This post is about Stereophile's parent company, equates that to the health of Stereophile, and then connects that to the health of high end audio.
Those are really three different questions, with tenuous connections.
Source Interlink is having some problems which have resulted in Chapter 11 filings (called bankruptcy). That's fine. They'll find a way to restructure the company or sell off the assets. Unfortunately, some people will lose their jobs, which sucks now more than ever. But it doesn't say much about high end audio.
Stereophile has always been a niche magazine and will continue to be. Why? Because high end by definition is not mainstream. I don't understand the comment about Stereophile being expensive itself. At $12/year for a subscription, it is the cheapest A/V magazine I know of.
High end audio will survive. Are there audio bargains to be had and is some consumer gear very good? Yes. Are there still gains to be had from going with some more expensive specialist gear? Sure. But just like some people don't see any appreciable difference between an LCD TV and a plasma TV, lots of people don't appreciate the last 10% in audio quality, either. That doesn't mean the high end is in trouble.
“An engineer explained to us that hundreds of ear impressions were gathered in the name of research, and while each one obviously boasted its own unique shape and size, one single characteristic remained uniform across the board: the entrance into the ear canal is not a perfect circle, it's an oval.”
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This post is about Stereophile's parent company, equates that to the health of Stereophile, and then connects that to the health of high end audio.
Those are really three different questions, with tenuous connections.
Source Interlink is having some problems which have resulted in Chapter 11 filings (called bankruptcy). That's fine. They'll find a way to restructure the company or sell off the assets. Unfortunately, some people will lose their jobs, which sucks now more than ever. But it doesn't say much about high end audio.
Stereophile has always been a niche magazine and will continue to be. Why? Because high end by definition is not mainstream. I don't understand the comment about Stereophile being expensive itself. At $12/year for a subscription, it is the cheapest A/V magazine I know of.
High end audio will survive. Are there audio bargains to be had and is some consumer gear very good? Yes. Are there still gains to be had from going with some more expensive specialist gear? Sure. But just like some people don't see any appreciable difference between an LCD TV and a plasma TV, lots of people don't appreciate the last 10% in audio quality, either. That doesn't mean the high end is in trouble.