Bose buys McIntosh

I worked for a long time to get my mc6700, 252 and 2 pair of SF. Part of the fun was going to a real retailer and hearing the difference. Now it will be buy at Costco. It won’t change how I like what I have but changes my attitude. Call me a brand snob. I get it. And 6700 has magic blue meter but when I listen to Chet Baker they hardly move. It’s eye candy for sure

This really could go either way, but it doesn't have to be a disaster. It could actually be a very good thing. Just depends on how things are handled by the new management. But isn't that the case with any changes? If the brand wasn't sold at all but just switched out a key management figure, we might get just as much or more changes compared to this situation. So who knows.

I would just point out that Samsung purchased Harman back in 2016 and it seems to be fine. They have different lines for AKG and JBL etc but Revel has since launched some very fine speakers (the F series) which are not watered down at all compared to pre Samsung models. I'd like to see what they do next with the Salon series but that only refreshes every decade or two so it might be a while. 

Can't wait for all those McIntosh Bluetooth headphones and speakers at Best Buy for $29.95. Those will definitely be screaming "quality". Maybe they can put a green LED on them for branding purposes. Ugh. 

@moonwatcher Best Buy sells McIntosh now. Not sure what your point is. 

@tkrtrb125 just that we’ve seen this movie before, and the ending isn’t pretty. The same thing happened to AKG, the originally Austrian brand that made studio quality microphones. Once they were sold, the brand name recognition was used to market a bunch of cheap headphones, and such being sold at Best Buy now for the clueless masses that think anything slightly better than Apple ear buds is "audiophile". AKG doesn’t even manufacture their AKG-C480B pencil condenser microphones anymore. Gone. For us old geezers, we have to continually check our perceptions of these once venerable companies when we reach for our wallets. Very few of them are anything at all like they were 30 or 40 years ago. They exist in name only.

If I had $6000 burning a hole in my pocket to buy a tube amp, today, I’d be just as likely to buy a Rogue or Cary Audio as a McIntosh, maybe even more so.