Oh, yea ... and I'll bet that the increase in leasing cars vs buying
outright hasn't helped much either. And an Alpine dealer told me today that
Alpine sees the market going in a different direction. Maybe that is why
they did not invest heavily in their HU line this year, actually scaling
back on many costly features. Maybe they want to capture market share at a
different price point and let Pioneer and some of the others duke it out in
the dwindling high dollar CD/MP3 receiver market.

- RG

"RG" wrote in message
...
One of the worst trends I see is the aftermarket HU's getting more
difficult to use. The manufacturers are using even less buttons (and
smaller ones) than they did in the past. Some of them require you to enter
a menu just to change the radio station to another preset. The factory HU
in my 2002 Civic Si was a joy to use and very intuitive, even in the dark.
My new Excelon deck requires far too much attention if I want to make
adjustments while driving. And the buttons are too small.But hey, it
sounds great though. Blaupunkts seem to have retained a large degree of
user friendliness and intuitive operation. At least they are thinking
about that aspect.
And some of the flashy (gaudy ?) designs they have been coming up with
don't integrate all that well with car interiors which probably causes a
large number of people to just keep their factory units. And some of these
factory systems really are getting quite good.

- RG


"MOSFET" wrote in message
m...
Thanks for the info, Howdy, I didn't know they were doing THAT poorly.
As you probably know, I worked for PG in the early part of the decade.

The article said: "Managers said at the meeting that the market for
high-end aftermarket car stereos has been declining, as auto
manufacturers include ever-better sound systems in their new models".

That is only part of the problem. Frankly, I think foreign competition
did them in. Let's face it, right now amplifiers have never been cheaper
(on a dollar per watt basis) or better. How in the world can you
convince a consumer to spend $300 on a 200 watt PG amp when he can spend
$100 and get EXACTLY the same power from a Sony amp.

And there's something else too. Something that's been bothering me for
the last 6 years or so. The focus on SPL and SPL competitions seems to
be going strong and getting stronger every year. But the focus on SQ has
all but disappeared it seems like to me. For instance, 10 years ago you
could look through any car stereo magazine (there are fewer of THOSE
around as well) and find cars that were STRICTLY designed to sound good.
Sure, they were clean, but you didn't see all this "tuner" crap, and
neon, and fiberglass, and superchargers, and turbochargers, and NOS, etc.
IT SEEMS TO ME THE WHOLE TUNER CRAZE HAS PUSHED SQ TO THE SIDE. I mean,
look at the time-line, IASCA started dying around 1997 or so, right when
the whole import tuner craze started getting going. There are many
reasons why the one replaced the other, but one of the biggest has to do
with weight and the emphasis on making the car lighter, and the fact that
we all can't be fiberglass experts. I think many people began to feel
they had to make a choice: either be an SPL competitor and not give a
damn about weight OR emphasize performance and anything that's heavy
(like a sub enclosure and amplifiers) MUST GO!

Of course, there will always be people like myself who care deeply about
the sound quality of their car. But PG rode a wave of SQ popularity that
truly peaked in the mid-nineties, and has been in steady decline ever
since.

MOSFET


"Captain Howdy" wrote in message
...
http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.
jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20060524005685&news Lang=en


In article ,
(Captain
Howdy) wrote:
http://portland.bizjournals.com/port...y6.html?page=1