Should 'Audiophile' Brands Be Sold In Electronics Mega-Stores?

[Woochifer]

Carver, perhaps? Didn't Bob sell the company to someone who tried to market the brand at Circuit City, et al? Did they not try to use cheaper parts to bring the prices down? Did it not fail? This comes to mind, because I'm one of those who ran to CC and bought some of this stuff, thinking I was getting a deal. It was s**t, to put it bluntly.

Now, granted, not all of the original Carver products were necessarily "high end".
But, they weren't exactly cheap either.

That's one example, and one that does not apply to the current business model for CC or BB.

The Carvers that were sold at CC were the same ones that were carried by the local high end salons, albeit a more limited selection of models. They did not use cheaper parts -- Carvers were just badly designed from the outset.

Their so-called magnetic field amps were banned for retail sale in L.A. County by the Fire Marshall because they failed the UL certification tests. That capacitor-less design ran cool and produced huge wattage numbers (the 5 lb. cube amp could be monobridged to output 400 watts on a test bench), but it was also a fire hazard of the highest order and not the best sounding amp in its price range. Carver wound up going in an entirely different direction thereafter with a full lineup of tube and hybrid gear (which I recall came about well after Circuit City dropped the line), which was much better received than their more gimmicky magnetic field amps.

The Circuit City deal happened way before Bob Carver sold the company. Bob Carver went on to start up Sunfire, which is still around.

Some use the example of JBL as an example of this model working.

JBL sells their "mass market" products at "mass market" retailers.

Are their "audiophile" or "high end" products proudly displayed at the
local big box retailer? Can anyone go to BB or CC and pick up a set of Everests?

Read my earlier posts. JBL continues to make high end products, but they always made a full lineup that went from the entry level all the way up to the high end. JBL's problem is that they no longer have a U.S. dealer network in place that sells those products. Dealers dropped them in droves when they began selling their entry level products in big box stores. JBL did not start making inferior versions of their high end products, they merely went into stores that would not carry their high end lines.

Your assertion was that once a brand goes mass market, everything gets mass produced and their quality takes a hit. I just don't it.

And I doubt that McIntosh will be selling many MA7000s at Best Buy either, not at the current price level. And...............................How do you bring that down?

The Magnolia mini stores inside of Best Buy allow you to special order anything that the standalone Magnolia stores carry (at least the ones in my area do), which includes the full McIntosh lineup, as well as B&K, Primare, Martin Logan, Vienna Acoustics, and Sonus Faber. Not sure about Krell, but those are carried by the standalone Magnolia stores as well.