rjohn79395 wrote: And now, my favorite audio store, Audio Systems in Austin, is going to shut down. The owner is retiring after many years in the business.

Yes, very sad, I have known them for almost 40 years. It is an unfortunate sign of deteriorating business in our channel (specialty audio), lots of owners getting ready to retire with no transition plan ... often through no fault of their own. The new breed of dealers is often not interested in high performance audio or in-store demos, more focused on automation and control. Maybe a little distributed audio, but home theaters are not the "must have" in a high-end home they once were. Time will tell, things tend to go in cycles, could be high-performance audio will become a trendy thing again like it was in the 70's and 80's. And then stores will change back ... what's old is new again.

Moderator wrote:

rjohn79395 wrote: And now, my favorite audio store, Audio Systems in Austin, is going to shut down. The owner is retiring after many years in the business.

Yes, very sad, I have known them for almost 40 years. It is an unfortunate sign of deteriorating business in our channel (specialty audio), lots of owners getting ready to retire with no transition plan ... often through no fault of their own. The new breed of dealers is often not interested in high performance audio or in-store demos, more focused on automation and control. Maybe a little distributed audio, but home theaters are not the "must have" in a high-end home they once were. Time will tell, things tend to go in cycles, could be high-performance audio will become a trendy thing again like it was in the 70's and 80's. And then stores will change back ... what's old is new again.

Moderator....that would be nice if it circled back around again. Good observation.
Del