Strange Marketing/Design Decisions

[Ajani]

So I’m the very slow process of rebuilding my 2 channel setup and hence have been reading up on just about any brands/products I hear about…. During this time, I’ve come across a few strange marketing/design decisions….

Marantz – Marantz America chose to launch the PM7001/SA7001 Integrated Amp/CD Combo as their entry level, 2 channel gear in America… Nothing wrong with that, except for the fact that they chose to upgrade the SA7001 CD Player to a more expensive SA8001 Player, but left the matching amp unchanged…. So now they have a $900 CD player being sold with a $600 Integrated Amp… which makes sense only to the few ‘source first’ advocates… even stranger about this pairing is the fact that Marantz has a great reputation for CD Players in North America, but no so much for their current Amps…. So maybe this move could have worked in Europe or other places where their amps are still well regarded, but in North America???

Onkyo – Onkyo has a new entry level 2 channel combo in direct competition with the Marantz one…. The A-9555/DX-7555 Combo consists of an $800 Integrated Amp and a $700 CD player (much better pricing than Marantz)… but the strangest thing to me is that the CD player doesn’t have a detachable power cord…. Now I’m not a modder, or a believer in upgrading power supplies but I know many audiophiles are…. So why drop a CD player for $700 with a fixed power cord???

Cambridge Audio – CA introduced the 840C ($1.5K) and more recently the 740C ($1K) CD Players with one major bonus over the majority of their competitors… Digital Inputs… a good decision as it allows the players to be used as both stand alone CD players and external DACs… The only question I have is… Why not take it one step further? Why not either add a USB input or drop one of the digital inputs and have a USB input instead? Computer audio is such a popular trend that this seems to be a no-brainer… even more so considering that CA dropped the 640H music server with 3 USB inputs over 3 years ago… so they clearly recognize the trend and have the technology available…

Feel free to comment on any of these decisions and to add your own… Come across any design/marketing moves that made you scratch your head recently???