Audio Specialists Seek Positioning Through Demo Stations, Seminars

Faced with an aging demographic of customers, razor-thin video margins and declining home theater business, specialty AV dealers are making an aggressive push into digital audio, hoping to reclaim a position they see as their rightful spot as the authorities of high-quality music systems. Going into 2012, Bjorn’s in San Antonio will be focusing on “connectivity and devices,” Neil Viers, sales manager, told us. A year in the works, the strategy is to position the company “to be the place where people go” for digital audio, Viers said.

Specialty retailers found themselves in unfamiliar territory -- as outsiders -- when digital audio exploded around them, first growing out of illegitimate roots and then becoming codified by the Apple ecosystem, where music enthusiasts flocked for devices and music. Specialists still face steep competition from Apple, “which does a great job of stacking people deep in their stores,” but there’s room for independent dealers to capitalize on digital audio both in and outside of the Apple world, Viers said. “We're looking to take consumers’ music -- whether it’s an “i-device” or a media PC -- and make the most out of it,” he said.

That strategy marries digital audio with Bjorn’s expertise in multi-room audio and custom electronics. The store has set aside 400-500 square feet of retail floor space for tables with new products that Viers wouldn’t identify yet. The focus for the new area will be automation and control using devices that manage shades, IP cameras and a variety of docks and listening stations, he said. Products will include those from B&W or Peachtree Audio that have Apple-compatible products, he said. The goal is to create an environment “like an Apple store” where consumers can play with devices and learn what’s possible with them, and to attract a “more youthful” customer base, Viers said. “Our demographic has been the Boomers for a long, long time,” he said. Bjorn’s will keep its traditional radio and TV ads featuring owner Bjorn Dybdahl, but has also moved heavily into Facebook and Twitter and will try to drive the younger demographic to its website and into the store, he said. It will also use its 18,000-name email list. “The 45-and-younger group tend to be on different media, and it’s cheap to do that, so that’s good for us,” he said.

NAD and PSB parent Lenbrook Industries is behind a push to make specialists the recognized destination for computer audio, according to dealers. As part of that initiative, The Little Guys in Chicago is creating a digital audio room in-store that owner David Wexler described as a “learning center.” Customers will be able to sit at workstations to learn how to get music off their PCs and into other rooms in the home and how to get better sound from music stored on PCs, Wexler said. Dean Miller, Lenbrook America president, declined to discuss the initiative now, saying more information would be available next month.

The Sound Room in suburban St. Louis pitches Peachtree Audio products whose digital-to-analog converters are designed to beef up the sound of compressed music. Salespeople encourage customers to plug their iPods into the dock on top of the Peachtree iNova, which plays through Totem Acoustics speakers in a demo station at The Sound Room, said David Young, president. “They bring their own music and can hear that it sounds really good,” Young said. The store also holds seminars on how to get music from a PC to play to other rooms in the house and how to get Internet radio and streaming services via a home network, he said. Networks present both opportunities and challenges, Young told us. When clients buy a new computer or add a printer to a network, the change can make streaming music or a Netflix app no longer functional. “When something doesn’t work, [customers see it as] our fault,” Young said. “And then we have to do the work to fix it because we answer the phone.”

Gramophone, Timonium, Md., “climbed the mountain as high as we could go” with traditional analog high-end customers, said Brian Hudkins, owner. Now the specialty dealer needs to “plant the seeds and build a new customer base” where iTunes and other digital music devices are the focus, Hudkins said. Customers are “fascinated with Spotify, Pandora and other services,” he said, “and when we show them they can have it throughout the house, they're very excited.” Sonos fulfills the need at the low end, and Meridian’s Sooloos music server at the high-end, and NAD and Meridian promise new product introductions at CES that should be “very interesting,” he said.

There’s room for more high-end products in the digital media space overall, Hudkins said. “It’s a very dynamic category and right now Sonos is the tool that a lot of us are using to attract that customer,” he said. Looking beyond audio, Hudkins sees opportunities in helping consumers find and manage digital photos and video “that’s stashed away somewhere.” Gramophone is “making real traction” in helping consumers discover content and making it “useful” for them, he said. The category needs to evolve as there’s a “fairly limited number of products” addressing this need currently, Hudkins said. “I can count on two hands the products that address this market right now,” he said. “Over the next 6 months to 6 years, we're going to see fewer and fewer surround-sound receivers and disc players and more products designed to play back network-based content stored in your home or on the Internet,” he said.

Definitive Audio in Bellevue, Wash., is building a digital portfolio around Sonos $300-$500 multi-room systems at the entry level and Linn’s $1,995 music server at the high end, Craig Abplanalp, vice president, told us. “There’s an increased awareness of quality which really helps what we're doing,” Abplanalp said. Definitive has built its reputation on selling products with better sound quality to make the listening experience more enjoyable, he said, “and to do that, you need to produce better sound in the room and make it easier to work.” Higher quality recordings that use less compression help Definitive’s cause, Abplanalp said, citing a rumored upcoming hi-res recording from Neil Young on Blu-ray that he thinks will stir interest among his client base. The audiophile playback community has been “pushing for higher res playback systems,” he said, and now some of the artists who care about the consumers’ experience with their music are “taking the extra time and effort to release music in high-res,” he said.

According to a post on Neil Young’s website, 2012 will be the year that artists release “High Resolution Audio.” Since the advent of the CD, Young said in a post from May 2011, “listeners have been deprived of the full experience of listening. With the introduction of MP3s via online music services, listeners were further deprived,” he said. He said the soul and spirituality of music happens when music engulfs the listener and “the feeling is there.” That’s what record companies were “born to give you and in 2012 they will deliver,” Young said. We contacted record producer Elliot Mazer, who produced Young’s DVD-Audio re-mix of “Harvest” and his 2009 “Archives: Volume I” on Blu-ray Disc, to ask about the upcoming release and details of the High Resolution Audio format. Mazer told us, “No comment for now.”