The Dumbing Down of Audio

[Resident Loser]

Sorta' reminds me of...

...an editorial I read some time ago in "Pro Audio Review"...

http://www.proaudioreview.com/publishers_page/april04.shtml

jimHJJ(...like I said sorta'...)

 

[gene]

...an editorial I read some time ago in "Pro Audio Review"...

http://www.proaudioreview.com/publis.../april04.shtml

jimHJJ(...like I said sorta'...)

Good article, though I disagree with his assessment of midfi audio gear today vs yesterday. For $250 you can get a DVD player that has commendable CD playback, certainly much better than a 10 year old portable CD player. You can still buy a good two channel receiver or integrated amp. The fact that you can get a decent $200 surround sound receiver today, is simply amazing since this was not possible 20 or even 10 years ago!

 

[Sheep]

Man you are anal retentive Thanks we fixed it.

And there will be more to come..

Oh, look at this! A typo in the Monitor Audio Ipod review.

In the Final Thoughs section, the words "for" and "a" are together as one.



SheepStar

 

[b_panther_g]

Marketing...The Double Edged Sword

Hey everyone.

Hello Gene. Great article. I liked it.

You wrote…
“…Despite our advances in science, one divine truth can always undermine us – marketing. Because of marketing, and lots of gullible people that fall victim to it, reality TV shows, pet rocks, and low-carb diets sell…”


It’s true, high quality music reproduction is a shrinking niche. And currently marketing isn’t helping. But, IMHO, the things you sited are simply the affects of a bigger problem…

"High-end Audio Equipment Manufactures Suck At Marketing!"​

I know that sounds nuts but (IMHO) it’s the truth. But I’ll try to explain my point of view thoroughly.

Marketing has it’s good points and if done correctly can turn this industry around almost immediately.

Most people aren’t very gullible. Marketing is a science. The products you mentioned were marketed very well.

For an example of good marketing in high-end audio/video let’s look at a website I came across… Audioholics.com (Heard of it… )


Your business – Audioholics.com – does a great job marketing.

• You get the word out by forming partnerships and business relation ships w/ other popular sites (i.e. the HTA).

• Your forum posts rank well in Google and other search engines - this attracts new readers.

• Your site has grown (and continues to grow) to one of the most visited HT sites on the Internet - Very impressive. On top of that…

• I continue to read your site because (I believe) you’re doing what you say – “Pursuing the Truth in Audio & Video.”

High-end manufactures can learn a lot from you guys. (1st I’ll Talk About the Good)

• Yes – High-end manufactures are the backbone of the high-end market. After all they make the equipment we all enjoy.

• Yes – Some do try to educate their potential customers, even though they may not get the sale (I.E. Axiom Audio has a newsletter with great setup tips for newbies)

• Yes – They do trade shows to show off their latest and greatest products

That’s all true but (Here Comes The Bad)…

Their Marketing Only Targets Existing Customers​

“The one exception are the (very few) manufactures who help new or budding enthusiasts (again the Axiom newsletter comes to mind)”


Marketing is where every-high end manufactures (at least all the ones I can think of) fall flat on their face. Their marketing is just plain bad.

So what if they put an add in an audio mag. Everyone I know who reads audio mags are already into high-end audio. So...

Are audio manufactures banking on their existing customer’s upgrades as a means to long term growth? From a marketing standpoint, that’s what it looks like to me. And it’s a bad idea and business plan.

People (for the most part) want the best they can afford (2 points for Mr. Obvious). People embrace new technology if they see it enriching their lives (CD=Better sound > DVD=Better movies > IPOD=Music on the go).

High-end audio manufactures simply need to find out how their products enrich people’s lives and…

Market It… Market It… Then Market It Some More…
​

Bose, who isn’t high-end IMHO, does a great job at this. They advertise their crap, oops I mean “quality products”, everywhere. (Please forgive me for the jabs at Bose) The point is…

“Even if the products aren’t the best, People will buy it if they think it’s the best”​

KNOCK! KNOCK! High-end manufactures – Here’s Your Opportunity.

Convince the public (people who don’t know you) that your widget is exactly what they’re looking for if they want to really enjoy that CD, or DVD, or Reality TV Show, or whatever.

If high-end manufactures stop trying to resell to their existing customers, and market to new customers, the industry as a whole would be better off.


---Sidebar---
Hey Audioholics (just incase you aren’t busy enough) here’s a golden opportunity to grow your business and introduce new people to high-end audio/video…

1. Find Audio Manufactures willing to donate some money and/or equipment

2. Find a local space and set up a quality HT once a month or every other month or on the regular

3. Do “gorilla marketing” =>Fliers, Posters, Postcards, etc. =>Libraries, Laundry Mats, Local Stores, Churches, etc.

4. Have a free raffle => Give away an IPOD or MP3 player or 2 new DVDs or a vacation (just give away something – anything – people want)

5. Have a family movie night or Sat. morning or...(You get the picture)

6. Play some quality CDs for those who show up early

7. Talk a little about high-end audio/video – then play a movie – then have the raffle

Bottom line…
You’ll be attracting new people to high-end audio/video
You’ll get more readers for your site
You’ll help some high-end manufactures attract new customers

It sounds like a potential Win-Win-Win to me.
---End Sidebar---


Just my thoughts.

Enjoy,
Panther

 

[Sheep]

4. Have a free raffle => Give away an IPOD or MP3 player or 2 new DVDs or a vacation (just give away something – anything – people want)

Something tells me you havent been here in awhile...

3. Do “gorilla marketing” =>Fliers, Posters, Postcards, etc. =>Libraries, Laundry Mats, Local Stores, Churches, etc.

Waste of time. They already get more hits through google then anywhere else.


Good post though!

SheepStar

 

[jeffsg4mac]

And there will be more to come..

Oh, look at this! A typo in the Monitor Audio Ipod review.

In the Final Thoughs section, the words "for" and "a" are together as one.



SheepStar

Sheep, Blame Clint, Don't blame me, He was supposed to have edited it for me.

 

[Sheep]

Sheep, Blame Clint, Don't blame me, He was supposed to have edited it for me.

No worries..

You think I single handedly wrote my Velodyne DPS-12 review? Buawhahaha, NO way!

SheepStar

 

[supervij]

Something tells me you havent been hear in awhile...

I was trying to fight it, but I can't; I gotta say it . . .

That's "here", not "hear".



cheers,
supervij

 

[Sheep]

I was trying to fight it, but I can't; I gotta say it . . .

That's "here", not "hear".



cheers,
supervij

whoops!

SheepStar

 

[flyv65]

I'd wager that just about everyone on here manages to do some critical listening from time to time.

I agree with your assessment, but I'd use a different phrase for it (sorry Gene, that means I disagree with you, too )! I know that many people sit down to "study" the music being played, but I prefer to kind of "relax" into the sound. On some of my stuff the sound can be so enveloping that I feel like I'm sitting in a little pub 3 rows back centerstage, only my clothes don't smell like smoke afterwards. One of the earlier posters said that "critical listening" is a euphemism for "picking out all the flaws you can find", but I prefer to think of it as "total emmersion"-sometimes the flaws can be the charm of a track, too.

Bryan...I know I didn't explain this well at all...

 

[Rock&Roll Ninja]

Marketing is where every-high end manufactures (at least all the ones I can think of) fall flat on their face. Their marketing is just plain bad.

So what if they put an add in an audio mag. Everyone I know who reads audio mags are already into high-end audio. So...

Equipment market is bad, I'll give you that.

But equipment manufacturers DO NOT advertise in audio mags. They advertise in GEAR mags. If you subscribed, and read every issue of Spin, Rolling Stone, Blender, and Vibe for 12 months you could count every quality loudspeaker advertisement on your clenched fist. Not a single ad. This is the exact market you want to sell your product to (music buyers), and they refuse to advertise.

Who does advertise to the music buyers? iPod, Zen (the rival MP3 player), and Monster Cable. maybe Sennheiser has one small 1/8th page add in the back of a magzine.

People won't buy what they don't know about. I also like in MTV's Cribs (ie. Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous Mk.2) professional musicians never own audio gear of any kind. They might have a 110" screen movie theater with a Bose 3-2-1, but thats the limit of their intrest in their own trade(They may have a grand piano they don't know how to play). One "rapper" even pointed out his $200 JVC boombox as his, and I quote, "Ultimate big pimpin' **** boombox". Wow, a $5million dollar house with the rent-controlled stereo.

 

[b_panther_g]

Equipment market is bad, I'll give you that.

But equipment manufacturers DO NOT advertise in audio mags. They advertise in GEAR mags. If you subscribed, and read every issue of Spin, Rolling Stone, Blender, and Vibe for 12 months you could count every quality loudspeaker advertisement on your clenched fist. Not a single ad. This is the exact market you want to sell your product to (music buyers), and they refuse to advertise...

That's exactly what I was trying to say. If I owned a speaker company, that's where I'd advertise. But...I don't own a speaker company. I guess the people who do like keeping their product secret .

Anyway. Great point.

Enjoy,
Panther

 

[b_panther_g]

Something tells me you havent been here in awhile...



Waste of time. They already get more hits through google then anywhere else.


Good post though!

SheepStar

Hey SheepStar,



The point was to get local people to actually "experience" high-end A/V.

The internet is a "pull" technology. People who are looking for high-end audio easily find this website.

But most people on the internet don't go looking for high-end audio websites - Hence the suggestion for local HT meets. To attract New people to high-end HT.

But how can they attract people. They could just say...

"Hey people. Come over here and look at my great HT."​

But that will do nothing but attract people who are already interested. Now if they say...

"Hey come and enjoy this great movie.
Oh and we're giving away something you want for free
[i.e. IPOD, MP3 Player, DVDs, Vacations, etc.]"​

Now they'll attract a bunch of people who wouldn’t normally be interested in HT. They'll go and, for the 1st time, "experience" a great HT. That gets a new customer every time.

BTW this type of marketing is nothing new. It's simple and battle tested for at least 100 years. Need examples?

• Picture Henry Ford giving a test drive (Very successful car company)

• Look at the presentation room in a Bose store (Very successful audio manufacture – even with crappy products)

• Read the CES coverage with Monster Cable's light bulb demo (Very successful cable company – even with overpriced products)

All similar marketing techniques (I know they're not exactly the same, but I don't want to get into a marketing discussion).

Anyway if they did it right, it would attract many New people to the world of high-end A/V. People who wouldn’t have found out about high-end A/V any other way.

I hope this makes more sense. Sorry for the confusion.

Enjoy,
Panther

 

[gene]

1. Find Audio Manufactures willing to donate some money and/or equipment

2. Find a local space and set up a quality HT once a month or every other month or on the regular

3. Do “gorilla marketing” =>Fliers, Posters, Postcards, etc. =>Libraries, Laundry Mats, Local Stores, Churches, etc.

4. Have a free raffle => Give away an IPOD or MP3 player or 2 new DVDs or a vacation (just give away something – anything – people want)

5. Have a family movie night or Sat. morning or...(You get the picture)

6. Play some quality CDs for those who show up early

7. Talk a little about high-end audio/video – then play a movie – then have the raffle

#1 Yea thats a good one though sometimes its easier to pull teeth

#2 Too time consuming and too much overhead for us but you are welcome to do this at your home and invite fellow forum members

#3 Small potatoes compared to search engine optimization which as you realized we are doing very well in

#4 Uh, we have like 5 continuous monthly forum contests and 1 major site wide contest (usually every other month or so)

#5 You don't have to pull my families arms to come to our Showcase home to watch a movie. I still have to get a pop corn machine that way I can officially charge for admission

#6 My brothers appreciate that, but my wifes side usually prefers compressed latino music

#7 See #4

Good post and thanks for the feedback!

 

[supervij]

I agree with your assessment, but I'd use a different phrase for it (sorry Gene, that means I disagree with you, too )! I know that many people sit down to "study" the music being played, but I prefer to kind of "relax" into the sound. On some of my stuff the sound can be so enveloping that I feel like I'm sitting in a little pub 3 rows back center, only my clothes don't smell like smoke afterwards. One of the earlier posters said that "critical listening" is a euphemism for "picking out all the flawsyou can find", but I prefer to think of it as "total emmersion"-sometimes the flaws cna be the charm of a track, too.

Bryan...I know I didn't explain this well at all...

Actually, this is more what I meant when I said that I like to sit down for some critical listening. I'm never really interested in searching out the flaws, I just like that feeling of being immersed in some really great album -- hopefully, a really great-sounding album too.

cheers,
supervij

 

[Rip Van Woofer]

Another good treatment of this subject:

http://mixonline.com/mag/audio_quality_age_good/

 

[Wayde Robson]

Great post Gene, great discussion.

First I want to go at B Panther G.

I think a lot of the so called “high end” manufacturers …that includes writers in the general vicinity of Stereophile magazine if I may be so bold as to name names… do a lot to UN-market themselves.

I hope I don’t get myself banned and on Clint and Gene’s discard list … but I’ve read just one too many hi-fi reviews from a writer who calls a $10,000 pair of speakers “pretty good, for the money”. I once read a review about an Arcam ($5000) amp referred to as an amp on a budget. I’ve read countless products that sell snake oil, wooden knobs, Shakti stones, cable elevators et all.

I think the average guy who is ready to delve a little deeper than the Sony HTIB he used in college might happen across a site on Transparent Cables and they’ll just say well… count me out. And they go get a Sony receiver and some Bose Speakers.

I would submit to you that the “high end” is by definition unmarketable. The non-marketing of the true high end is exactly what keeps them high end.

Despite considering myself an objectivist I lost respect for Nakamichi the first time I saw the brand on the shelves at Best Buy. If Wal-Mart started selling Sunfire, its owners would be pissed off!

You don’t have to get up into the Sunfire or Conrad Johnson to see the high end elitism. What if you could find Rotel at Best Buy? People would lose faith in them. An NAD sighting at Circuit City would make me want to cry.

I consider Denon on par with most of the middle high-end stuff (at least Rotel/Adcom/NAD). I think Denon does a lot to promote its brand perhaps at the cost of some of the elite aura the name once enjoyed.

 

[MDS]

I understand the notion that were some of the 'high-end' brands to be available at your local brick and mortar store they would lose some of their cache, BUT that plays right into the whole 'elitism' that surrounds the high-end.

- High price is associated with high performance whether true or not.
- The desire to have a name that is not readily recognizable by the masses ('exclusivity').

Unfortunately, the elitism attitude is exactly why we end up with arguments like:
- How can that $200 DVD player possilbly sound as good as my $2000 Esoteric brand.
- You can't hear the difference my multi-thousand cables make because your system is not 'resolving' enough.
- If you could afford it, you'd see what you've been missing.

Obviously, some of the high end is substantially better than the mass market, but not nearly enough to justify a 10x or even sometimes 100x price differential.

 

[Wayde Robson]

I'm with ya MDS.

I hate to see Gene's initial article devolve into arguments about the specifics of what's worth a lot of extra money. He covered so much interesting ground in it.

But...

Believe me I respect the Hafler/Sunfire/C.Johnson gear. If it didn't cost as much as a car I'd only buy stuff made by an engineer who was following his own vision.

But still, I read stuff like this online

http://www.bigpicturebigsound.com/article_686.shtml

and I go ... huh?

This is someone who should know the audio/video scene. But he's perpetutating a philosophy of guilt for not making sacrifices. He seems to be saying that if you're not involved in a constant cycle upgraditus your destiny is to lose interest in your system.

 

[Rock&Roll Ninja]

What if you could find Rotel at Best Buy? People would lose faith in them. An NAD sighting at Circuit City would make me want to cry.

Suprisingly the local NAD/PSB dealer is also the local discount furniture & car stereo place ("we finance anyone! bad credit! No credit! Military!").