I was doing some reading and came across this article after finding out that Gibson had acquired a majority of Onkyo USA and Teac Corp. over the past two years.<br><br>
First Onkyo - Now Gibson Guitar Acquires Majority of Teac; Can Gibson Put the Pieces Together? - Strata-gee.com<br><br>
And what follows are my thoughts regarding Teac and Onkyos' "troubles".<br><br>
While I'm not an expert on these matters I do believe maybe I have some ideas to share regarding the decline of Teac over the years as well as Onkyo's recent sharp decline. If you happen to see this same literary elsewhere do not be surprised as I may feel compelled to get the word out. While no failure of Gibson to be sure these companies have both fallen prey to market shift and have not quite kept pace with these changes. I'll be looking at a small part of the market share in the following. Bare in mind I'm not expert and I may be totally off base about the collective demand of consumers, but I'll try to see if I can nail some heads.<br><br>
I will begin with Teac. Long gone are the days of the legendary reel to reel cassette recorders and are we've been forgetting about this for years now. Take a look at Matsushita Corp and their legendary Technic's kickstand the SL-1200 turntable. Even a bullet proof direct drive turntable is still relevant today in a few crowds, but the Technics brand is nearly extinct. Not quickly enough was the brand abandoned after it's weakening in the 90's that even switching the brand of home audio products to Panasonic and investing in costly tech from Texas Instruments for their Full Digital Amplifiers in home theater receivers. Add a couple of misses with poorly excecuted feature sets like only 1 HDMI in and out and that's all she wrote, Matsushita home theater receivers in the US, gone.<br><br>
Looking at Teac's home audio, which I have come to love so dearly even with it's faults, it's not hard to see why they've been losing ground for more than a decade. Nearly 10 years ago Teac had introduced it's Reference series of components. A supposed trickle down from the so touted Esoteric line of which it resembles more now than it did but unfortunately we don't one "micro" esoteric components, we want less costly versions of them (which I will add that the Distinction series does well and should be the only line that receives the "Trickle down from Esoteric" marketing treatment). If the Reference line had been intruduced with a full range of products today like it was 10 years or so ago with home theater receivers, disc players of many types, I believe it would have had more universal success today with proper marketing. Space conservation is becoming a concern for more and more Americans as more of them become renters rather than home owners. I just imagine a compact Teac reference receiver with the niceties of HDMI, wi-fi audio streaming, USB connectivity and those nifty little B&O Ice amplifier modules fed by a respectable switching power supply. Make those sexy components in gold, black and silver again, people are clamoring for the dated used one's on eBay all the time, it's what we want. What we don't want is for our expectations to be let down when we purchase the CR-H500NT and find it's a wholly inadequate audio product even though on paper it seems cool. I want an AG-H550 with HDMI and I want little Teac Reference monoblock ampliers fed from the preouts of the newly envisioned AG-H550.<br><br>
Ok so this is becoming too much about me and not enough about what I'm really here to get at. So let's move foward with Onkyo. Message to Onkyo... No more plastic! I remember when I had my Onkyo TX-DS787, a hefty mamoth of an AVR and I had a few others over the years and found them to be satisfying with a few statements with the blue aoura around the volume knob that as long as it could be dimmed we could live with it because we knew all our friends would be really impressed by the "cool" look. Dot matrix displays were another halmark as well as really large well lit remote keypads with countless features. The peak of my respect and hightened excitement for the brand was when HDMI 1.3 receivers rolled out from Onkyo. The TX-SR805 was a true monster of a receiver weighing a massive 50 pounds and at under $1000 was a true bargain for it's features and raw brute power. At this point it seemed Onkyo was on top of their game and selling boat loads of receivers. The next line came out and the successor to the goliath TX-SR805 had inexplicably lost 15 pounds of weight? Where did the weight go? After this we suffered as we saw the Onkyo products lose their quality to such a point were they have must have become the lowest bidder at some point. I went to Best Buy and saw an Insignia home theater in a box system that had a full size AVR and familiar designed speaker package. Looking the thing over I could tell it shared most every bit of it's internal componentry with an entry level Onkyo receiver. I wasn't sure if this was the result of over manufacturing receivers on Onkyo's part or if Best Buy placed an order for them.
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If either of these companies want to earn new business from people like myself they might consider getting back to setting trends rather than following them. Teac set a trend with it's Reference line that compact components could not just sound good, but function just as fully as full sized ones. They did this all while making very beautiful looking equipment as well. Onkyo's focus should be the bring new and exciting technologies to the forefront with products aggresively poised to keep the competition at bay for a significant period of time while other companies scramble to think of something better. I always thought of Onkyo having very straight forward lineups that I could easily determine what model fit my requirements, now there's this confusion for me between the HT-RC and TX-SR(nr) lineups and what seems like 6 entry level models with similar features. What am I supposed to buy?<br><br>
Well I didn't mean to go off on a tangent about Onkyo but this is just what I observe. I usually don't go to this length to say something regarding things like this. Most companies are very good at determining what the consumer wants and sometimes they don't have the resources to materilize what the consumer is demanding or maybe the wrong set of circumstances guides them away from doing what the consumer wants. Only thing I have further to add, which is more of an reiteration, is that if these brands wish to truly revitilize they must set themselves from the pack and be trend settings and let others follow your work.
