Audio Research in Receivership??????

[artto]

Well, Klipsch. Here's your (second?) big chance to add an excellent, highly respected high-end audio amplifier company with a compatible & desirable product line to your portfolio.

 

IMO Klipsch probably should have bought Mark Levenson, or McIntosh years ago when the opportunity arose. But since Klipsch is now owned by Voxx Internaltional (formerly AudioVox, the cheap car stereo company) this probably won't happen.

 

https://parttimeaudiophile.com/2023/05/02/audio-research-in-trouble-announcements/

 

But, IMHO, ARC would make a great match with Klipsch, and also an opportunity to maybe introduce some more affordable vacuum tube products into the mix.

"Just sayin"

 

[LTusler]

Long thread over on Hoffman on this also.

[RealMarkDeneen]

Not saying they are dead, but if they are they had a good run of about 53 years.  Considering how specialized their market place is, that's PDG. In 1970, pretty much all young men were interested in audio gear. I'm from that era and I got my first "real stereo system" in 1969 - and so did all of my friends. I'm just spewing, but I would guess that today, a young man with $1500 will spend it on a telephone to carry around in his pocket before he would buy a piece of high end audio gear.

 

"Tiny, plastic, portable, digital, cheap, and offshore" - -  all the qualities that ARC amplifiers don't possess! I hope they make it. It is a great company with a great tradition of excellence. In 1974 when Bruce and I designed our first preamp at Paragon, the ARC SP3a was the "gold standard" for most who were in the know. Very intimidating.

 

 

[Edgar]

58 minutes ago, RealMarkDeneen said:

... I would guess that today, a young man with $1500 will spend it on a telephone to carry around in his pocket before he would buy a piece of high end audio gear.

 

Do phones really cost that much nowadays? Wow, do I ever feel like a dinosaur. My last phone cost me $59, and yes it's a smart phone. Does everything I need and a few things I don't. But then, I use it almost exclusively for phone calls and texts, the exceptions being those few new electronic devices that require a smart phone just to set-up.

[OO1]

  PAC   are full up with  Onkyo, Pioneer, Pioneer Elite  from Japan  .  why even bother with ARC 

[RealMarkDeneen]

1 hour ago, Edgar said:

 

Do phones really cost that much nowadays? Wow, do I ever feel like a dinosaur. My last phone cost me $59, and yes it's a smart phone. Does everything I need and a few things I don't. But then, I use it almost exclusively for phone calls and texts, the exceptions being those few new electronic devices that require a smart phone just to set-up.

 

Yes. An iPhone 14 Max with 1TB is $1599.00

 

I'm sure someone is buying them. Uh, not me!

[the real Duke Spinner]

23 hours ago, RealMarkDeneen said:

Not saying they are dead, but if they are they had a good run of about 53 years.  Considering how specialized their market place is, that's PDG. In 1970, pretty much all young men were interested in audio gear. I'm from that era and I got my first "real stereo system" in 1969 - 

 

 

Still have a Pioneer SX 850 . 

Fantastic sounding today even... never servicedakways wanted the big did ..

What ??

1050 ??

 

 

[Audio Flynn]

My SP14 being a hybrid preamp was lean to me but very good. The guy I sold it to loved changing the phono section resistance.

 

He is a cart swapping junkie.

 

AR is a quiet company with solid engineering.

[Audio Flynn]

On 5/3/2023 at 10:48 AM, artto said:

Well, Klipsch. Here's your (second?) big chance to add an excellent, highly respected high-end audio amplifier company with a compatible & desirable product line to your portfolio.

 

IMO Klipsch probably should have bought Mark Levenson, or McIntosh years ago when the opportunity arose. But since Klipsch is now owned by Voxx Internaltional (formerly AudioVox, the cheap car stereo company) this probably won't happen.

 

https://parttimeaudiophile.com/2023/05/02/audio-research-in-trouble-announcements/

 

But, IMHO, ARC would make a great match with Klipsch, and also an opportunity to maybe introduce some more affordable vacuum tube products into the mix.

"Just sayin"

 

ARC and Heritage have always sounded exceptional.

 

My  SP14 preamp I used with VRD and H H Scott 208.

Belles

Chorus II

[dirtmudd]

https://trackingangle.com/features/audio-research-corporation-saved-restructured-company-remains-in-maple-grove-mn-at-least-for-now

[artto]

On 5/6/2023 at 2:47 PM, RealMarkDeneen said:

Not saying they are dead, but if they are they had a good run of about 53 years.  Considering how specialized their market place is, that's PDG. In 1970, pretty much all young men were interested in audio gear. I'm from that era and I got my first "real stereo system" in 1969 - and so did all of my friends. I'm just spewing, but I would guess that today, a young man with $1500 will spend it on a telephone to carry around in his pocket before he would buy a piece of high end audio gear.

 

"Tiny, plastic, portable, digital, cheap, and offshore" - -  all the qualities that ARC amplifiers don't possess! I hope they make it. It is a great company with a great tradition of excellence. In 1974 when Bruce and I designed our first preamp at Paragon, the ARC SP3a was the "gold standard" for most who were in the know. Very intimidating.

 

 

 

I agree.

But STUPID me, on my first "good" (real) stereo system (circa 1971), I had my preamp choice nailed down to a Crown IC150 OR Audio Research SP3a. One guess which one I bought - because of better specs, and lower price. Yup. Hodie-doh. Talk about starting off on the wrong foot!!

[the real Duke Spinner]

17 hours ago, artto said:

 

I agree.

But STUPID me, on my first "good" (real) stereo system (circa 1971), I had my preamp choice nailed down to a Crown IC150 OR Audio Research SP3a. One guess which one I bought - because of better specs, and lower price. Yup. Hodie-doh. Talk about starting off on the wrong foot!!

Crown ICY 150

As it became known  Specs don't necessarily mean good sound. 🙄

 

[Islander]

On 5/6/2023 at 1:50 PM, Edgar said:

 

Do phones really cost that much nowadays? Wow, do I ever feel like a dinosaur. My last phone cost me $59, and yes it's a smart phone. Does everything I need and a few things I don't. But then, I use it almost exclusively for phone calls and texts, the exceptions being those few new electronic devices that require a smart phone just to set-up.

 

Your phone appears to cost only $59 because the price is part of your monthly payments.  Its actual cost to you is actually a lot higher.  However, it should be paid off after 3 years at most.  Accordingly, it may be time to switch over to a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) plan, which should reduce your monthly charge.  In my case, I got curious, called up to ask if my phone was paid off, and was told that it was.  When I asked why my payments had not gone down, they dodged the question and cheerfully told me that now I could switch to a BYOD plan, which would save me $15 a month.  They don't inform you when your phone is paid off, apparently in hopes that you'll never wonder why your phone appears to never be paid off, and keep on making those excess payments.

 

The BYOD plan is working out well for me, since it got some updates, like 20 gig of data (up from 1 gig), free messaging, and free Canada-wide long distance calls.  However, I'm jealous of a relative of mine who lives in Northern Ireland, for his phone plan anyway.  For only £40 a month, he gets WORLDWIDE free calling.  One time, he called me up and we talked about music for 5 hours!  That would have been silly expensive on my plan.

 

In Canada, the government looked into the phone payment plans, through the CRTC (the Canada Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission), and eliminated 3-year phone contracts.  Now they're a max of 2 years long, so it's easier to find out what your phone actually costs you to buy.  They did some other things at the same time to protect mobile phone users, but this was 10 or 15 years back, so I forget what other rules were brought in then.

[Edgar]

16 hours ago, Islander said:

Your phone appears to cost only $59 because the price is part of your monthly payments.  Its actual cost to you is actually a lot higher.

 

Actually, no. It's a TracFone. I bought it outright for $59. I average about $7 per month for my usage style -- talk and text only; data are available but I don't use them.

[Deang]

$1500 for a piece of “high end” audio gear? Might want recalibrate that scale brother. 
 

I was talking to John Warren last night, who has recently gone to several shows. At one of these shows, his wife told him, “you’re like the kid in this group”. We are both in our mid 60s. 
 

It’s a super niche market now. The great majority can’t afford any of this stuff.

 

We call them “phones”, but they are really pocket super computers.
 

https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2022/11/08/fast-forward-comparing-1980s-supercomputer-to-modern-smartphone

 

You can get a nice iPhone on a payment plan for $50 a month. Partner it up with decent headphones or IEM’s, and you are set. There is a lot to be said for lowering the noise floor and taking the room out of the equation. I do a lot of this myself.  
 

Younger people are trying to figure out if there is even going to be a world for them when they get older. They don’t give two shits about any of this stuff.

 

If Klipsch isn’t careful, like Audio Research, they will also go the way of the dinosaur. 

[Edgar]

9 hours ago, Deang said:

We call them “phones”, but they are really pocket super computers.

 

In 1993 I developed a digital signal processing algorithm that required so much computation that I thought I'd never see it run in "real time" during my lifetime.

 

By about 2015 it was running in "real time" on a telephone.

 

What a great time to be an engineer.