Spatial Audio Raven Preamp

Electronics in particular are globally sourced. Here’s a simple example: say there’s a circuit board that AtmaSphere, or Spatial, buy in small quantities, say in the low hundreds. That’s a lot of circuit boards for a high-end manufacturer.

The circuit board might be assembled in the USA, Canada, the UK, the EU, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, China, Vietnam, Thailand, the Phillipines, or many other countries. But that’s the finished board. It contains semiconductors, which come from any of the countries mentioned above. And resistors. And capacitors. And the glass fiber for the board. And the copper in the circuit traces.

From the perspective of AtmaSphere or Spatial, we just see a circuit board that does what we want, and we hope (and pray) we get a timely delivery without getting snagged in customs. Delays are a huge deal to any manufacturer. Every part is a critical part, and parts shortages shut down production, which is very expensive, because it costs money to keep the lights on, pay off capital expenses, and pay for trained staff. Every day without production is a day closer to bankruptcy.

On-again, off-again political posturing about tariffs, quotas, additional customs screening, etc. etc. is calamitous for small manufacturers. The big boys like General Motors and Ford have the capital reserves to ride things out for several months, but the little guys (that’s us, folks) are working on very thin margins with a fickle customer base.

By "fickle" I mean a customer for a Ford F150 is going to buy a full-size pickup truck no matter what. They might switch to a Chevy Silverado, but they’re not going to buy a VW or BMW that cost the same, because those are totally different products. By contrast, a high-end customer can always wait another year or two, and can choose from scores of different products at a wide variety of price points.

I’m not crying in my beer, because what I just described is how the entire high-end business works, and you just have to accept uncertainty as part of the deal. But you wonder why artisan-assembled high-end costs more? That's why.

I will be buying the Raven preamp (which has CanCon) and also spending 6 weeks up in Toronto this summer. Spending my money in the Canadian economy to fight the good fight.

My young son is a picky eater, and it seems he likes a lot of stuff that is grown in Canada (buying in Costco). We will pay that extra 25% and support Canada. Will be buying Canadian as much as I can from here in the USA.

I started as an audio designer at Audionics in 1973, so I’ve seen a few ups and downs in the audio industry. Don’s been doing his thing in Canada since the early Eighties, so between the two of us, we’ve seen what’s been happening in the North American market for quite a while. Players come and go, fads come and go, as well as turnover in big-name reviewers and gradual shifts in consumer tastes.

Will the high-end itself survive, given the aging demographics? Good question. Headphones, and the specialized amps that serve them, are a growth area, since they have a compact footprint and can live on a computer desk as a peripheral. Late-night headphone listening is also well suited to young families living in urban apartments.

Big-rig systems that take up a whole room? That seems to be a declining market, unless the system is domestically acceptable within normal living room decor ... the traditional "stereo system" we saw in the Sixties and Seventies. Swap in a digital streamer for the classic FM Stereo Receiver of the Sixties and Seventies, and it looks pretty much the same.

One thing Don and I find gratifying are a new breed of medium-to-high-efficiency speakers that work well with 25-watt amplifiers. This is a sweet spot in the market that’s been ignored a long time ... moderate power amplifiers that are optimized for listening pleasure, not bombast, and speakers that have low distortion and effortless dynamic range. More, please.

Indeed on the speakers.  I own 95 dB speakers that are an easy 8 ohm load.  The giant 84 dB speaker that takes 200 watts to wake up really don't sound any better to my ear.  In general they sound worse.  Give me a 90+ dB well behaved speaker every time.  Then I can drive it with a 20 watt tube amp and be happy:)

As for tariffs, we shall see.  Now there are more negotiations going on.  One thing business hates is uncertainty.  Consumers hate it too.