Masimo/Sound United Dealer Portal now says “HARMAN”

[AcuDefTechGuy]

With the collapse of brick and mortar AV stores and big box retailers going in a different direction with the younger crowd, Samsung could easily drop Boston and Def Tech. They would keep Denon and Polk as the "better" in the better/best offerings, but we'll see.

Yeah, probably keep Denon since Denon is so big.

So now Samsung/Harman/SU will sell AVR/AVP from Lexicon, Arcam, JBL, Denon, and Marantz. Seems like too many brands of AVR/AVP.

 

[everettT]

Yeah, probably keep Denon since Denon is so big.

So now Samsung/Harman/SU will sell AVR/AVP from Lexicon, Arcam, JBL, Denon, and Marantz. Seems like too many brands of AVR/AVP.

For one company, it is too many IMHO.

 

[TLS Guy]

For one company, it is too many IMHO.

Yes. They need some time to take stock of their assets. When you really look at it, multichannel home HT with surround sound has been a colossal failure overall. It has led to far fewer homes having decent audio in the home than a generation and more ago. So it needs a fundamental rethink. Out of desperation came the daftest contraption of all; the sound bar! So you have a ton of speakers with different channels crammed into a small box, with speakers far too close together to have any meaningful channel, separation and sound worse than it would be with just one better mono speaker. But it can say Atmos on the box in Target!
So, my hope is that the varied assets of Samsung/Harmon will really lead to meaningful change and not more of the same, which in my view has failed for the majority of households and dealers come to that.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

For one company, it is too many IMHO.

We will see which brands they cut - but scary for the employees of those brands since it will mean layoffs.

 

[ryanosaur]

We will see which brands they cut - but scary for the employees of those brands since it will mean layoffs.

What does Boston Acoustic do these days? Figured that one is low hanging fruit… or at least a good tax write-off for a few years.

 

[TLS Guy]

We will see which brands they cut - but scary for the employees of those brands since it will mean layoffs.

Not necessarily. If they are smart and realize where this has gone of the rails, and bring in better simpler systems with less parts and simpler set up and operation, then the glory days could well be ahead and everything running full bore and employing many. Read Shady's latest speaker review of that two channel speaker system that connects directly to the TV via HDMI. It is affordable and offers superb performance in a simple elegant format. That is the sort of system that could bring much better AV to the many with no hassle. What we rave about here, has been soundly rejected by the many, and to be honest with good reason. Now is a time for serious reflection and re-assessment.