Classe is going out of business

Never heard their stuff, but always seemed like a respected brand that I would love to hear.

Wow that's going to sting. It's sad but it may just be the tip of the iceberg.

Great stuff

I've auditioned several speaker systems with Classé electronics, and I've always been impressed by the sound quality. @DSkip hit the nail on the head, as far as I'm concerned.

With that said, my sense of the situation is that without strong and costly marketing, high-end manufacturers are not going to survive in this market in which many people who have money to buy high-end equipment are being satisfied with lower quality, more convenient, easier to use alternatives. Many are more interested in whole-house systems that provide reasonably good sound than in great sound in a single room for listening. Dedicated listening rooms are giving way to home theaters.

In recent years, I've seen several very successful friends build new homes in which they install very expensive whole-house systems and relinquish the far better sounding systems they had in their prior home. It seems to be the fashion these days.

Perhaps, it's analogous to being satisfied with MP3 quality that makes listening convenient even though the listener knows he/she is sacrificing sound quality.

The industry may be consolidating.

I can understand the popularity of headphones, heck, I've invested a good chunk of change(compared to the average Joe) in my office rig. However, there is no way it comes even remotely close to my (not so hi-end compared to some of you yahoo's systems). I think, that for the most part, even today's well to do John Q Public doesn't have an appreciation for good sound, or even care for that matter. College aged people, how many have real systems compared to 10-20 years ago. Not many I'm betting.

nooshinjohn wrote: »

I wonder how much of an investment it would take to buy the name and relaunch. Seems to me a company like Sound United could use a name like this in their portfolio.

They would neuter it.
Not to far different but about 10yrs ago Smith & Wesson was bought for 7 million dollars. The investors got all the tooling, patents and everything now its a hundreds of millions of dollars company and increasing every year. I wish I was part of that bunch.

Sad news indeed. It's a brave new world gents.

Interesting. I guess China manufacturing just postponed it. On the other hand, Bryston seems to be doing really well.

Skip, there is a big difference between a manufacturer and a dealer, but the concepts are obviously similar. Good luck.

Have wanted to try some Classe amps for a while now ( a knowledgeable friend uses them and says they are fantastic) but the prices for a vintage one is way up there. Maybe this will soften the market and I might be able to afford one or two!

To me they should drop as they are extremely difficult to do any servicing on them as the manufacturer will not give out service manuals and specifications for servicing (I do understand their reasoning) but you no longer have an option to send to the manufacturer for updates and Servicing some of the repairs are just no longer able to be done and we certain issues that can develop they become a paperweight if they can't be fixed this is not just their equipment but several pieces of equipment when you get into the high-end stuff Krell ,McIntosh you name the brand it's not very different once you get up to a certain level, basically becomes a crapshoot whether you can get a system that last for a while or if it does experience an issue you have to throw it away. To me that's a major drop in value.

Yes but no more apparently. They are out of business according to this thread.

Hope so for the sake of all the current owners. Hope he gets the parts and service books as well.

"defunked" -- now, would James Brown have approved of that?