Let’s stop the Politics right now. I go to sites likes to escape it.
The long term decline of Audio has been going on for a few decades. We are seeing and another step in the extinction.
Apple makes more money on Ear Buds than the entire commercial speaker market.
When my kids went to college 20 years ago I started talking with them about what kind of system to get them for their dorm rooms. They looked at me like I was crazy. Their iPods and earbuds were all they, and anyone else in their dorms, wanted.
Meanwhile my contemporaries, all of whom cared very much about our mid Fi systems when we were young, were doing the same thing. In my little social circle of the planet I am the only person who cares about audio.
The consolidation and purchase of many brands by conglomerates that are uninterested in audio, such as Massimo, is accelerating the demise. There is a lot of hedge fund money looking to buy stuff and uninterested in managing what they buy.
What I don’t understand in this thread is the focus on the pandemic as the culprit. The pandemic was actually good for audio. People were stuck at home, and many discovered their systems that they hadn’t turned on for years. The repair shops were jammed as people discovered their components had atrophied from disuse. Sales of audio equipment jumped. Perhaps that may have got the hedge funds attention.
It was a blip. The long term factors just aren’t in our favor. The ultra high end is pursuing the customers with Elon Musk sized bank accounts. The mid Fi companies don’t know what to do. Crank out cheaply made junk at grossly inflated prices and hope to dupe some people who are Elon wannabes? Or try to make low cost gear to sell to people who increasingly don’t give a hoot? The mid fis are deers in the headlights and in a few years will be audio roadkill.
Let’s enjoy our systems while we can, but realize that we are dinosaurs