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General Asylum General audio topics that don't fit into specific categories. |
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General Asylum General audio topics that don't fit into specific categories. |
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In Reply to: What Are You Doing to Save Our Hobby? (Long) posted by ChadHahn on January 14, 2011 at 20:36:06:
Around here, over the past few years there has been a collapse of retail of all audio and video retail as well as music/video stores and now even video rental is gone. I'm in a densely populated Chicago suburb and in the past 5 years Circuit City and Tweeter have disappeared, Tower Records is gone, and now even Blockbuster is liquidating both of the stores in the area. Borders is on its way out it seems and the selection of cds there has been declining for a while. The Barnes & Noble doesn't sell cds at all anymore.
Quality audio hardware has been a niche market for a while, high quality software (cds and records) is a fairly recent niche market, and even traditional video rental is going away. I guess you can get about anything you want on Netflix but I'd still like to be able to drive down the street and rent a movie. It seems to me that these things all belong together. I wonder if it's plausible to have a store that rents movies, sells cds and records, and also sells audio/video equipment. Has this been tried? Even a hi-fi store that sold components, cds and records, and had a bank of video rental machines with good selection would be great. You could rent your favorite movie and try it out in a demo room to see if you think it's worth upgrading hardware.
None of the audio shops in the area that I've been in have decent demo rooms. To me, a shop should have a few furnished demo rooms and a lot of portable room treatments so that you can demo in a live, somewhat damped, or well-damped room. This makes a far bigger difference than the differences between decent, compatible components. Most places have demo rooms packed full of too much equipment and no meaningful way to evaluate it. If people had the chance to go into a store and find out what basic type of sound they prefer it would help, obviously. Once someone has figured out what they like then you figure out how close they can get to having it at home within the constraints of their budget and the space they have. I'd love to see a store with some demo rooms that were decorated like real rooms in a house. Have the unobtrusive living room hi-fi, the second bedroom home theater, and the kickass audiophile basement. Tweeter was doing this sort of thing in some stores before they went under. I read that these stores were actually making money but the traditional stores dragged them under.
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Follow Ups
- RE: What Are You Doing to Save Our Hobby? (Long) - Jon L4 11:34:11 01/15/11 (0)
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