Classe closes for good.

Very sad day for employees and customers. Hopefully someone will purchase some of the more important component/parts and offer repairs and/or parts for existing customers.
 
Sad day for the industry. Altough I have never owned a Classe product, I know they were generally well regarded for both quality and value, and any time I heard one of their products it was always in a great sounding system.
 
Sad. I always liked Classe Audio and their customer service has been excellent the times I needed it. .
 
It is wonderful for the consumer of high end audio these days in that there is so much competition.
It is terrible for the manufacturer of high end audio these days in that there is so much competition.
 
Sad to hear this.

I love my CP 800 preamp. I've compared it, in my own system, to many, many other preamps and the Classe is still here.

I will keep it until it quits.
 
I purchased a used Classe Sigma 2200i a couple of months back for less than half off retail. I’m very happy with it, but sad to hear Classe is closing.

I just noticed the Classe Sigma 2200i received Stereophile’s highest “A” rating in the latest October issue in the catagory of integrated amps, and it sounds fantastic to me. I bought it because it has a lot of features I was looking for in an integrated amp.

Sad day for sure.
 
Projectman said:
What consequences does outsourcing your manufacturing to China or any other country have? Lot of components in your equipment was made in China.
Click to expand...

In high end hifi - A lot.

What do you think would happen to Wilson, Magico, Boulder, Moon or some other high end manufacturers decided to offshore to China? Even the Chinese elite would stop buying their products.

btw - what components in any of my equipment is manufactured in China?
 
Sad. Had a Classe 401 amp . It drove my Maggie's well.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Sad News for sure. So after Classe, what B&W dealers would use to show their 800 series?
 
XV-1 said:
In high end hifi - A lot.

What do you think would happen to Wilson, Magico, Boulder, Moon or some other high end manufacturers decided to offshore to China? Even the Chinese elite would stop buying their products.

btw - what components in any of my equipment is manufactured in China?
Click to expand...

The Chinese don't buy Chinese? Come to think of it, I don't know if I have ever seen a Chinese person eating in the restaurant that I go to get Chinese food...
 
watts said:
It is wonderful for the consumer of high end audio these days in that there is so much competition.
It is terrible for the manufacturer of high end audio these days in that there is so much competition.
Click to expand...

not really, for the smart manufacturer is not only driven by their own desire but by the competition as well.

Classe' was great stuff, but I think in the end their 'curb appeal' was somewhat off.
 
I've been impressed how Marantz has done over the years after being swept up so hopefully United can work this out and bring Classe back.

I don't know how true this is, I heard someone remark Classe had a high value on the remaining inventory.
 
Marantz has only been under Sound United's wing for less than a year. I'm rooting for them all. If the current direction Polk and Def Tech are heading is any indicator, there should still be some great products coming out of the line.
 
Thanks for the correction, although D&M was still a holding company that time wouldn't apply to the time frame I used. I just mean, holding companies thus far have not been the spoilers I feared when these types of take overs/buy outs began to appen.

DSkip said:
Marantz has only been under Sound United's wing for less than a year. I'm rooting for them all. If the current direction Polk and Def Tech are heading is any indicator, there should still be some great products coming out of the line.
Click to expand...
 
I am actually quite surprised there are so many solid state companies still surviving in the high end industry given that often what is "inside the box" are often purchased from the same limited number of suppliers and often sound very much the same.

I am not a big SS fan (to say the least) but when I listen at a dealer and they trot out 5 SS amps for audition I often walk away thinking meh - sounds remarkably the same in the sense that all of them aren't particularly great - one may sound a little fat or have better bass or sound more airy so in that sense they sound different from each other but then I sit back and think yeah but did any of them actually sound any good? And that is listening to amps with a spread of $2k to $60k. You'd really hope that the latter would utterly trounce the former. Meh.

And since invariably I always see the store selling a bunch of second hand variants on the shelf it seems that we audiophiles tend to get excited about hearing a "difference" but not necessarily focusing on whether the difference is better - OR - we note that there is an improvement in say soundstage and plop down the credit card and 8 months later we note that something is wrong with the tone (which seems to me to pervade almost all SS amps regardless of how much you pay for them).

Regarding Classe (and I have not heard the supposedly better pre 1992 Classe so I have only heard mid 90s and newer (supposedly inferior Classe). But, I have auditioned Classe a lot and compared them to the likes of Krell, Rotel, Mark Levinson, Bryston, Arcam, Naim, Roksan, Adcom, Threshold, Sugden, Musical Fidelity, Accuphase, YBA and some other big SS amps of the time (1990s). Sugden stood out as actually sounding the best if you could live with the low output power. And YBA and Accuphase seemed to me to have a little edge in sound quality though I don't know exactly why that was the case.

Though I certainly understood why everyone I knew basically cycled through many of these brands over and over and over and never got anywhere. Because the differences all came with some kind of issue that bothered them after awhile. They bothered me. Some were trying to sound like a stereotypical tube amp but sounded affected, while others were "neautral" in other words flat and lifeless and sounded best when turned off.

Regarding Classe - I think when you begin charging premium dollars for any piece of audio gear there needs to be a sense of prestige to go along with the purchase. Making stuff in China or using off the shelf parts is inexcusable IMO. If you pay $10k+ for an amplifier that transformer ought to be built in house designed and manufactured in house - not bought from a Chinese firm for $25 and then put a sexy case of 1 inch thick metal to weigh it down so it can "seem" substantial.

This is my long winded way of saying - the product began to lose that sense of Class eh?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top