Do you remember?

I was wondering exactly the same thing about roofing contractors. Why is it that you hire them and they give you a ten year guarantee and then they have disolved in two years and formed a new company....?

Perhaps the barriers to entry are too low and competition too fierce and the high end customers a fickle lot which chase the latest marketing hype. Perhaps high end audio has overshot the mainstream customer (cheap systems, even the dreaded Bose, are on the whole pretty darn good). Dunno...good question, as I sit here in Houston airport there is not a single Audio magazine available at the newstands.....but tons of stuff on home improvement, cars,fitness, PC's, self-help, hollywood celebs and regular newsmagazines. Fergilicious was on the cover of one magazine....mmmh hard for a black or gold amplifier face plate to compete with that!!!

John, no what I am saying is that the price that was asked for the product was probably correctly set to enable the manufacturer to make enough money to stay in business. But all this hinges on how many units the manufacturer can sell. You are saying that their lack of staying power only results in having set their prices too low, had they done otherwise they would still be in business. I'm saying that the fickle nature of audio buyers is what kills them. Using your logic, cars would still be the province of royalty and the moneyed and would still be made by hand by Rolls-Royce, Hispano-Suiza and Dusenberg. I am sure there is a different story behind the demise of each of these companies or of these brands and that too low a selling price is not necessarily the issue.

Pbb, so then by your theory, the companies that went out of business did so because they overpriced their products? Obviously if the market felt that they represented a good value for the money, they would sell enough units.

There are plenty of companies who sell products in the same price range as Sonic Frontiers and Aragon, that are still in business. So either these two companies were not selling enough units, which would be hard to believe since most believe they represented good value, or their profit margin per unit was not high enough. FWIW, when you have a low profit margin, you would have to sell many more widgets to stay afloat. You cannot expect to sell as many Audio Research units as Denon units would sell, therefore the profit margin has to be different. When you have a high end company trying to sell units at Denon/Sony profit margins, that company won't be around for long, because they will never sell as many units as Denon/Sony.

John

Did the SF people move on to another venture? Are they still "in the business" under a new name or working for other people? I can't imagine that design talent just disappeared.

The company still exists from what I can tell, and has concentrated on its Anthem line. Correct me if I'm wrong.