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Is this the end of HEA?

http://www.cepro.com/article/is_this_the_end_of_high_performance_audio_at_ces

This last year has made my ears perk up. Honestly I didn't even know the article above had been written until now. What I did know was listeners have been in touch with me about the future of HEA and their future as advanced listeners. It's been nice to see folks getting in touch with me and even nicer that they are doing so because they wish to settle into their final system sound. To say things in their words "it's been an expensive ride" and most of these folks aren't sure they've gotten a fair shake always from the hobby. Many feel they have bank rolled a part of a hobby that hasn't always delivered the goods. Basically instead of telling listeners that this is a variable hobby the "experts" pushed a very expensive game of component Plug & Play onto the discrete audio generation. I remember those days of guilt buying where a dollar amount was used as a representative for quality, when it meant no such thing. I knew first hand this was not the case as designers scrambled to make up-sell products that sounded less musical than the original products that put their name in audio fame. I also could see the HEA decline happening but still was giving the benefit of the doubt to those saying HEA was just fine and growing. Mom and pop stores for the most part have vanished in the US with the exception of a few creative thinkers. New expensive products are being adored but I don't see many actually buying them. Now I've got my eye on T.H.E. Show (Richard's show) and wondering if it's happening or not. Richard and I have talked many times about what will happen to HEA in the US if T.H.E. Show and CES cease doing their thing in Vegas. I wonder what Richard RIP is thinking now sitting in the clouds.

I am very excited to see the next few years come about even though I know some are still buying into the old paradigm that the HEA is the cutting edge with only a volume control to adjust and a fork lift included with every purchase. Going to the CES web, I have my answer for Vegas. Going to T.H.E. Show website I'm still in question. If these two are no more, in terms of HEA, who's next?

Michael Green

michaelgreenaudio
sleepwalker65's avatar
sleepwalker65
832 posts
 
@michaelgreenaudio 

Watching the pendulum swing from expensive, high mass and complicated back to simplicity, low mass and thoughtful is exciting.

The author of the bleak but futuristic “Idiocracy” was spot-on.

The days of simplicity are long gone, and with it purity and directness of the signal chain. Everywhere, hoards of lemmings pump monotonous “top 20” tripe into their ears, consisting mainly of the latest bubble-head “pop” “singers” and rappers. The bar has been permanently lowered. Sound quality is not even on the distant horizon for these unfortunates. 
inna
7,923 posts
 
They often don't even have a more or less permanent place to put this stuff in. They are portable themselves. Often disposable too - doesn't matter which one to hire, most are just the same.

glupson
7,842 posts
 
sleepwalker65,

"The real reason millions of lemmings are connected to headphones is because a rapper made them think they needed to."


I was thinking about headphones more along the lines of people using them with Walkmen ever since 1979 or so. No doubt that Beats by Dr. Dre, if that is what you were referring to as "rapper", elevated aftermarket headphones into some other galaxy. However, it was a couple of decades after sidewalks and urban transportation had become flooded with head/earphones. I think that rapper convinced people to buy his particular brand and did not change the mode of listening towards headphones that much.
inna
7,923 posts
 
By the way, Michael's best Chameleon speakers used to cost $15k, not much by audiophile standards but quite a lot, and now he advocates cheap s**t. And that's in addition to complete lack of ideas regarding acoustics. Maybe he forgot everything he knew.
michaelgreenaudio's avatar
michaelgreenaudio OP
1,019 posts
 

Actually inna I would consider all of my speaker designs to have their place and their place in design history. If I ever produce the "LOW" loudspeaker you’ll see a higher price tag again, but I would doubt there be more than 40-100 folks that would spring for them at just shy of $20,000.00 with all the trimming. I might be surprised but that’s what I would guess purely based on the age of High Enders getting up there. The Rev Combo however is a different story topping out at $8,000.00 fully loaded with all the trimming. The Rev6 starts at $1250.00. Hardly cheap, seeing that these are the only "Tunable" speakers on the market using real guitar boards as baffle boards. My drivers are made with LTRedwood baskets, hand voiced, I wouldn’t call that "cheap". So first lets define "cheap". I’m not and never have been "cheap", I’m fair and pour my soul into what I do. If you think that’s cheap okie dokie, but I think most owners today think they’ve hit the super audio jackpot when they get one of my speaker sets. Same goes for my other designs all the way up to the Tunable Rooms :)

Now saying this, there has also been those who have had me design million+dollar systems in my life most of them putting the focus on the acoustics and full tunable system.

When it comes to the electronics this is where I part from HEA. Everything I make, I make for a reason to produce music. Heavy chassis don’t produce music. So if I cut out the heavy chassis that’s part. Heavy heatsinks don’t produce music, there goes another chunk. I don’t like the sound of enclosed heavy transformers as compared to open transformer designs, that’s more cost to hack away at. Thick pc boards, nah, I again like the old style for tone. Bigger transformers next to chips, disaster. So when you start to see the parts and pieces come together for what I like to tune it starts to shape the pricing as well.

The most expensive set of amps I had in last year were $30,000.00. They got stepped all over by almost every other amp I had in the house "Tuned" vs "Tuned". The company asked that I not mention their name as they bought the amps back from us.

If some of you wish to change my meaning around to suit your narrative I don’t have a problem with that, Tunees are reading and that’s what counts. Everyone has their reasons to paint their own pictures.

Michael Green

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