MOSFET wrote:
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

As we've tried to build our retail operation, we've learned quite a lot
about this industry very quickly. First, the industry is going to have
to throw off some companies because the market is simply saturated with
product.

Imagine being a guy who doesn't have a electrical engineering degree,
who didn't really grow up with car audio, who loves music and wants a
kick ass system -- what does this cat have to go through to get a great
sounding system at a good price? If he came to this message board he'd
get steem rolled with information that was way over his head (and
conflicting). He could read one of the car audio magazines that he
could find at Boarders...oh, they only have one at Boarders! If he did
buy the magazine, he'd see a laundry list of manufacturers and longer
lists of models and meaningless (to him) lists of specs for the models.


This dude ends up going to Wal Mart, picking up some Sony Xplod, and
will probably be pretty happy. Well, until he comes across a guy with
Kicker who says it's the shiznit, and he runs out and buys a bunch of
Kicker stuff. He can't tell the difference, but at least he *feels*
like he has a better system. Then somebody tells him Kicker blows and
that he really needs some Kappas. After buying a few systems and
spending more money than he ever wanted to, ol' boy buys a car with a
factory Bose system, realizes that it sounds about as good as anything
else and gives up on car audio.

Could you imagine if there were over 200 different makes of cars (like
there is in the car amplifier world)? The industry needs to be cut
down to a more reasonable level of competition so that prices can be
set at a sustainable level (when I was selling items for 5% over cost,
I sold more than I could handle but made no money. When I moved to 30%
over, it became worth it to sell things, but people bought from
Etronics instead...at 5% over cost). This will happen in time, because
if I can't make any money selling car audio, then the manufacturers
can't make money either and they will start dropping off.

The companies that will survive and do really well are those who ignore
the 'audiophiles' and instead work to make their product user friendly
and understandable to the average consumer. Also, those companies that
operate with some honesty will do better than those with trumped up
specs. Right now even if a newbie learns what all the specs mean they
almost instantly learn that the specs are highly manipulated and not to
be trusted.

Anyway, that's the way I see it.

Pious