What's going on with the audio market?

I think there's a recent shift in emphasis on what high-end audio manufacturers are making, which may leave some of us old troglodytes (64 in my case) behind. Flavor-of-the-month seems to be music streaming as opposed to physical media, the latter being what most of us grew up with. My theory is that younger buyers, fewer of whom are audiophiles, are more focused on convenience and portability than actual audio quality. (Some of the blame here might rest with the advent of the MP3 format, the first time in the history of recorded music that the public demanded a LOWER quality of sound). While there remains a dizzying variety of traditional equipment still in production, I agree with many previous posters that prices have butted their heads against the ceiling of affordability, and the market is at or near saturation. In my area (Northern California) there are still a fair number of high-end audio stores and they show no signs of distress yet, but most concentrate on home theater which is where the money is at the moment.

merrillaudio4 posts05-27-2016 9:53amHere is my 2 cents from a manufacturer.

1. Sales are good.

...only need to know location and even if you do, it's worth LOTS of LOTS of money to settle so profit not guaranteed or highly jeopardized. Otherwise sales... Don't even think of dealing high-end components unless you snatch a nice storage unit for cheap or sweep through tempting estates. 
Ordering new high-end products and selling via retail store -- WASTE OF TIME and MONEY no matter whatcha do.

Dealers need retooling.

retooling implies expenses that should be ALWAYS part of equation.

1. The older buyers are downsizing.
2. The new products are better, faster and cheaper.

...the new products are better and cheaper isn't true at all. compared intro prices 10 years ago and found 40% increase in average. don't find new products ANY better at all. They're just advertised better and nothing more.

I'll  go out on a limb and say many of those young people streaming music from phones and tablets today will be doing something similar in 20 years or so but also to a very good sounding home setup ranging from good quailty powered wireless speakers to things as good or better than anything around today depending on their goals and discretionary income. 

No, many of today's high end products are seriously overpriced. Some great values like never before, but lots of exaggerated, hyper dollar stuff being pushed. Some of it sounds fine, but not worth the price. I suppose I am so turned off that this colors my view of the industry in general. 

Bad service is also rampant and really upsets me. The gear quest has stopped for me. I am on a new music quest! 

If you were to look inside the gear sold today and see the parts quality used for the prices asked, assuming you know about electronics and parts, you would begin to feel as sick as I do about the industry.  No reason for the prices charged on many high end pieces.  No reason other than only a relative few of us will ever buy this stuff. I can no longer support this dying model as I have decided to enable it no longer. 

$1 resistors and $10 capacitors in $15,000 speakers and on and on! 

Again, I know we have exceptions, but we need open our eyes as we are being charged ridiculous prices for what is actually inside the gear. Yes, including R&D etc... 

We do have some  companies selling nice sounding gear for reasonable prices like Emotiva and others. These are genuine great values that we should take notice of and there are others.