As is China.
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True for listed companies since the 1980’s. Investors can be individuals, trusts or government, usually a mix of all.
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There’s people who care where their money goes, it would certainly matter to them.
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Yes, re all all streamers that need to access the internet, but other digital, such as DACs, and indeed transports or other devices playing from locally stored media, are not necessarily have any more finite a lifespan that other electronic components. (Of, course, everything has a finite lifespan, but I took your comment to mean relatively short term),
DACs you are probably right…they could be good for a longer haul. Transports? Not so sure. If you are talking streaming the predecessor to the Naim Core had a limited lifespan and I don’t think it is supported. If you are talking cd players well the transport for my CDi started failing and now it’s a paperweight. Nice looking though in my listening room … and in all fairness I did play the heck out of it for over 20 years.
Aurender is primarily an US product, but made in South Korea.
From the site:
“ Aurender builds highly regarded, high-quality audio products for both audiophiles and music lovers who want to enjoy operational convenience, simplicity and excellent sound quality. Aurender products are developed and manufactured in Korea.
Product design and Marketing is done in California, USA”
Its China, what is the misunderstanding ?
Martin
I think that since South Korea isn’t on Trumps poop 
list they’ll be ok.
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HK is different from China, though owned and politically run by China. As for electronics, where China was once simply a copycat source, low cost but all too often even lower control of quality, these days there is a lot of innovation and real development in electronics, and even good quality control, though old way products do still abound. HK isn’t really a centre of excellence for electronics, however interestingly one of the centres of high tech excellence in China is Shenzhen - a city right on the border with HK: And it is a real border, with full border control operating in both directions. A UK citizen can visit HK, visa free, but we need a visa to visit China - and it is far from free!
But I’m not sure what the relevance of the difference between HK and China is to this thread?
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I just wish Auralic owners good long life with their products.
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I’m very sad to hear of the demise of Auralic, I was always very impressed with their products at shows and my thoughts go out to their staff in particular as well as distributors, dealers and customers.
Quality audio faces a number of simultaneous challenges right now from reduced disposable income, an unpredictable trading environment which has been exacerbated by Trump’s tariffs, rising energy costs and a tidal wave of cheaper chinese made hi-fi products. The biggest problem of all though in my view is a failure of the industry to connect with music lovers worldwide.
Sadly, those of us who care enough about music in the home to spend thousands on kit to play it are a tiny proportion of music lovers worldwide. I’ve been highlighting this for some time and in my view it represents a huge missed opportunity. If we take the motor industry as an example then most people own cars and value them, just as most people own a bluetooth speaker or headphones to play music on. Aston Martin, Lotus, Ferrari, McLaren, Lamborghini and Porsche owners represent a very small proportion of the total motor market, but ask any driver if they have heard of those brands and they will have done - in fact their brand visibility is out of all proportion to their market share in the wider auto market. They are truly aspirational even to regular motorists who currently drive a Fiesta. Many ordinary drivers read about them in the press, have done track days to experience driving a supercar, have been to the motor show and sat in an Aston Martin, have seen their cars placed in big budget movies and TV shows or have watched Top Gear and other motoring shows that report on them.
I don’t think the audio industry has done a particularly good job of marketing over the past couple of decades and if you asked the average person at a Taylor Swift or Coldplay concert if they have heard of Naim, Linn, Audio Research, DCS, ATC, Krell or Rega my bet is they haven’t. In short the vast majority of music lovers, many of whom have the means to spend £1000 on a night out to see Coldplay, have simply no idea that it’s possible to enjoy the music they adore sounding so real and so lifelike in their home.
We have to ask the question why is this?
How many audio firms bother to advertise in places where music lovers congregate whether that is in tour programmes, at concerts or festivals, in record shops or in the music press or lifestyle magazines and websites? How many audio brands put much effort into connecting with the vast target market that is music lovers worldwide, whether that is through having demos in record shops, music bars or other places where large numbers of music enthusiasts actually are? How powerful would it be to place an ad in the Coldplay tour guide to say “Tonight we hope you enjoyed hearing Coldplay live, tomorrow contact us to hear a Naim Audio system that will blow your socks off and make Coldplay sound just like they did tonight at home every day of your life…”
This weekend I will be at the Ascot Audio Show and I guarantee that the vast majority of rooms (hired at great expense) will be stuffed with superb kit which has no easy way for people to know what model they are listening to, what makes it special or even how much it costs. This industry is unbelievably bad at even the simplest aspects of marketing 101. The show has been advertised in the hi-fi press, but I doubt it’s been advertised to normal people in the local press, on the web, on the tube or even in the local (wealthy) community. Most people outside the industry will simply have no idea that it is even running or that for £20 they can go and hear their favourite music on some of the finest audio systems in the world.
Unless the audio industry is prepared to get out there and touch passionate music lovers worldwide it will be doomed to playing to a diminishing number of audio nerds like us who read the hi-fi press or attend obscure audio shows.
Now I’m realistic enough to know that the marketing budget of Porsche is likely a thousand times larger than the marketing budget of any audio firm, but what’s to stop brands pooling their resources and running joint ad campaigns in the music press or running a booked joint demo in the HMV music store in Oxford Street? Why don’t audio brands organise music evenings at some of the larger better known record shops? Naim have a connection to Bentley, Kef do the sound in Lotus cars, JBL work with Toyota. What’s to stop any of these brands running audio demos in car dealers after closing and showing just what their systems can do in the home over some wine and coffee?
The main reason I write about audio is because I want to connect with people who love music and describe just how much hearing it on a great audio system makes you feel and enhances your life.
Please excuse these lengthy ramblings, but I care deeply about this industry and want to see it prosper. Every firm that goes under matters because it further diminishes the high quality audio market and its visibility to the mass market. Collectively we are stronger…
Hopefully see some of you at Ascot on Sunday - I’m not reporting on the show this year, so it will be a relaxing day off for me for once!
JonathanG
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Great post and PLEASE don’t stop posting! The industry desperately needs good audio evangelists. Like many, I get great joy with my system and I try to share my passion with others but I don’t have the skill to communicate like you and others. It’s really sad that Auralic is apparently done as I also did like their offerings.
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I just read a very depressing article that said when surveying the current young working population, music interest in general is a rarity and is a very noticeable trend. In the 2000s we saw the decline in popularity of the album with the vast majority favouring one off tracks. In the 2010s we saw the demise of the band, fed more by record labels who found pushing solo artists to be much cheaper and easier. Now in the 2020s, people are overwhelmingly not even interested in any artist at all. They hear a song they like on TikTok or Insta and consume it there. Never even bothering to look up the artist and find out about their work catalogue.
The industry has basically lost an entire generation.
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Thanks for a thoughtful post. You could write the same post about photography with dedicated cameras and lenses, which is my other passion.
Most people do not care much about sound quality. My wife is passionate about music, but is happy with using €10 earbuds to listen to stuff on YouTube. My HiFi is “too complicated”, in her words. She does admit that music sounds “clearer” on my system, but has no interest in sound quality. Rock and pop is her poison.
I would add another problem to the list. Many of us live in apartments, or houses with a party wall. Cranking my gear up to confortable listening levels can be done when I know my neighbours are out. Which leads to another point.
If you check out the Head Fi site, you will see they run successful “Can Jam” events. It seems they attract a big youthful audience. Headphones and associated gear, seem to be in a more heathy state.
Bose who make mass market bog standard headphones, have just bought McIntosh. Maybe they might do what most headphone brands do, and create a range that spans from €10 earbuds, to €stratosphere gear.
I believe the way we listen to music in our homes is changing. I can probably get high end results using my portable PC as a streamer, feeding a headphone amp with incorporated high end DAC, with a pair of top quality cans plugged in. I can listen to the music as loud as I can bear, without the neighbours banging on the wall. Sure no headphone can match the “concert hall in my living room” experience, that a good traditional system gives, but it is a good compromise. My Astell and Kern portable music player, that can play Wav files, is almost up there with my fixed system. it sounds remarkably good with my HD800S cans.
Finally. Just like photography, there is a lot sniffy snobbery in the HiFi world, along with tons of mystification and snake oil. Prices of products are often criminally exaggerated. I had a cable made for €30, that used the same connectors and cable, as one I saw sold in a shop for €several hundred.
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I’m not so sure my son was raised listening to excellent audio gear. He’s a headphone geek, he goes to tons of live shows. And there’s plenty of both young and old there!
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I opened probably this discussion, wondering how well the Auralic direct competitor, also Chinese, is .
Then someone said that Lumin is not Chinese, but from Hong Kong.
Nigel1957 - I think you raise a very good point about the importance of headphones, especially to generation rent…
I do often see our passengers getting off the plane, some wearing surprisingly large headphones and they are indeed all ages. So I think you are right, many understand the importance of good headphones, it’s just a pity the same isn’t true of full sized domestic hi-fi.
As for your wife not caring about the quality so much I expect that is pretty common too. But I always think that hi-fi is a bit like wine or even single malt whisky for that matter, you need somebody who knows the subject to educate your palate and show you the nuances, although I expect you have already tried that with her. I seem to have managed to turn my wife into quite an audio connoisseur as when kit comes in for review she often surprises me by reacting very strongly i.e. black and white to it and a lot of it she reacts to by saying she doesn’t like it. I suspect though that what she likes is my reference system because she is used to it, so when I plug something else in and it sounds different she doesn’t really get past “it’s different to the benchmark so therefore it’s not as good”. I expect manufacturers are grateful it’s me writing the reviews and not her!!
As for others remarking on the ludicrous prices being charged for cables and kit in general then I’m with you all the way on that. The industry does itself massive credibility damage in my view with spurious claims and ridiculously inflated pricing. Nobody can justify £15 grand for a mains distribution block, £50k for a turntable power supply or £40k for a tonearm…
Despite that, some uber-fi I think does go some way to justifying its extremely high cost - those Wilson Audio Chronosonic XVX speakers cost £300k but they are perhaps the finest speakers I have ever heard, the Wilson Benesch GMT - One turntable at over a quarter of a million pounds is a truly revelatory experience and I can see that the engineering, materials and meticulous pursuit of perfection and low production volumes means it must be incredibly expensive to produce. I don’t have a problem with those or indeed the Naim Statement amplifiers - they’re flagships pushing the very frontiers of audio engineering. It doesn’t matter that only a handful of people will ever own them, they’re the SR71 Blackbird of hi-fi and I for one am very glad they exist.
It’s the £15 000 a metre interconnects I have an issue with…
JonathanG
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It’s the £150 a metre interconnects I have an issue with…
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Great post Jonathan but I think the reality is a lot simpler than you describe here. Nowadays it’s not about the quality of the sound it’s about how the music moves people or how it speaks to them lyrically. I guarantee not many care about soundstage or timbre or decay so advertising quality HiFi is pointless in most cases as this generation don’t care. I can’t imagine an occasion when my daughter or any of her friends would sit down and critically listen to Billy Eilish or Taylor Swift and comment on soundstage or instrument placement, it would never happen. I work with a team who on average are about twenty years younger than me and 99% have never of Naim, in fact only one knows of them because their wife works for Bentley. All of them though spend their days listening to music on the works computer systems and are more than satisfied tapping their feet along with Spotify and Logitech speakers.
It’s a dying industry whether we like it or not and outside of forums like this it doesn’t exist to many people. You only have to look at the age demographic and preferred music on here to realise that it’s generally a middle class, older man’s hobby with plenty of disposable income and time on their hands. Sad but very true in my experience.
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I did Taylor Swift , K-pop (blackpink,bts , girls generation , G dragon etc ) Rihanna , Sabrina carpenter , Duo Lipa etc etc , mostly pop artiste on my systems and many dealers system for eg . DD, Vitus , linn solo 800, Luxman , Burmester , naim /focal , MSB, lumin , and many more , they all sounded super wonderful and different characters on different makes.you can actually point out the placement of all instruments in the recordings .
Try , you will have different results and NEW findings , they are actually very very good and TRUE recordings
Yes the industry is dying .some of my audiophile friends had given up the hobbies . And the new generation, iPhone is their audiophile hifi . 
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