Tunable setup, and I have done two of these setups since because of the demo he gave to others.

The hobby has changed, and as great as the listening hobby or movie hobby still are, the gaming hobby has become the latest addiction for the senses. After we built this gaming room/system the owner played a video from "Tool" and I think I left sometime in the early morning, after being turned on the tons of artist through his eyes and ears. He didn't once mention anything HEA, but was totally into the soundstage I had created for him. Things were floating in and out of the room's dimensions, appearing on and off the screen. Sound Stage!

I don't see the new generation debating the meaning of soundstage like highenders do. These folks are all about the electronic soundstage, and either the system can play it or not. HEA is a very hip thing, but it's somewhat weird for us to hang our hat on something that will be archived as a past technology. Yep, there are a few youngsters that are going to keep HEA alive, but compared to the mainstream HEA is a declining species. And, why shouldn't it be? I have to apologize to some of you on here for me being so bold, but if you think newer recordings are crap, you need to literally consider the source. Soundstaging is and always will be advancing. If you have a system that can't play it, that's a different issue than the recording.

Michael Green

www.michaelgreenaudio.net

craigl59
306 posts
 

+1 Michael

You describe the situation perfectly as age and generational-based. Am in my mid-60s and went to a professional orchestra concert recently. Was the youngest person there by a large margin.

There are few or no young orchestral lovers coming up and wonder if the HEA landscape is similar.

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