More potential bad news for some big names...

Just my experience..... I live in Cleveland ,Ohio. For at least the last 5 years...We have 1 Audio store, and that is run out of the guys house. He carries very expensive extremely niche brands.  Cleveland has a population of 375,00 and regionally its well over 1 million people. We used to have at least a dozen brick and mortar stores, and now 1 out of some guys house.

My point is, at least in my neck of the woods...there is no demand for high end audio, or mid/fi gear. I believe it is a generational problem. I think as us dinosaurs get old and go deaf...there is no one behind us to pick up the slack.

Also all the young people grow up with music on their phones/state of the art ear buds/and blue tooth speakers that blow away what we had, and its so much easier and convenient.

I don't see this changing for the better. High end audio will always be around , but at a much smaller scale. Which will certainly eliminate Audio manufacturers and Audio stores.

I would bet that the as people in their 30s turn into 40 and 40s into 50 they will keep these companies busy

The young folks are in the headphone space for the most part. Some of them are slowly moving up to the audiophile headphone space from mass produced gear.

Tomorrow I will be selling a $5-6k headphone amp. I will have no problem selling it since there are a lot of young people pining after top end headphone gear.

I want to use the funds to buy a $10k headphone and that thing is back ordered for a few months (it is catching up now)

krelldog is correct. I live in Cuyahoga Falls OH and have bought audio from that one guy selling audio out of his house. Audiophiles are a very small group IMHO. Maybe krelldog wants to give him a plug?

@krelldog You mention there’s no demand for high-end audio and mid-fi gear. I am experiencing the same impression but in a different way.

A lot of people over at AVS think all DACs sound the same, all preamps sound the same. And all amps sound the same. Amps in AVR are as good as any external amp. This is not an exaggeration, they really think that. Some make claims such as "I have tried external amplification, no difference from my AVR". No context what amp was tested.

So in a nutshell, a lot of them think everything sounds the same. What about cables? Forget about it, purely snakeoil. The quality and purity of the metal don’t matter. The connectors don’t matter. They all sound the same.

So let me ask you this, in a world where everything sounds the same to these people, how are legacy companies going to thrive? BTW, I don’t think these companies in the discussion are good and worth keeping around.

We have new companies popping up that are extremely talented. Many from Denmark.