The usual AV companies are being bulldozed by Big Tech. They've lost the war. At the same time, Big Tech is not that clear in what direction they want to take AV. Apple will produce a superb speaker, the original HomePod , I believe and remove it from the line up with no clear strategy.. Amazon would or has done the same, oogle produce the wonderful chromecast and it is no longer ... Samsung, a big tech , albeit of a different nationality or perhaps philosophy, acquired Harman and .... well... yeah.. JBL is still at its devices, making spectacular products that no one can find or know about and ... no one knows what they will come up with ... and when .. so .. The usual crapshoot... The Japanese bigs are getting smaller , scattered and acquired. Sony is a shell of its former shelf, Pioneer, Panasonic, Denon ..
The Audio and Video's Industry has been too long mired in its old ways. They have lost sight of the needs and wants of the new generations. Yet people seem to continue to be attracted to "good" sound, whatever that means. When the sound coming from their AV system resemble what they hear in events or functions where music is played by a band, people seem to recognize it as "good" sound. Almost at an intuitive level.
Yet most of those companies haven't produced much to serve the public. We are still in the numerous boxes and lot of wires .. in a world of wireless, pressing icons on a smartphone or vocalizing commands. At times their cluelessness is beyond baffling (talking to you Harman).
An exemple: Class D affords small form factors and efficiency for massive power output, superb performance and, these days an important factor, excellent energy efficiency. How many AVR do you see with Class D? Not from Denon or Marantz or ... perhaps Pioneer, briefly. Class D amplifier modules can be easily sourced by the DIYers, yet are rare as hens teeth in the AV world.
Wireless.. Half-baked efforts by Denon with their potentially good HEOS... who else?
Clear DRC, named D R C as in Digital Room Correction. Audyssey actually performs that feat. Once you work for years at it and frequenct fora and debate and read and research. Why not make it easy? Easier? A subscription? Something the layman get to make his/her/their system sound ood in their room... Noooope.
It is clear people don't like a lot of big speakers and wires in their rooms.. yet, there has to be a middle ground between the stooopidly small and bad sounding Bose "cubes" and the usual speakers favored by the audiophiles. A exemple : 5 JBL LSR305 and some disguised subwoofers ( they could be coffee table for all I care
) with good integration in most living room can make for a pleasant sounding system and pas trop cher? No? Dress them up in some designer shapes and colors, throw in the decoding from something the size of an Apple TV4K, sending the signal to the speakers wirelessly. IMO and IME , eminently feasible with today's technology. Where is such product? I mean, we know the advantage of soffit mounting, that is what a speaker mounted
in a wall is... We can control directivity electronically .. yet we are still pushing boxes to the public?
The charge is being led by the Lifestyle sector. Often derided by us audiophiles, they've seen the light. they lack however the knoweldge of the traditionally AV companies.. Yet they , at times surprise me. SONOS sounds good to me, so does Devialet, their little speakers speak a lot of truth. And the bass coming from these smallish pumping boxes is stupendous... From time to time Bose (
)too, the 700 soundbar sounds good to me, not something I would listen to for hours but casually, yes, in a bedroom, yes. As for Bang and Olufsen, some of their speakers will wipe the floor with many of our ASR favorite speakers... in most rooms. While being as pretty and fine looking as <Plug whatever pretty celebrity you want here>... If you have the opportunity, please listen to a Beolab 5, you'll hear and understand what I mean. They're a strange company...
Which AV company will make this transition? I see Kef, moving toward? I see Cabasse, another European compan. Who else? Ikea... No joke. They are thinking it. Their Home electronics strategy is alive. They are thinking Home Electronics. People see their (abundant and very good) Home Automation offering, I believe Ikea is looking for more. Their collaboration with SONOS is no fluke.
All that to say that the future of the AVR is no AVR but software, applications, apps and the hardware to accommodate and integrate these. In a very small package. Apple TV 4K or smaller size.
peace.
... probably with a built-in ultra short throw projector.
