Ohh boy, this got me started. Apologies to those who have heard my rant before.
Corona virus in and of itself will not kill high-end. Since there is essentially no retail infrastructure for high-end audio anymore, most of the industry has moved to a direct sales and or online business model anyway. In fact, several members here have reported buying components during the crisis and are now enjoying them with their newfound time.
Part of the problem with high-end is that there is no entry-level. And what there is is frequently derided as 'mid-fi' by (some of) those who are more well-heeled. A couple of years ago, I compiled a list of exhibitors at Capital Audiofest and tallied up the cost of the system on display. The mean price of the systems on display was $58,000, and that was after backing out the cost of the system in the room that had the big KEF $220,000 'shampoo bottle' speakers. I felt that the cost of that system skewed the results. I also didn't include the cost of the now obligatory boutique cabling. So add a few grand for that in most rooms. I haven't done this for several years, but just a glance at most of the show reports leads me to believe that the numbers have only gone up.
I have young friends who are in fact interested in audio. I have gotten them to come to the shows, but I only got one to come back. They seem to be turned off by the implication (or sometimes overt assertion) that they need to spend $1000 just to plug the system into the wall. This does not build an audience for high-end. Having decent, rationally priced equipment available does. If they want to buy the half inch thick faceplates and filligreed metalwork later in life, that's fine. My first Dynaco system cost me $330 in 1971 dollars (a little over $2K today). $100 or so later and I had FM. I got almost 10 years of enjoyable music out of it and really only replaced it because that's when Hafler came out on the market and I had the itch to build something again. Neither of those systems were what would be considered 'high-end' today, but they were nipping at the heels of it and they were both very satisfying systems to listen to and provided much enjoyment long-term.
There is practically no counterpart to that system today, and if there is, you won't find it at an audio show. There was one dealer who was promoting a $3000 system at one of the CAF shows but, on each of my several visits to the room, that system was not connected and playing.
So, in my opinion, two things are killing high-end audio. One is partially greed, because it probably takes nearly as much resources to design, build, and market a $5000 system as it does to do the same for a $50,000 system. And audio manufacturers being a business, most anybody in a business, given the choice between making a living selling $5000 dollar systems and making a killing selling $50,000 dollar systems, well, most people would rather expend 10% of the effort and resources to make the same money. Problem is, the market for high-end audio is small in number. And that brings me to my other point.
I mentioned that I knew some young people who are interested in audio. There aren't many though. When I was 15 I bought my first system for lawn mowing money. By the time I was in college, most my friends had systems. They were not 'high-end' systems but they were decent which takes me back to my original point. Now there's no entry level, and a pretty fair amount of- let's be honest- snobbery towards equipment most people would consider 'affordable'. The people who are in that age group now have zero interest in spending close to six figures on a music system. They listen to music with synthesized drum tracks, synthesized instruments, autotuned vocals and the like. There is no original acoustic event to have '', so they are perfectly fine with 'smart speakers' (which, I'm like the high end audio market, is growing by leaps and bounds). Sad to say, I don't see this changing anytime soon.
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