Help us shape the future of Polk

txcoastal1 · February 2023

The real boost was albums and entry level turntables. Many actually had the opportunity to hear uncompressed music.
I do realize that is likely a fad the is soon fading away again, but I will take what us audio aficionado's can get!!

dpowell · February 2023

Made it through first time on the application. Will see what happens.

DStachour · February 2023

The survey worked fine for me the first time and I'd love to contribute.

maximillian · February 2023

Survey is closed, but probably would not have qualified due to working for another audio company.

The industry has many challenges:
- Shift away from quality and more towards convenience.
- Along with that, lots of low-brand, inexpensive competition.
- Approaching recession
- Difficulty to overcome the reason why higher-end audio is needed. "Higher end" being anything more than a BT speaker. There's also a lack of show-rooms to hear good audio.

I personally experienced #1 recently. My daughter (20 yo) said she wanted to get into Vinyl or CD collecting. I asked why, and could only get "because it sounds cool". Then I turned the conversation to upgrading from her BT speaker and over-ear headphones to a nice 2 channel rig and she wasn't interested. She doesn't have the room and doesn't see the need (even though I have several nice setups to hear). I offered to get her setup with an LSi7 based rig (amp, pre, stands, etc.) for CD playing but she turned it down.

That said, my wife does appreciate the sound of my R100's in my home office. But she also uses headphones mainly.

Lastly, I am still a Polk fan and have many products from Polk. I occasionally lurk here nowadays, and don't participate much. The forum has changed from when I first joined and it doesn't seem as engaging and fun.

SIHAB · February 2023

We stink.

This:

$130.00

nooshinjohn · February 2023

@CarlJacobson_POLK

Do you know when we will start finding out if we have been selected or not?

SIHAB · February 2023

Oh, you have been selected;

mhardy6647 · February 2023

maximillian wrote: »

Survey is closed, but probably would not have qualified due to working for another audio company.

The industry has many challenges:
- Shift away from quality and more towards convenience.
- Along with that, lots of low-brand, inexpensive competition.
- Approaching recession
- Difficulty to overcome the reason why higher-end audio is needed. "Higher end" being anything more than a BT speaker. There's also a lack of show-rooms to hear good audio.

I personally experienced #1 recently. My daughter (20 yo) said she wanted to get into Vinyl or CD collecting. I asked why, and could only get "because it sounds cool". Then I turned the conversation to upgrading from her BT speaker and over-ear headphones to a nice 2 channel rig and she wasn't interested. She doesn't have the room and doesn't see the need (even though I have several nice setups to hear). I offered to get her setup with an LSi7 based rig (amp, pre, stands, etc.) for CD playing but she turned it down.

That said, my wife does appreciate the sound of my R100's in my home office. But she also uses headphones mainly.

Lastly, I am still a Polk fan and have many products from Polk. I occasionally lurk here nowadays, and don't participate much. The forum has changed from when I first joined and it doesn't seem as engaging and fun.

So, I agree, by and large, but I think that economics has dealt "us" (the "average consumer") a weird hand in the past 20 years or so -- there's not much in the middle (heck, there's not much "middle class" left); markets for most things have bifurcated: there's inexpensive/massmarket and then there's "high end"/luxury/"lifestyle". The price gap has widened just as the chasm spread in personal wealth has widened.
Here's a hamfisted attempt to visualize this for hifi. In the old days, there was (I think) a fairly "normal" (Gaussian) distribution of products available from the low end (Soundesign, Yorx) to the high end (conrad-johnson, Audio Research, McIntosh) -- pick your favorite examples. There was plenty of stuff in between, and the price spread from the bottom to the top of the market was fairly limited (say $100 to $10,000, i.e., three orders of magnitude).

Nowadays, there's an explosion of value-priced stuff, mostly from generic Asian manufacturers and brands -- and still a healthy (if smaller) niche at the high end, with concomitant, stratospheric pricing. Today, that price spread is from $10s of dollars (Amazon Basics-level products) to millions of dollars (five orders of magnitude!). Worse, there's -- maybe (?) -- not much in between.

(not to scale!)

It's the change in distribution, and the nonlinear increase in the spread (from ca. three to five orders of magnitude, a 100-fold change) of prices that are the big challenges, I'd opine.

Right now today, Polk's R and L series are pretty reasonably in- between. Maybe (??) there is still a market for high-value, reasonably-priced entertainment components?

nooshinjohn · February 2023

mhardy6647 wrote: »

(not to scale!)

So... Audio now needs to buy a bra?

mhardy6647 · February 2023

nooshinjohn wrote: »

mhardy6647 wrote: »

(not to scale!)

So... Audio now needs to buy a bra?

maximillian · February 2023

I agree with you, but I think the middle ground presence varies by product type. For headphones, especially in-ear it's definitely two humped. But for bookshelf and floor speakers there's still mid-priced options (some may call this mid-Fi). Of course, depends on how you define the middle. But Polk still sells the Monitor and T-series. Some may argue that the $500-$800 price point is mid-priced, and that would place the smaller Signature and Reserve products at this price point. That's always been Polk's strength - selling quality sounding speakers for <$1K.

Again, in-ear, wired products, totally agree. Lots of cheap junk, some high end expensive stuff (>$300) and not too much in the middle ($100-$200). I can't seem to find a comfortable, good sounding wired set for portable gaming (low latency). A lot of products that used to be here (such as Grado iGe3) seem to be discontinued in favor of wireless or more expensive sets.

dromunds · February 2023

Polk and others presumably have the “good, best, better” approach for that very reason. One reason the R200’s are popular is because they are in that average consumer range, albeit within the audio set.

rooftop59 · February 2023

dromunds wrote: »

Polk and others presumably have the “good, best, better” approach for that very reason. One reason the R200’s are popular is because they are in that average consumer range, albeit within the audio set.

I would say look at the edifier's above. The R200s are very expensive for most people, especially when you consider that you have to buy an amp, stands, cables, etc. WE think of them as mid-fi or even great sound at a reasonable price; the masses do not...

[Deleted User] · February 2023

nooshinjohn wrote: »

@CarlJacobson_POLK

Do you know when we will start finding out if we have been selected or not?

John, I'll need to make an inquiry. I was just helping get the forum members involved, but I am not that involved in the project. Stay tuned.

dromunds · February 2023

rooftop59 wrote: »

dromunds wrote: »

Polk and others presumably have the “good, best, better” approach for that very reason. One reason the R200’s are popular is because they are in that average consumer range, albeit within the audio set.

I would say look at the edifier's above. The R200s are very expensive for most people, especially when you consider that you have to buy an amp, stands, cables, etc. WE think of them as mid-fi or even great sound at a reasonable price; the masses do not...

That’s why I qualified the statement, “within the audio set.”

nooshinjohn · February 2023

Did anyone get selected yet?

mhardy6647 · February 2023

maybe we're just, you know...

audioluvr · February 2023

Deleted User wrote: »

Not yet. Hopefully, I’m not scheduled for 8:00am Monday. Lol

Oh you will be now!

F1nut · February 2023

Geesh, give them a chance.

skipshot12 · February 2023

Nothing yet, a little too soon?

mhardy6647 · February 2023

In all seriousness, yes, I reckon so (a little premature, that is).
It's a journey, not a destination.

vader540is · February 2023

maximillian wrote: »

Survey is closed, but probably would not have qualified due to working for another audio company.

The industry has many challenges:
- Shift away from quality and more towards convenience.
- Along with that, lots of low-brand, inexpensive competition.
- Approaching recession
- Difficulty to overcome the reason why higher-end audio is needed. "Higher end" being anything more than a BT speaker. There's also a lack of show-rooms to hear good audio.

I personally experienced #1 recently. My daughter (20 yo) said she wanted to get into Vinyl or CD collecting. I asked why, and could only get "because it sounds cool". Then I turned the conversation to upgrading from her BT speaker and over-ear headphones to a nice 2 channel rig and she wasn't interested. She doesn't have the room and doesn't see the need (even though I have several nice setups to hear). I offered to get her setup with an LSi7 based rig (amp, pre, stands, etc.) for CD playing but she turned it down.

That said, my wife does appreciate the sound of my R100's in my home office. But she also uses headphones mainly.

Lastly, I am still a Polk fan and have many products from Polk. I occasionally lurk here nowadays, and don't participate much. The forum has changed from when I first joined and it doesn't seem as engaging and fun.

From my experience, " Hifi audio" is definitely coming back.

/r/audiophile has almost 2 million members ( and growing) most of them are GenX, millennials & GenZ

I hope this hobby doesn't die. Im going to teach my kids to appreciate a good 2 channel system with proper components & proper set up.