Audio Note UK vs Audio Japan Sonic Differences
- Thread starter caesar
- Start date
So what are the data points - I live in Hong Kong - I see a lot of AN UK gear on the used market AND KKondo gear and Lampizator and Aries Cerat and Boulder and ARC and CH Precision AND Krell AND Levinson AND KR and everything else. That means that the people who bought said units in some fashion grew tired of it and moved on. Maybe they upgraded within the company brand - maybe they moved on to something else.
If you are trying to be objective - truly objective - and just look at total worldwide sales then I guess this would be the ultimate arbiter because you could then say - "people with deep enough pockets to buy $50k amplifiers" are likely to turn over many stones and try out the competition. Then you assess how many $50k amplifiers brand X sells worldwide per year vs brand Y.
As I am not American - I don't tend to measure quality by sales figures for audio because not everyone is exactly objective as it pertains to "just listening" and folks have various biases. For instance - I have seen a lot of Tesla owners with bumper stickers that say "We bought this car before we knew Elon was an ass" and a lot of people will not buy a product for religious or political reasons.
I had several guys on forums tell me that based purely on my posts they would never buy/or audition any Audio Note UK product. They made that decision without hearing any of it - just because they hated my guts because I dared to like the sound of it more than their McIntosh/Bryston/Krell etc. And of course, several death threats came my way as well. People sure do take this audio stuff seriously - lol.
How do we judge this stuff - I listen and I like AN UK better than Kondo - so what can you SAY to me to change what I heard? Vice Versa - there are no "words" that can change a first-hand experience.
Back to sales figures - okay one dealer sells more Kondo than AN UK - okay but what are all the circumstances of that? What about different markets - what about globally? How many $100k+ amplifiers does Kondo sell globally vs AN UK? Do you have numbers for that?
The AN UK dealer in Hong Kong noted that they sold 200 M6 preamps and also presold 200 Meishu Tonmeister integrated amplifiers (when I was there they had about 15 boxes in the waiting room by the secretary they had so many Meishus selling like hotcakes) - the M6 preamps sell for $20k to $45k depending on version and the Meishu Tonmeister is $19k to $25k+ depending on version. So they sold 400 units in one year just from these two units from one dealer. And we haven't gotten to the affordable gear like OTO and their power amps or the shit ton of Jinro and Ongaku they sell or the M10, M9, M8, M3, M2, M1s.
It would be nice to know what sort of sales high-end companies are producing. ARC went belly-up and that shocked me because I perceived them to be a kind of high-end juggernaut. But they were struggling.
Yes that's possibly happening with other established companies as well, we had Verity close, the Dartzeel controversy, could be others. So much for those who were mocking the small manufacturer. At least point to point tube electronics can be repaired by anybody, and drivers of a speaker can be replaced.
