HiFi Subjectivist ¦ Audio Forum ¦ NVA User Group

It is almost like Darwin in reverse. Small companies started by enthusiast make great product, they get sold on when the owner retires or gets pissed off with the industry or wants to cash in. The companies are then run by corporate type suits who just bullshit each other to keep their jobs. They hire white coats who just bullshit the suits because they know they don't understand in order to keep their jobs. So the company bullshits their customer because that is the only thing it has any expertice in.

That is the story of the last 50 years of industrial development .

And the customer accepts the bull because he is told that this weeks/months/years product is better than last weeks/months/years......

Sometimes even a start up is dominated by bullshit. Normally a person has idea then they have a product and then they have a business. Not in all cases, most notable Linn rip-off someone elses idea and then bullshit it. Rega, salesman sees a gap in a market and bullshits it. Some are worst than others and levels of bullshit varies in both intention and subtlety. Rega v Linn is a classic example, but even though Linn was/is far worse, bullshit is bullshit.

It can also happen to huge companies. For example, I think Sony has gradually descended to corporatism since co-founder Akio Morita retired in 1994.

Another case: Sansui - an audiophile brand in the 70's which descended to mass-marketing cheap and shoddy stuff in the 90's.

It will be interesting to see if the same fate is in store for Apple after the demise of Steve Jobs.

Japan is different because of "face", their prestige and how other Japanese companies viewed them was all important. SO most product was made to make profit and rip off the foreign devils, but some product especially for the home market, but also sometime for the USA, was produced for "face", and then you will rarely find anything better anywhere. Find those products, and very few were imported to the UK thanks to the flat earth brainwash bullshit, and you will have something very special.

The Japanese had white coats who knew what they were doing if they wanted to.

And then there was the medium sized EMT that made its best products after founder Wilhelm Franz passed away in 1971. It was the changing market with Radio stations going digital that killed off EMT in the 1980's.

And JBL and Altec thrived for a long time after James Lansing died in 1949. Although today neither company are what they were in the 1940's to 1970's.

I suppose some companies have enough momentum to make great products for a while before they run out of steam.

Or if they have an ethos like the companies you mentioned and stick to it.

Someone with real passion and a Big Idea starts a small company, if it is lucky it gains a following and grows. Not that surprising in my view if the passion dies or leaves with the founder. Why should it not?

Personally, I think Spendor and the like have gone the same way. Profit and the mass market are big lures. I find it difficult to argue with someone wanting to make a good living for himself and his family. A decent product at a decent price is the best you can usually hope for.