Florida Audio Expo - 2022

Mike said:
When you say relevant, you mean?

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I mean relevant to that person/family. What they can afford. What fits into their listening room. What they can envision as a possibility.
 
Dizzie said:
I mean relevant to that person/family. What they can afford. What fits into their listening room. What they can envision as a possibility.
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As you can imagine, we have folks like this come into the store all the time. They have champagne tastes and a beer budget.

We can show a “budget” system, but it’s still going to be north of $20k and for a lot of folks they start gasping and flailing their arms.

I’m sure there are vendors out there with a $1500 system, but they sound like things at Best Buy.

Just saying…

The reason you don’t see $1500 systems is the ROI. They would need to sell 10 systems just to pay for the room, let alone travel costs and such.

I get your point, but the economics often don’t work out to justify the cost.


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I would hope that there is a significant potential market between the $1500 and $20,000 points. I am not talking about bare budget systems but systems that are a great value and not out of reach for many wanting to move up from Best Buy.
 
Dizzie said:
I would hope that there is a significant potential market between the $1500 and $20,000 points. I am not talking about bare budget systems but systems that are a great value and not out of reach for many wanting to move up from Best Buy.
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There are and I’m sure some of our vendors will be showing such systems.

We plan on showing:

MBL Xtreme Reference System (room 1)
Vivid G1 Spirits with Block Audio (room 2)
Kharma S7-S/Luxman 507z (room 3)

Of course, this is HIGHLY subject to change.


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Dizzie said:
Not necessarily. There is a lot about major shows to put off newcomers and old-timers too. I attended CES 8 out of 9 consecutive years while it was still the place to be for audio and T.H.E. Show Vegas ran concurrently. I also attended T.H.E. Show Newport a couple of times. The last time I was at a show I left a day earlier than I had planned.

Admittedly leaving early was a lot about seeing and hearing the same old stuff. But a lot of it was the massive prices, massive equipment, and huge rooms. 100-pound-plus amplifiers and monster speakers in a room with 1/4 acre of floor dedicated to python cables and equipment stands.

They had no relevance to me and my system. And after too many shows I was no longer impressed by the best. I was shopping for relevance. Something I could afford and fit into my home.

I wonder if headphones are so popular with young people because they don't weigh 100 pounds and require a huge room and ancillary equipment to obsess over.

To convert an "innocent" to an audiophile you need gateway drugs. Mike, I encourage you to have some "relevant" rooms at the Florida Audio Expo. It is fine to show people what can be done but it is also important to show them what they can do.
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I understand what you are saying. However, that being said, much (but not all) of today's high end tends to focus on the ultra high end. Part of it is the internet and the more modern conditions that have driven some of the dealers out of business and it carries over in many cases to the manufacturing side. Generally dealers have limited space to show products in their space. People tend to focus on what the cost to the dealer is of a particular piece of equipment and don't take into account what the cost of rent is, taxes, utilities, advertising, employees, etc.

An example would be if one looks at the recent thread about the Capital Audiofest. I've always liked GT Audio Works speakers (lived in the DC area and went to the first and most the first several Capital Audiofest) and in post number 37 Mike posted a picture of their latest offering here - Capital Audiofest Pictures and Comments Yes, the current system exhibited is $59k. In earlier Capital Audiofest, GT Audio Works had a couple of models. I think the smaller model was $3.5k and the bigger one (close to the size of the current model) was $6k. As improvements were made down the road in the manufacture of drivers the smaller model was dropped and went up to I believe around $9k.

The cost of rooms at the audio shows are not cheap either (and have gone up lots over the years -e.g. https://www.audiofest.net/media/images/docs/RMAF21Prices.pdf). So one has to look at those things as well. There will be cases when some rooms have manufacturers which also make components and speakers of lesser cost. They may not exhibit those as they are looking to get as much bang for the buck to recover those costs. I think if anyone goes to a show and likes a particular room there is an opportunity to look to see if there are cheaper components and speakers and talk to the people exhibiting and see if those things might be of interest.

Just for the record, I'd consider many of the things exhibited not relevant to me either personally. Given the expenses involved, I understand that. I usually go to shows at this point if I have a friend I'm helping who is not as much into high end audio as I am but wants a guide to bridge what is shown and what may be more relevant to them. Sometimes one runs into someone who has some of the more reasonably priced offerings from a particular manufacturer who is exhibiting and helps provide a frame of reference as to what to expect. It's just the nature of the business today. If one wants cheaper stuff, then for a large part of the offerings (some dealers in some markets may carry what one is interested in), one may have to look for Magnolia stores in Best Buy stores
 
Well said Phil. Drawing an analogy would be going to a car show and wondering where the Prius’ are. People go to car shows to see the Ferrari’s, Lamborghini’s, McLaren’s, Porsche’s and when it comes to Toyota, the Supra, not to a Prius or minivan.


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Mike said:
Well said Phil. Drawing an analogy would be going to a car show and wondering where the Prius’ are. People go to car shows to see the Ferrari’s, Lamborghini’s, McLaren’s, Porsche’s and when it comes to Toyota, the Supra, not to a Prius or minivan.


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But the parking lot is full of Camrys because that is what they can afford and justify as a daily driver. There is a difference between entertainment viewing and shopping.
 
Dizzie said:
But the parking lot is full of Camrys because that is what they can afford and justify as a daily driver. There is a difference between entertainment viewing and shopping.
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I think there will be plenty of Camry type systems in the smaller rooms.


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Dizzie said:
Mike, I encourage you to have some "relevant" rooms at the Florida Audio Expo.
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Dizzie, I push as hard as I can to get affordable stuff there, reaching out to many more budget friendly brands, with limited success. Not for a lack of effort there. Adding to that, unfortunately, we can't dictate what an exhibitor displays! The rational is often, we spent $3-4k for a room, so would have to sell an awful lot of $500 products to make sense. That said, we had some rooms with $2k speakers(JBL), one of my rooms 2019 had a $1600 system
, from memory we've had desktop computer speakers in the $600 range exhibited, etc.
2022, well, I guess we'll see. Won't be for a lack of trying.

cheers,

AJ
 
Dizzie said:
But the parking lot is full of Camrys because that is what they can afford and justify as a daily driver. There is a difference between entertainment viewing and shopping.
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Sometimes the demo equipment will be sold as shows (so the manufacturer doesn't have to have it shipped back home). You can't roll back the economics and costs involved to some earlier period in time and expect it to last. Given the climate (both audio and other things) the RMAF called it quits. If the shows don't attract enough potential buyers where companies can cover their costs, then one can expect more of them to disappear. In the example Mike gave, one can sure go look at the Porsche and then look at the VW models Years back a dealer I knew who carried Magnepan was being bugged to carry their on wall $725 speakers (pair) and do a whole HT with them. He just couldn't afford to take up his retail space with more of that stuff and stay in business. He had a pair (of the $725 speakers) to exhibit with his more expensive Maggies so people could get an idea of how they matched up.

Look at the stores that have disapeared. I used to enjoy going into even Radio Shacks from time to time when I was in the area. I gave my brother and old 5.1 set of their speakers with the Lineaum tweeters for his bedroom (I have them in mine at one point). It is economics.
 
Mike said:
I think there will be plenty of Camry type systems in the smaller rooms.


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That is great. That is all I was trying to say. There needs to be some affordable equipment in the mix. Some buyers will end there but others will upgrade and upgrade and upgrade. Today's Camry buyer might be tomorrow's Supra buyer.
 
AJ Soundfield said:
Dizzie, I push as hard as I can to get affordable stuff there, reaching out to many more budget friendly brands, with limited success. Not for a lack of effort there. Adding to that, unfortunately, we can't dictate what an exhibitor displays! The rational is often, we spent $3-4k for a room, so would have to sell an awful lot of $500 products to make sense. That said, we had some rooms with $2k speakers(JBL), one of my rooms 2019 had a $1600 system
, from memory we've had desktop computer speakers in the $600 range exhibited, etc.
2022, well, I guess we'll see. Won't be for a lack of trying.

cheers,

AJ
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Ever heard of mandates ..... ! :)
 
Mike said:
There are and I’m sure some of our vendors will be showing such systems.

We plan on showing:

MBL Xtreme Reference System (room 1)
Vivid G1 Spirits with Block Audio (room 2)
Kharma S7-S/Luxman 507z (room 3)

Of course, this is HIGHLY subject to change.


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Cant wait ....!!! :)
 
Dizzie said:
That is great. That is all I was trying to say. There needs to be some affordable equipment in the mix. Some buyers will end there but others will upgrade and upgrade and upgrade. Today's Camry buyer might be tomorrow's Supra buyer.
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A few years back, Vanatoo had a room at the Florida Audio Expo with their small powered speakers. I was using a pair of passive speakers at that and when I moved things around several months ago, I bought a pair of Transparent One Encores for the desktop. So yes there are more reasonable things there. A good portion though will be the more expensive things. Many moons ago (probably about 9 years back), I went to the Capital Audiofest looking for a DAC for a secondary system. A review site, Everything Audio Network, had a stack of DACs from $500 to $1,800 to compare. After listening for a bit, I ended up buying one that was in the middle price range.
 
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