Wondering if this is any indication of where Yamaha is headed

[little wing]

This article was back in January, but wondering if anybody has seen it, or have any thoughts on Yamaha and where they are headed as far as the home audio market.

Yamaha Home Audio exits Malaysian market - av2day.com

 

[lovinthehd]

Lack of demand? Aren't a good chunk of their products made there?

 

[little wing]

Lack of demand? Aren't a good chunk of their products made there?

I believe so. I would guess it is lack of demand there.

 

[TLS Guy]

I believe so. I would guess it is lack of demand there.

I think there is going to be lack of demand all round. The glory days of home audio in the 70s and 80s are long gone from the "rear view mirror." I think the industry making multichannel surround audio the standard was a big mistake. Even with AV making high value two channel audio high quality AND affordable would have been a far better bet.

This almost forcing of multi channel audio has come up hard against total system cost and above all, interior design practicality. The other issue has been rapid obsolescence and reliability. The latter caused be high complexity units built down to a price. This whole debacle has been a huge mistake on the part of the audio and AV industry at large.

Now Trump has come on the scene with his totally daft and onerous tariffs, the coffin of home AV will become firmly nailed down for the foreseeable future.

So, my advice is to look after your gear very, very carefully.

 

[little wing]

I think there is going to be lack of demand all round. The glory days of home audio in the 70s and 80s are long gone from the "rear view mirror." I think the industry making multichannel surround audio the standard was a big mistake. Even with AV making high value two channel audio high quality AND affordable would have been a far better bet.

This almost forcing of multi channel audio has come up hard against total system cost and above all, interior design practicality. The other issue has been rapid obsolescence and reliability. The latter caused be high complexity units built down to a price. This whole debacle has been a huge mistake on the part of the audio and AV industry at large.

Now Trump has come on the scene with his totally daft and onerous tariffs, the coffin of home AV will become firmly nailed down for the foreseeable future.

So, my advice is to look after your gear very, very carefully.

I would agree. I have a simple 5.1 set-up, and due to cost and room constraints that's probably as far as I'll go. I toyed with the idea of another subwoofer, but I don't really have a good space to install a second sub. And as far as these tariffs go, just SMH... I paid $900 for a Rythmik sub about 5 years ago. Two weeks ago, that same sub was going for almost 1.5k! Now, I look at the web-site, and it's not even available right now, and the price says "TBD". So yeah, I'm treating my humble system with kid gloves, because replacing my AVR is going to run me at least 2.5k, when the time comes.

 

[Teetertotter?]

There just isn't any buzz by the speaker and AVR folks, towards the general public, about HT. Advertising is NILL, accept audio related Magazines. Goes back to the HAVE vs HAVE NOTS? HT is a luxury item. Perhaps people today are more into TV's and Cell Phones? Perhaps a sound bar is a more affordable accessory?

 

[dlaloum]

Back at the start of HT.... when Fosgate released his first Dolby Surround processor... the surround was a single channel, 15W to 25W was deemed ample, and one or two repurposed car speakers was deemed adequate!!

Then we went from the sublime to the ridiculous!!

A 4.0 setup with a good pair of front speakers, and a compact bookshelf or satellite pair at the rear, is quite capable of providing excellent HT performance... with the right choice of gear and setup, 95% of the available performance is there with this simplest HT setup.

The rear does not need to have deep bass or high highs... if it covers the 150Hz to 10kHz range then you have captured 99% of what should be in the surround channels.

Where most people wanted a model T ford, capable of taking the family for a drive down the road, the HT fraternity went down the path of trying to supply the average punter with a mid engined supercar.... yeah that was never going to fly! (and it never did!)

Today we have soundbars using direct/reflected sound to provide an adequate impression of surround and height, these can be further improved with compact satellite surrounds... and for minimal outlay, the average buyer can have a home theatre experience.

Yeah I've added height speakers to my setup.... for most material we stream, or play from our NAS (ripped all our DVD's and BD's long ago) - there is little or no difference with the addition of height... the occasional Atmos track from Netflix has something happening there....

I'm running 5.1.4, but there is very little improvement over my previous (2008) 4.0 setup.

And soundbars have improved out of sight from where they were 10 years ago.... I organised a soundbar for my 87yo mother.... it improved sound from her TV substantially, and more was not needed.

HT is and was a niche, going all the way back to its birth .... Briefly (and erroneously) a bunch of companies tried to mainstream it.... but I think we are heading back to a relatively normal status.

 

[lovinthehd]

I think it's just a generational thing largely. Economics to an extent of course as well.

 

[Kingnoob]

I think there is going to be lack of demand all round. The glory days of home audio in the 70s and 80s are long gone from the "rear view mirror." I think the industry making multichannel surround audio the standard was a big mistake. Even with AV making high value two channel audio high quality AND affordable would have been a far better bet.

This almost forcing of multi channel audio has come up hard against total system cost and above all, interior design practicality. The other issue has been rapid obsolescence and reliability. The latter caused be high complexity units built down to a price. This whole debacle has been a huge mistake on the part of the audio and AV industry at large.

Now Trump has come on the scene with his totally daft and onerous tariffs, the coffin of home AV will become firmly nailed down for the foreseeable future.

So, my advice is to look after your gear very, very carefully.

I don’t know if Yamaha is doing bad In America or not.

 

[dlaloum]

I don’t know how surround systems will survive most people these days don’t even make enough to live on. Retail is terrible and that’s all corporations create they require 4 year degrees for anything better or really hard trades. And student loans are impossible to get rid of through bankruptcy so it’s a debt trap. The country might collapse before audio is Gone.
we’re is the extra money for a home theater coming from??? Just the top 20% of earners once tarrifs hit ??
They should go back to 2.1 ch systems.

In days of yore, when Dolby Surround was the big thing, and Fosgate released a processor, to add the surround channel to your stereo setup.... many simply used car speakers for the surround channel, and the power needed for surround was only 25W RMS....

Surround needn't be as expensive as we Nerds have made it...

Just a single back channel with 2 very basic speakers already gives you 80% of the benefits of surround at very little cost.

 

[gene]

I think there is going to be lack of demand all round. The glory days of home audio in the 70s and 80s are long gone from the "rear view mirror." I think the industry making multichannel surround audio the standard was a big mistake. Even with AV making high value two channel audio high quality AND affordable would have been a far better bet.

This almost forcing of multi channel audio has come up hard against total system cost and above all, interior design practicality. The other issue has been rapid obsolescence and reliability. The latter caused be high complexity units built down to a price. This whole debacle has been a huge mistake on the part of the audio and AV industry at large.

Now Trump has come on the scene with his totally daft and onerous tariffs, the coffin of home AV will become firmly nailed down for the foreseeable future.

So, my advice is to look after your gear very, very carefully.

This makes me want to cry because everything you say is so true and resonates with me. That, combined with people don't have the attention span to read anymore and just want to see Instagram and Tiktok reels makes this even more problematic. I can spend hours crafting a review editorial with measurements and get 10X more traffic just doing a Youtube video instead.

The Trade War is already having a very negative effect on the audio industry we all love and it's also hitting us at home. I will refrain from making political statements in this thread but this is the 2nd time since 2020 that I'm watching my business decline and I'm not alone. I'm trying to stay positive and pressing on but, it's discouraging to put it mildly. Just 3 months ago, we were bustling with activity and affiliate monetization to pay the bills. That has dried up considerably since. Sorry if I'm sharing too much here but your post got to me.

 

[lovinthehd]

This makes me want to cry because everything you say is so true and resonates with me. That, combined with people don't have the attention span to read anymore and just want to see Instagram and Tiktok reels makes this even more problematic. I can spend hours crafting a review editorial with measurements and get 10-20X more traffic just doing a Youtube video instead. The Trade War is already having a very negative effect on the audio industry we love and it's also hitting us at home. I will refrain from making political statements in this thread but this is the 2nd time since 2020 that I'm watching my business decline. I'm trying to stay positive and pressing on but, it's discouraging to put it mildly. Just 3 months ago, we were bustling with activity and affiliate monetization to pay the bills. That has dried up considerably since. Sorry if I'm sharing too much here but your post got to me.

OTOH I find you do more videos of mediocre value than your written articles, which I prefer. Traffic be damned!

 

[isolar8001]

In days of yore, when Dolby Surround was the big thing, and Fosgate released a processor, to add the surround channel to your stereo setup.... many simply used car speakers for the surround channel, and the power needed for surround was only 25W RMS....

Surround needn't be as expensive as we Nerds have made it...

Just a single back channel with 2 very basic speakers already gives you 80% of the benefits of surround at very little cost.

Some of us had surround even before it was invented.

Run a back pair of speakers off of your amps B switch with the negatives tied together....It worked surprisingly well to aid an airy sound to everything !

 

[MrBoat]

I never did keep up with audio trends and have always been about 20-30 years behind and satisfied pretty much forever until something breaks.

Before all of this so-called political trouble, I had friends losing interest in their HT after going all-in fanatical. Their perceived prospective audience has been even shorter-lived to non-existent and would rather do other things than a family movie night, more than say, a dozen times. Advances in HT, in spite of their hype, have been about as incrementally exciting as a new version of Windows actually is, compared to what is made of it.

Whenever you have an industry that relies so heavily on continuous shopping, it's only going to be a matter of time before it runs into trouble. There has been way too many different speakers and gear to chose from to the point that it all seems relatively generic, including the high-end stuff. All of the available brands I am not ultimately familiar with gives me a sense of product overload and I end up choosing something from JBL because I just don't trust the value is there with these so-called elite, higher-end, boutique products.

I was done buying audio and lost interest in shopping for it well before any talks of tariffs, just from overexposure alone. The music systems I have are so ridiculously clear and immersive that it would be foolish to change it and with multiple backup systems beyond that, thanks to the glut of used and clearance bargains all of this product overload has left in it's path.

 

[lovinthehd]

I never did keep up with audio trends and have always been about 20-30 years behind and satisfied pretty much forever until something breaks.

Before all of this so-called political trouble, I had friends losing interest in their HT after going all-in fanatical. Their perceived prospective audience has been even shorter-lived to non-existent and would rather do other things than a family movie night, more than say, a dozen times. Advances in HT, in spite of their hype, have been about as incrementally exciting as a new version of Windows actually is, compared to what is made of it.

Whenever you have an industry that relies so heavily on continuous shopping, it's only going to be a matter of time before it runs into trouble. There has been way too many different speakers and gear to chose from to the point that it all seems relatively generic, including the high-end stuff. All of the available brands I am not ultimately familiar with gives me a sense of product overload and I end up choosing something from JBL because I just don't trust the value is there with these so-called elite, higher-end, boutique products.

I was done buying audio and lost interest in shopping for it well before any talks of tariffs, just from overexposure alone. The music systems I have are so ridiculously clear and immersive that it would be foolish to change it and with multiple backup systems beyond that, thanks to the glut of used and clearance bargains all of this product overload has left in it's path.

Does seem like we are reliable consumer sheep to an extent....

 

[highfigh]

Some of us had surround even before it was invented.

Run a back pair of speakers off of your amps B switch with the negatives tied together....It worked surprisingly well to aid an airy sound to everything !

Or, one speaker with the wires only connected to the positive terminals.

That's a real blast from the past, for me.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

I don’t know how surround systems will survive most people these days don’t even make enough to live on. Retail is terrible and that’s all corporations create they require 4 year degrees for anything better or really hard trades. And student loans are impossible to get rid of through bankruptcy so it’s a debt trap. The country might collapse before audio is Gone.
we’re is the extra money for a home theater coming from??? Just the top 20% of earners once tarrifs hit ??
They should go back to 2.1 ch systems.

I think people can still get a great 5.1 system with AVR + 5 bookshelf + 1 sub for $1.5K, which is what I had back when I was in a freshman in college.

Add a $500 TV for a total of $2K and you can still enjoy a great system.

Sure, it's not as great as a $10K+ or $20K+ system, but it can still be pretty great at $2K.

 

[Kingnoob]

In days of yore, when Dolby Surround was the big thing, and Fosgate released a processor, to add the surround channel to your stereo setup.... many simply used car speakers for the surround channel, and the power needed for surround was only 25W RMS....

Surround needn't be as expensive as we Nerds have made it...

Just a single back channel with 2 very basic speakers already gives you 80% of the benefits of surround at very little cost.

I-see I used to use a Sony prologic system htib thing. Even with larger speakers hooked to the surround Channels they didn’t do much.

I think people can still get a great 5.1 system with AVR + 5 bookshelf + 1 sub for $1.5K, which is what I had back when I was in a freshman in college.

Add a $500 TV for a total of $2K and you can still enjoy a great system.

Sure, it's not as great as a $10K+ or $20K+ system, but it can still be pretty great at $2K.

yeah I have a low budget system and a Yamaha in another room.

 

[shadyJ]

I deleted a bunch of posts that went off-topic and seemed more like personal squabbling. Let's stick to the subject of conversation, guys.

 

[Bobby Bass]

I believe there is hope for the next generation but there’s no denying the economy’s major impact on consumer buying habits. I see a lot of posts with private sellers noting how they struggling to sell new and used equipment lately. The hope is for the next generation to care about quality sound and invest in equipment. The good news is that I find people in their teens and 20’s love their music. My kids and Their friends are fine listening to their music on their smartphones or at best a Bluetooth speaker. My daughter asked me to help her buy a TV. I bought one and wall mounted it for her. I then bought a soundbar and mounted it under the TV. I made sure it could be run through the remote or her phone So it was no extra effort to use. A week later she calls and tells me how much she loves the sound on her TV but even more she is streaming her music through the soundbar. Also can I get her another soundbar for her roommates TV. They both appreciate the upgraded sound. huzzah! Next step is a 2.1 system. There is hope!