Audio Research in Receivership.

@4afsanakhan 

Example of a successful brand bridging the gap; Technics (by Panasonic).

“I’m going to cross shop Technics, Devialet and Audio Research” said no one, ever. In the history of the world.

Listen, you and I can agree to disagree on the semantics of what is or isn’t high end. ARC products or even pricing wasn’t the problem. Strategic blunders by the most recent leadership, financial mismanagement and a crippling debt load each contributed to a viable business stumbling. ARC will come out the other side just fine and refocus its efforts on what its good at building. I see many here on Audiogon talk about the high end market shrinking….the fact is that the high end has never been better. Companies come and go in every industry.

I also tire of reading how bad the economy is, how there is no disposable income, how every audiophile and audio show is populated by predoninantly old men. But that was true 20 years ago and yet, here we are coming off the two best years high end audio has experienced in a couple of generations. Obviously the older generation continues to be replaced with the next generation of older consumers. There has never been a time in this hobby where there was a broader, deeper and better set of gear from which to choose. Young people today are diving in to vinyl, enjoying the interactive, tactile hifi experience.

For so long the Gold Standard. Very sad. Hope they pull through.

well said @ghasley 

hit nail on head on all counts

just the speaker sales alone in high end audio was over a billion dollars last year. It's easy to fail with any business but it's not for the lack of buyers

Since the market for high end gear is world wide, and not just limited to a certain demographic and location, that would seem to be what has been holding up the industry. 

However, ARC has some serious competition due to this world wide market, more so than ever before in the past. When ARC was in their heyday ( which IMO was in the mid 80's to the late 90's), they had the US market far more to themselves than today, and they had a decent exposure in Europe as well. This situation applies to many other well known high end US audio companies today, which makes me question who is going down next, unfortunately. It would seem that many of these US companies have been heavily relying on the far east market, question is for how long can that continue?