Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site

I predict a highly probability that a new wave is coming in high-end audio loudspeakers. The today’s high-end audio the loudspeakers field is in a complex stagnation, the stagnation that will lead to the need to invent a new ways to sell loudspeakers.

For a manufacture to sell a good loudspeaker is very difficult task as if you do good loudspeaker then with your sale you… loose a customer. Truly, a person pays a lot of money for a good performing acoustic system and then the person stays with this acoustic system for years. There are people who stay with same speakers for 10-30 years – how the hell a speaker manufacture would pay monthly his mortgage if a customer bought ones and them gone for 10 years? The loudspeaker industry put on the task the army of the audio writing whores – the publications reviewers. Pay attention, I am not talking about the audio writers who publicize the new loudspeaker technologies, discover the new directions and etc…. but the I am talking about the industry payrolled sleazebag that methodologically and persistent, month after month polish the knob of user’s perception convincing them that the very new crapy model that “juts accidentally became available” has “something” that should make a user to sell his current loudspeaker and to buy a new model.

This process is very well-oiled and very grotesque and any person who actually knows how the inner-mechanism of audio distribution works feels very appalling about it, if not involved. Even from some among the people who are involved I heard a lot of sorrow about the stupid customers who “swallow” all that superficial marketing crap that they structured for them.

However, the mortgages invoices are still coming and the dollar keep crashing dally. Many manufactures increase prices by-monthly, with no needs lately to provide any justification for price rise. In the past the idiotic stories were composed and deployed to the customers as the justifications for price increase  – “the new ultra-expensive cabinets made by lazers”, “the new beryline diaphragms”,  “the new ceramic drivers”, “the new diamond tweeters” ,  “the new MF cones soaked with ejaculate of  adolescent hippopotamus”… I can go on and on… However, everyone feel that this is got saturated in the mind of mostly blind to results audio consumers. Not the last fact is that the audio “reviewers” who dump all this crap to buyers perception are generally very low talent writers, the writers who just write very pure marketing literature – thanks Gog the Americans are accustomed to bad literature…

So, what I think will happen next? The markets desperately need a new, very dramatic round of cash collection. I think the new round of huge price increase is coming in loudspeakers and the industry will invent an idea that will “rationalize” the price, increase and “justify” the need for a consumer to sell current loudspeakers and to by new. I think I know what the industry will use as a crutch for this action. The new industry-embraced mania will be loudspeakers with electromagnets.

I would like to stay away in this thread from the discussion about the advantage and disadvantages of electromagnets (or as they called sometime field-coil drivers). They have own positive and own negative moments. However, they are cheaper and simpler to makes, they are more confusing and finicky to use, they are new and not exploited ground in marketing and they are truly a golden future for audio sale.  I can predict that within next 5-10 years you will see the new very sophisticated versions of Wilson eAlexandria, JMLab Grad Utopia Electra, Avalon EdilonX,  Kharma Electron Exquisite, B&W ElectroForce Suprime, eAerial Acoustics, Dynaudio AC and Von Schweikert Elecrodrive…. All of them will be with new “revolutionary” designs around the electromagnets. None of them will be upgradeable as the new generation of the loudspeakers wills have the “proprietary” cooling systems that will throw the generated in the field-coil hit out of the loudspeaker’s ports or to have on-board heat-exchangers. Someone like Meridian will stick the DSP in the loudspeakers, will delay the signal and will dynamically pre-magnetize the field-coils with respect to the actual signal.

That all electromagnet direction might or not might be beneficial for actual Sound but it will surely give a LOT of talking points for a new tsunami of audio marketing. Wait until you see $6000 platinum-made interconnects between the field-coil power supplies for loudspeakers, and the cable elevators for the field-coil interconnect made from the wood of Aquilaria trees…

I do think that it is coming. I do not see any signs of it yet but the opportunities and the conditions are there. Let see if the industry bite it – I think they will as the marketing lucrativeness of the idea is truly very fertile.

Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site