Whether you label it hype or zeitgeist, audio equipment continues to sell in proportion to current buzz. Successful salesmen ride the prevailing wave. The wave is continuously generated by reviews, forums, word-of-mouth, etc. We've seen it all before: What HiFi used to – and to some extent still – groom buyers into buying the same handful of brands at the same handful of retailers. Independent mom-and-pop dealers are locked out of that lucrative mainstream, so they have to ride smaller waves. But there's an inevitable symbiosis – a mutual dependence – between influencers and resellers.
ASR currently enjoys a position of influence capable of making or breaking a brand - eg, AsciLab. Smart resellers cosy up to that, pile on, and reap rewards. It's the way of the world. The lure has always been – and continues to be – performance and status. Whether the hook is science or a good-looking box, the psychology and economics remain identical: harness, focus and create the desire to spend; then continue to push that button: even whiter whites, even more sciencey-sounding technical perfection – even if that is proven to be long past a threshold of relevance.
We're in a moment when a simple numerical ranking of excellence resting on a permanent-seeming foundation is reassuring. But we're also in a moment when those technical differences are converging: in recent decades audio excellence has been increasingly democratised. But that doesn't touch the need for consumer therapy, or the status-endorphins generated by purchase and ownership of an on-trend device. People will keep buying new things, convinced by whatever prevailing wind says is the thing to buy – somewhat dissatisifed with yesterday's once-new thing. And all this will go the way of AOL. Meantime, subjectivists to our bones, we're all complicit: reviewers, makers, buyers – caught in the same churn.
