Madrigal is Closed

What?
So what future lies for the Levinson folk. Will they be a memory?

Who's next Lexicon? Then they'll be just Harmon Kardon said to State Of The Art in amps and processing? Oh boy has this worked out good!

Klipsch is doing some great things with Aragon too! How long before they are just mediocre amps total junk! It will be like they will be collectors items the way old Marantz and Mac Tube gear is now.

I hoped for these cos. to cross technologies ,but they are closing the doors instead and consolidating their junk lines to make better junk!

Hi-End is dead except for the rich!And that means good Mid-Fi is next to go. I really think that good affordable amps are becoming hard and harder to come by as years go by. There are great amps ,but they are becoming increasingly more expensive and harder to find IMO. It is coming down to digital all in one boxes that are junk in MO.

Aragon,Muse ,B&K,Adcom Conrad Johnson all are amps of the past quality wise.

JMO

I've never owned any of their gear but I hate to see them go.

you've got to be kidding!

The sky is falling, the sky is falling!!!!!

Gorf, do you have any more information? How did you find this out? What operations did Madrigal perform that may not be performed now?

I went to Madrigal.com and it forwards you to http://www.harmanspecialtygroup.com/.

It appears that Levinson and Revel are still operating but you must wonder what affect this has.

I fail to see anything dire in this and think many of you are misreading things and over-reacting.

With the discontinuation of Proceed, there was no reason for Madrigal to exist as an umbrella brand for Levinson alone. Think of Harman Specialty as the new name for Madrigal, which now includes Levinson plus Revel and Lexicon.

Or maybe I'm a pollyanna.

If it's true,to hell with them.There are better companies.

Inna, on what do you base your statement "There are
better companies"? Have you owned Madrigal equipment?

I have owned a number of pieces of Mark Levinson gear,
and I have always found the construction quality beyond
reproach. You can criticize them for their sound, but
to me and many others they are among the best in "high
end". I've had occasion to deal with their service
department, and they were always prompt, polite, helpful
and completely professional. Other firms could do well
to emulate Madrigal.

I just got canned.

Drubin is basically correct an his assesment; that is the big picture.

The powers that be at HSG have not been able to follow through with smaller details/decisions that are part of more major decisions.

Gorf, sorry about your job loss. This economy/recession sucks. I hope Levinson stays afloat. I too have used and enjoyed their some of their equipment. I have especially liked their digital gear and preamps. I am less sanguine about their amps. Best of luck.

I think this is nothing more than a result of their own success and their own corporate direction. A very popular and well-respected brand with very high build quality (although I personally never cared much for their sound), bought and sold and merged several times on the way up the corporate ladder. This has been going on ever since the departure of Mark Levinson (the man). They have always striven for greater market share and corporate success (witness their association with Lexus), and this is just one more step in that evolution.

I wouldn't read too much into it, but instead say that if it upsets you, then support the smaller "craftsmen" in this arena, who make excellent products but have no latent mega-corporate ambitions. E.g., Ayre, BAT, Lamm, Red Rose (duh!), and many many others. Small companies that are dedicated to making the best product they can, content with a small market share, and put their energy into sound quality rather than image. That's the beauty of the high end: it is one of the last bastions of American craftsmanship and quality left in the modern era. The departure of one brand to corporate heaven is no cause for grief IMHO, not when it was clear that that's where they wanted to go in the first place. Celebrate the entrepreneurs among us, for they are the last holdouts against the corporate juggernaut and represent that which is best in America.

Correction, Madrigal is not closed. What has taken place is as follows. Harmon International the mother company of Madrigal has recently purchased Lexicon. And due the brand name recognition that Lexicon has, they have decided to desolve Madrigal in name only. The new name or umbrella is Lexicon. All the Madrigal employees will become Lexicon employees and all the companies under the Madrigal Umbrella excist now as subsidiaries of Lexicon. This is a report received from a Madrigal rep direct. Evidently since the phones were off for a few days the rumor mill produced this rumor. As Mark Twain once said "the report of my death has been exagerated greatly" (give or take a word)

Theo, sorry to burst your bubble.
ALL of the hourly employees were cut; dead.
Most of the salary employees are being kept on for 2 months in an "on call" status; then terminated. (This includes the entire top end, high paid sales staff.)
VERY few employees were actually asked to relocate and become Lexicon employees.

The building is CLOSED!
Reps are reptiles! (Did you hear something from a rep firm or someone inside?) He is being told what to say for now because Lexicon doesn't have all of the details worked out; they don't plan on communicating the facts to the dealers or distributors until next week!

Madrigal used to run 5 brands:

Madrigal Imaging - Sold last year
Proceed - Dead
Audioaccess - JUST transferred before the end of the fiscal year to JBL/Harman Consumer Group
Revel - Was and will be manufactured in the JBL Pro plant in CA; Madrigal only administered the brand
Mark Levinson - The flagship of Madrigal will now be engineered and ASSEMBLED at Lexicon. The decisions have been made to farm out as much as possible (even if this means sending work to China).

Jayarr,

Thanks for the condolences. The plant was mismanaged for the past 7 years, leading up to this "tightening of the belts". The economy has definitely not helped, here or elsewhere.

Gorf, my appologies, but a rep was probably doing just that "damage control" You seem to be a lot closer to the fire than he is.
Best Wishes

I guess the only thing that bothers me is that the brand Mark Levinson was the people that made it, not some design in a CAD program that can be made overseas by cheap labor. I think Mark Levinson may of just taken the leap into Mid-Fi. I know Levinson product to be made in the US by US workers with the attention to detail that a fine piece of equipment deserves and requires. It was truly a luxury item, now I hope Lexicon doesn't turn it into some foreign made product with an American label, that would truly be sad.

~^~ Gadget ~^~

Article from >Middletown Press

No insult meant to the majority of Audiogon-members I have come to respect - but after reading the story on the closing of Madrigal, employees showing up for work and being told they are all fired and shall collect their belongings and leave the building, I am glad - at least at this moment - that the kind of capitalism we have in Germany is different from that in the US (although we sure could need some of the dynamics)...

Where can I go for Madrigal support, downloads,software warrinty etc...Who picks up the responsability, Harman ?. Thanks, William.