jbrown

Will it be called the Scheißehorn instead? or the Billigpfeife? maybe the Müllwürfel? (keeping with the German theme) I guess it's time to buy a set of Palladiums while I still can ... From TWICE: Though Klipsch will operate as a stand-alone company, said Audiovox president/ CEO Patrick Lavelle, "we see many opportunities to leverage distribution, global brand development, and brand expansion in areas such as OEM automotive and professional audio." I guess this means we'll soon see the Reference line at Sears and Palladiums at such high-end establishments as Best Buy and Amazon.com Klipsch also "provides an outstanding new distribution channel for our company to reach the home and commercial installation markets," Lavelle said. Sounds like we'll be seeing Klipsch branded universal remotes and low-end cables with pretty connectors, all of which bear a striking resemblance to their AR counterparts sitting on dusty warehouse shelves at CompUSA and Circuit City. Wow, $166 million seems like such a low price, no wonder Audiovox bought them. It would have been nice to see a hifi-centric M&A group buy them instead. I am seriously disappointed. I hope it turns out to be for nothing, only time will tell.

Nothing will happen with their current products, they'll continue to be great. It's the future products that will get hosed, but that will take a year or so.I mean, just look what they did to this poor, defenseless Mustang: http://www.cepro.com/slideshow/image/7599/ OH THE HORROR!

Unfortunately I am all too familiar with the "Audiovox Effect". In fact, I signed up here mainly to share my hopes that this deal does not go through. I have already witnessed the dismantling of one of our longest-running and most reliable vendors. Code-Alarm automobile alarms. We sold Code-Alarm for 15+ years. They were great. Failures were rare, products were robust, features were always state of the art, and warranty was a non-issue, but always handled. Then came Audiovox. The product tanked. Every successive generation got worse and worse until we dropped it (at which point the product was a craptastic Audiovox chassis wrapped in a Code-Alarm case). They do handle occasional warranty issues for our existing clients, so that's nice, but that's the extent of our dealings with them anymore. Code-Alarm was not the first company ruined by Audiovox, and it looks like it may not be the last. I certainly have my fingers crossed that this deal does not go through. I really like Klipsch speakers and the new Palladium line is just stunning. I hope there's more greatness to come and am really looking forward to some "trickle-down" designs from the Palladiums coming to the next generation of the reference line. That kind of stuff doesn't seem to happen when a company like Klipsch sells out to a company like Audiovox.