When you take the family out for a meal at McDonalds, it isn’t for the culinary experience, but for a whole raft of other reasons.
Inexpensive, convenient, fast turnaround, and it gets the kids off your back. On the other hand, your expectations for a night at a hatted restaurant are very different – good food, good service with an atmosphere to match – and you are happy to pay for all of these. When anyone buys a Hyundai car they are not expecting the fit and finish of a Mercedes Benz, and a Mercedes Benz customer is willing to pay a premium for that luxury…
So why is this industry so different? I recall an argument I had with Panasonic many years ago (reported here and here). The Japanese company announced that it was exiting the Australian TV market because it could no longer compete in price with the powerhouses of South Korea and China. My argument – that this was not necessary because it had a premium product and that the Australian public was smart enough to recognise this and pay a premium price – held no sway. To me, this was the equivalent of Mercedes-Benz exiting Australia because it couldn’t compete in price with Hyundai!
Our industry does not celebrate its heroes enough, as far as the mass media is concerned. As a reader of StereoNET, you understand that there are differences between streaming services, that not all amplifiers are born the same, and that your hi-fi equipment can create an emotional attachment to the music you are listening to. But alas, hundreds of talented manufacturers produce wonderful products that remain largely unknown to a wider audience. And unless you access the specialist press, you will likely never know of their existence.
”the mass media rarely recognises anything beyond McDonald’s equivalent of audio/visual systems.”
– Len Wallis
A cursory glance at the lifestyle sections of some of the largest media publications yielded numerous motor car reviews (at both ends of the price spectrums) and various articles on watches, mobile phones, luxury clothes and accessories – but not a piece of performance audio or video hardware. You do not need to be a motoring enthusiast to know that a Mercedes Benz will cost more than a Hyundai and the reasons why – we are confronted with this information daily, whether we are interested or not. Yet, the mass media rarely recognises anything beyond McDonald’s’s equivalent of audio/visual systems.
Is this the fault of the media, then? Not at all. Look at the advertisements in this week’s weekend papers. There will be pages of electronic pieces promoted – all at the bottom end of the market and all purely price-driven. At the same time, you are likely to find ads for Kia and Porsche, Swatch and Omega, Country Road, and Burberry, representing both the market’s staple and the luxury ends. Swatch and Omega watches share one purpose, which is to tell the time, and to the best of my knowledge, there is little to separate the two brands in this function, irrespective of price. (Note: StereoNET Publisher Marc Rushton, sharing the same opinion as Len Wallis, did manage to get a series of articles (examples 1, 2, 3, 4) into mainstream newspapers around 8 years ago, however they were canned as quickly as they started in favour of articles such as “Ten Best Bluetooth Speakers Under $250”)
These same price discrepancies also apply to our industry but for a reason. As good as an NAD C316Bee amplifier is, it is not in the same class as a Musical Fidelity NuVista integrated. An Aurender streamer will outperform a Sonos Port, and the list goes on. In our industry, performance and functionality offer justification for the price differences. Yet only those ‘in the know’, e.g. StereoNET readers and their ilk, would be aware of this – or even of the very existence of brands like Musical Fidelity and Aurender.
You can spend $500 or $50,000 on a watch that fulfils its primary purpose perfectly and identically, whereas a $50,000 amplifier is demonstrably superior to one costing $500. Yet the global luxury watch market is estimated to be worth over US$40B per year, and the global luxury AV market is just north of US$2B! Ours is a wonderful industry, capable of delivering so much enjoyment. It deserves a far wider audience than it currently has. Unfortunately, I do not have a solution, but I hope one is out there!
**This article by Len Wallis originally appeared on StereoNET on the 25/7/2024**
