is audiogon good for the audio industry or bad?

You wrote "Absolute Sound drives me into retailers and listening rooms, helps educate me and helps create my wish list, but, AG helps me make it a reality. The result is that I spend far more $$ on equipment...which by the way, drives me to buy absurd amounts of source material through acousticsounds, etc..."

Which means you are buying "used" equipment and merely using the Brick and Mortar stores as a way of auditioning equipment, without paying them anything. Thus they go bankrupt as you are merely wearing out their equipment, and wasting their time. Now I know why the title of your thread is "Is audiogon good for the audio industry or bad?" Based on your use of it, I would say "bad". (No offense, but that is how I feel.)

Now, that being said, I too use Audiogon to buy and sell equipment. (However, I try very hard not to use B&M stores as you do, as it is not morally right, from my point of view anyway). What I do is use Audiogon (and Audio Asylum) to create a network of friends and acquaintences, through which I can ask (or get asked) to listen to their equipment. If that does not work for a particular piece of equipment I am interested in, I will, on occasion, take a chance and buy something used, that I have not auditioned, at a good price, knowing that I can resell it if I don't like it, (usually on Audiogon, and make most, if not all, of my money back). In this case, I think Audiogon is somewhat good for the audio industry, as it makes used equipment more valuable, and thus makes people want to try out more equipment. The downside to this is that it means people are buying more used equipment, rather than new equipment, which is not helping the audio industry.

Obviously the absolute best thing for the audio industry would be for all of us to buy only new equipment, and donate our used equipment to up and coming audiophiles. (But that ain't happening! Although, I do help out my friends with cables and other accessories.) I remember back in the eighties and early nineties, before the internet boom, (and before Ebay and especially Audiogon), and basically, you bought all of your equipment new, and traded in your old equipment, because the used market was basically limited to your surrounding cities. It seems to me that the eighties were the high point of the audio industry.

My two cents worth anyway.

You would think any resource that generates interest in a hobby area has to be good for the associated industries.

I personally feel Audiogon is the best thing to happen to the high end audio industry since the end of vinyl’s golden age.

The forums have allowed all of us to learn. Most of came to Audiogon through some search engine, either looking for used equipment or advise. With very little time invested we discovered other people just like us, looking to learn and share this wonderful hobby. For me it was a place to learn from the very basics of system start up, to the art of pulling the most from what ever level I could afford.

After a few years, I found myself experimenting beyond the level of most, and in return I was sharing my findings. This is the description of the Audiogon forums, and how they have raised the level of knowledge in our hobby. Then it dawns on us, these are our friends too. I started finding myself sharing with friends from Audiogon, both in the forums and off site. I discovered this was becoming a big part of my life, and I enjoyed it. Then the damnedest thing happened, Lugnut! This thread changed lives, and allowed Audiogon to rise to a much unexpected level. We shared our love, tears and hearts for a man most of us never actually met.

Is Audiogon good for the hobby? Is caring about people you don’t know in any way other than through an Internet forum significant?

Oh, then there is the used market for audio gear. Audiogon just happens to dabble in this too. Suddenly we had a place where we were able to sell our unused gear. In audio, most people tend to take very good care of their equipment, and yet part of the hobby is trying new equipment in our ever evolving systems. Before Audiogon there was no true market for this gear, and many of us had closets full of stuff. Audiogon allows us to trade our equipment in a very stable used market. For the most part we can buy and sell used equipment with very little actual cost, thus making the Audiogon community a group of friends trading equipment and sharing experiences. It’s like we all lived close by, except we have never met. But that is not quite true; I have found a group of local audio friends through this site too. Funny I needed to go out into cyberspace to discover now two more people who live in my 3000 person suburb who also share the passion of high end audio.

Now the down side, but this is not an Audiogon issue as much as an Internet issue. The Internet has created a marketplace where some sellers have chosen to exploit the ability to undercut pricing. We consumers of course benefit from this by cheaper prices for new gear, but at the cost of killing what was. The amount and variety of bricks and mortar retailers has dwindled to a very few. This limits our personal exposure to equipment, and limits our chance to audition equipment before we buy. If we shop at Audiogon, chances are we do not shop in our local audio retailers, and visa versa. That is too bad, but it is reality. Audiogon did not create this issue, and in fact does little to support it, so in my eyes, not even this issue is pinnable on Audiogon.

I guess one could make the argument that the newly discovered local friends (unknown without Audiogon) all have different equipment, and in fact we are auditioning other equipment, and in fact sometimes in a far more affective way. I will leave that discussion to others however…

So in conclusion, I believe Audiogon is the best this to happen to the high end audio industry, and I am proud to be a ten year member.

jd

Jadem6 is right on. Audiogon keeps the pressure on prices, on line and B&M.