[GL1TCH3D]

As far as I know only the niche audiophile market even recognizes them as a legitimate brand.

I rarely see consumers with Sony equipment.

I agree with you on audiophile grade equipment not being hi end, they are quite not there yet as they are more in focus with lower tier consumer goods (the mass market makes more $$$). lol they dont care as long as business is good.

As for consumers not having sony equipment I have to disagree with you on this one, people dont usually just let anyone into their homes just to show off their stuff, and when you say sony equipment are you just referring to headphones and audio related hardware only? how about TVs, theather systems, speakers, mobilephones, cameras and game consoles <-- this!, especially this in Asia. Sony's global market value didn't rise because its bad at producing consumer goods. :rolleyes: Or how about studio equipment? btw I see so many people using those XB series headphones here in my country, tried it and hated it. lol

Your statment reminded me (while I was still in college) of someone saying something like "Mistubishi isn't a legit brand they dont have anything note worthy", then this german exchange stundent answers "maybe you should research who builds some of the best class of destroyers in service right now, including some US destoryers and the majority of military gear being deployed in Japan".

If its open back, and is really good or far better than my X1 then I might get tempted. :atsmile:

I probably should have been more precise with my statement!
Disregarding the home setup products (TVs, theatre systems, game consoles), Sony doesn't seem to do well at all, at least here where I live.
They stopped selling the laptops here, i rarely see people with Sony phones and even less so with Sony headphones. Their TVs do fairly well and the PS4 is, well, one of 2 consoles targeted at teens.
I never said Sony wasn't note worthy in any way, I regard them as having very good products in every area but their marketing is severely lacking, at least where I live.

 

[customcoco]

but their marketing is severely lacking, at least where I live.

It's funny it seems like almost the opposite where I am.
 
They've got some of the best ads around, and they advertise a lot, yet they don't seem to do well at all apart from what has been discussed here.
 
It seems to me that the average joes have a rather strange view of Sony.
 
They kind of associate Sony with those cheap Home-Theater-in-a-box that you can find everywhere for a hundred bucks.
 
With that said, the guys I'm talking about also think that Bose and Beats are the end all and be-all of all things Hi-Fi

 
Yet a single look at what they can put out when they want brings everything back into order.
 
I can't help but drool over all those great product lines : Qualia, R10, Early-ES, Esprit etc...
 
Their recent high-end speakers (SS-ARX) sounded remarkably good when I heard them, too.

 

[haloxt]

Sony's innovative stuff like Qualia occurred at a time before they got a white CEO whose function was to fire the engineers that innovated. Actually Sony is doing pretty bad in all consumer electronics departments, even their gaming division when you factor in all profits and losses for the division and how they are selling things cheap and cannibalizing themselves for short-term profit. I get a feeling that people here are judging Sony without actually looking at the numbers or really critiquing what Sony has been doing. I used to invest and keep up on Sony for a long time and they haven't been doing good for about the entire last decade. No innovation, overpriced compared to other companies, products that cater to no one, web presence and marketing stuck in the 1990's. Just look at the one or two sentence product descriptions Sony has for many of their products on Amazon, and worst of all, just look at how their own official website uses #999 color scheme which is literally the most unreadable thing I've ever seen on the internet and I can't navigate anywhere or make sense of the nonsense product descriptions before my eyes start to burn and I have to close the site, let alone ever consider buying anything through the Sony website. You'd think that one of the thousands of Sony employees would care enough to let Sony know that 2 sentence descriptions for their TOTL headphones on Amazon isn't sufficient.... but when so many of their products are like that, it really says it all IMO.
 
Just to give you an idea of how out of touch Sony is, a year before Sony sold their NYC building, I went there thinking they would showcase Sony's best stuff, but all they had was a tiny store completely devoid of customers that didn't even carry their TOTL stuff, not even TOTL headphones and earphones that were only a few hundred dollars. When I asked to see more headphones than the $50 things they had displayed I was told by the store clerk, who was surprised that a customer was in the store, that they didn't stock it because it was "too expensive" to carry, even in their $1 billion dollar building. You can imagine how disappointed I was after just coming from Apple's underground NYC store with so many people that customers had to wait to get in.

 

[GL1TCH3D]

but their marketing is severely lacking, at least where I live.

It's funny it seems like almost the opposite where I am.

They've got some of the best ads around, and they advertise a lot, yet they don't seem to do well at all apart from what has been discussed here.

It seems to me that the average joes have a rather strange view of Sony.

They kind of associate Sony with those cheap Home-Theater-in-a-box that you can find everywhere for a hundred bucks.

With that said, the guys I'm talking about also think that Bose and Beats are the end all and be-all of all things Hi-Fi :rolleyes:

Yet a single look at what they can put out when they want brings everything back into order.

I can't help but drool over all those great product lines : Qualia, R10, Early-ES, Esprit etc...

Their recent high-end speakers (SS-ARX) sounded remarkably good when I heard them, too.

It's interesting. The only things they really push here where I live are their TVs, cameras and the ps4, that last one being the only thing they really advertise.
The big name stores (Bestbuy and the likes) usually have their high end TVs, the PS4 (obviously) and maybe their cameras. Though after that it's mostly the low end headphones and home theater setups. They also tend not to put the audio stuff on display / demo which might have a big influence compared to all the beats, bose and other branded headphones which are up for demo.

At the Sony store they display their cameras and TVs prominently while their headphones and earbuds are left on the side.

At SSI, an audio exhibition in my city, Sony came with a couple of amps and their 1R line of headphones and that's it.

 

[GL1TCH3D]

Sony's innovative stuff like Qualia occurred at a time before they got a white CEO whose function was to fire the engineers that innovated. Actually Sony is doing pretty bad in all consumer electronics departments, even their gaming division when you factor in all profits and losses for the division and how they are selling things cheap and cannibalizing themselves for short-term profit. I get a feeling that people here are judging Sony without actually looking at the numbers or really critiquing what Sony has been doing. I used to invest and keep up on Sony for a long time and they haven't been doing good for about the entire last decade. No innovation, overpriced compared to other companies, products that cater to no one, web presence and marketing stuck in the 1990's. Just look at the one or two sentence product descriptions Sony has for many of their products on Amazon, and worst of all, just look at how their own official website uses #999 color scheme which is literally the most unreadable thing I've ever seen on the internet and I can't navigate anywhere or make sense of the nonsense product descriptions before my eyes start to burn and I have to close the site, let alone ever consider buying anything through the Sony website. You'd think that one of the thousands of Sony employees would care enough to let Sony know that 2 sentence descriptions for their TOTL headphones on Amazon isn't sufficient.... but when so many of their products are like that, it really says it all IMO.

Just to give you an idea of how out of touch Sony is, a year before Sony sold their NYC building, I went there thinking they would showcase Sony's best stuff, but all they had was a tiny store completely devoid of customers that didn't even carry their TOTL stuff, not even TOTL headphones and earphones that were only a few hundred dollars. When I asked to see more headphones than the $50 things they had displayed I was told by the store clerk, who was surprised that a customer was in the store, that they didn't stock it because it was "too expensive" to carry, even in their $1 billion dollar building. You can imagine how disappointed I was after just coming from Apple's underground NYC store with so many people that customers had to wait to get in.

It's painfully obvious that they don't draw nearly the same attention as other brands when they're trying to be in those markets.
They must be under the impression that just having the product out is enough to get the buyers when in this day and age it's obviously not.

 

[HarleyZH]

I probably should have been more precise with my statement!
Disregarding the home setup products (TVs, theatre systems, game consoles), Sony doesn't seem to do well at all, at least here where I live.
They stopped selling the laptops here, i rarely see people with Sony phones and even less so with Sony headphones. Their TVs do fairly well and the PS4 is, well, one of 2 consoles targeted at teens.
I never said Sony wasn't note worthy in any way, I regard them as having very good products in every area but their marketing is severely lacking, at least where I live.

The PS4 is not aimed and marketed to teens only, in fact going by studies the average age of gamers was around 30 when I last checked.

 

[achristilaw]

Always have admired the entry level Sony phones, the MDR V-6's (w/ Sony's others) are quite credible at $100.00. I've owned the R10 and sold it for profit

I hope Sony makes real strides, using a realistic price point, for an assault toward a reference phone. Great phones can be had for well under 1K from the likes of Mr. Speakers Alpha Dogs, or the HIFIMan HE-560 among others. Sony NEEDS a winner at a winning price to bolster both corporate image and consumer confidence.

 

[Zoom25]

Hoping for a closed flagship that has the comfort of the Denon/Fostex but with a higher isolation and relatively high sensitivity.

 

[jjcha]

  Always have admired the entry level Sony phones, the MDR V-6's (w/ Sony's others) are quite credible at $100.00. I've owned the R10 and sold it for profit

I hope Sony makes real strides, using a realistic price point, for an assault toward a reference phone. Great phones can be had for well under 1K from the likes of Mr. Speakers Alpha Dogs, or the HIFIMan HE-560 among others. Sony NEEDS a winner at a winning price to bolster both corporate image and consumer confidence.

 
I can't speak to the US audiophile market, but at least in Japan Sony's always had a variety of credible products in the headphone market, though perhaps less so lately at the higher end.  I do miss the days of the MDR-CD3000 and SA5000 occupying the ~$350 audiophile high end, as well as the MDR-R10 and Q010-MDR1 as the true flagships ($2000 - $3000).  Feels like it's been a decade (well it has) since Sony's really participated in this end of the market.
 
Still, I've got a pair of MDR-R1 mk 2 on my noggin right now and feel it does just fine for an upper-tier consumer (~$200-$300) portable closed headphone.  I think it competes quite fairly with all the other competition on the market at this price point. 
 
There used to be this insane creative risk taking engineering at Sony - look at some of the VAIO computers, like the VGN-X505.  They pioneered the ultrabook before the ultrabook's time.  It's hard to look at the Sennheiser HD800 without at least being reminded of the SA5000/Q010.  You might argue the Sony NEX-7 camera, maybe the PHA portable DAC/amplifiers all reflect this part of the company's DNA.  Miss this in the company's headphone line.
 
I think there is an argument that having these market leading products did absolutely bolster the corporate image and consumer confidence.  Just seems understandable though that the company needs to be careful in deciding where to allocate its resources for these insane creative risky products.

 

[Beagle]

  Always have admired the entry level Sony phones, the MDR V-6's (w/ Sony's others) are quite credible at $100.00. I've owned the R10 and sold it for profit

I hope Sony makes real strides, using a realistic price point, for an assault toward a reference phone. Great phones can be had for well under 1K from the likes of Mr. Speakers Alpha Dogs, or the HIFIMan HE-560 among others. Sony NEEDS a winner at a winning price to bolster both corporate image and consumer confidence.

 
I heard a rumor that it will be two new flagships at two different price points and releases.....the R100 in October which will be priced at $27,050, and in January, the R1000 at $75,050. Both will feature space-age housings made of helium-injected gold as well as a newly designed 430mm driver, impedance of 2 ohms, sensitivity of 189dB and frequency response of 2Hz-387,900kHz (+/- .4db) and miniplug for iPhone.
 
Too rich for my blood

 

[barid]

You actually had me going for a while

 

[audionewbi]

  Unveiling of new high-resolution audio pruducts.
countdown 5 days 14 hrs ?
 

I can see a walkman, a headphone and an IEM. 

 

[wigglepuff]

I probably should have been more precise with my statement!
Disregarding the home setup products (TVs, theatre systems, game consoles), Sony doesn't seem to do well at all, at least here where I live.
They stopped selling the laptops here, i rarely see people with Sony phones and even less so with Sony headphones. Their TVs do fairly well and the PS4 is, well, one of 2 consoles targeted at teens.
I never said Sony wasn't note worthy in any way, I regard them as having very good products in every area but their marketing is severely lacking, at least where I live.

Its probably just there? er Canada right? maybe due to importation duty and other government restrictions on import. Companies dont usually spend so much just for small returns, its also the same with some western brands that are rare here in Asia.
 
They dont make laptops anymore, probably due to the saturated market from laptop makers here in Asia where chinese manufacturing is owning at the moment. But headphones I still see a lot of people using them in my area atleast.

  Sony's innovative stuff like Qualia occurred at a time before they got a white CEO whose function was to fire the engineers that innovated. Actually Sony is doing pretty bad in all consumer electronics departments, even their gaming division when you factor in all profits and losses for the division and how they are selling things cheap and cannibalizing themselves for short-term profit. I get a feeling that people here are judging Sony without actually looking at the numbers or really critiquing what Sony has been doing. I used to invest and keep up on Sony for a long time and they haven't been doing good for about the entire last decade. No innovation, overpriced compared to other companies, products that cater to no one, web presence and marketing stuck in the 1990's. Just look at the one or two sentence product descriptions Sony has for many of their products on Amazon, and worst of all, just look at how their own official website uses #999 color scheme which is literally the most unreadable thing I've ever seen on the internet and I can't navigate anywhere or make sense of the nonsense product descriptions before my eyes start to burn and I have to close the site, let alone ever consider buying anything through the Sony website. You'd think that one of the thousands of Sony employees would care enough to let Sony know that 2 sentence descriptions for their TOTL headphones on Amazon isn't sufficient.... but when so many of their products are like that, it really says it all IMO.
 
Just to give you an idea of how out of touch Sony is, a year before Sony sold their NYC building, I went there thinking they would showcase Sony's best stuff, but all they had was a tiny store completely devoid of customers that didn't even carry their TOTL stuff, not even TOTL headphones and earphones that were only a few hundred dollars. When I asked to see more headphones than the $50 things they had displayed I was told by the store clerk, who was surprised that a customer was in the store, that they didn't stock it because it was "too expensive" to carry, even in their $1 billion dollar building. You can imagine how disappointed I was after just coming from Apple's underground NYC store with so many people that customers had to wait to get in.

Maybe they are on a delima? where they want to follow some of China's booming companies as to targeting mass cosumers rather than hi end products. Since people in the past regarded them for quality products, if they produce cheap plastic headphones to reduce cost people might totally ignore them and go bankrupt all the way or if its succesfull like for example those Superlux from China they will be earning tons here in Asia alone and especially China where consumerism is seriously going wild. also the fact of China's proximity in Asia, they just dump all those brands and products in neighboring asian nations. So local brands and manufacturers are having a migrane right now. (I know this for a fact since my family used to be in manufacturing in Jeans and other textile, when China joined the WTO and started dumping their products, it was a filing for backrupcy race)
 
Like >>> Toyota adopted to the world maket so they can compete in specific areas in specific markets (price ranges), take a look at Toyota websites of different countries, example Toyota Camry (the hi end model) the unit in the US is totally different (including internals) from the ones in China, Japan and Southeast Asia, the ones in Europe is also different. They made it that way to comply with government standards for safety and to control cost to target specific areas where people will actually like the unit and can still be able to afford them.
 
note: China's economy is seriusly killing some of its Asian conterparts at the moment be it automotive, mobile phone, communications hardware and other products, and no its not cheap plastic products either where people used to mock them when they started out from 1997, its seriously good ****. Due to the fact that they can mass produce so much that actual cost of a good quality product goes down a lot. (dont ask me how mass prodcution works or its algorithm, I have no idea) Like how Ford motors nailed it before with mass production, which stapled the company preWW2 era.

 

[wigglepuff]

btw you guys can read japanese? Is that new? I dont see any announcement in thier english websites. The language on the pic is mandarin btw, hmm aimed for China...its probably going to be cheap? (I mean in the price tag sense, hopefully not the product quality)

 

[JayLam]

If the price is cheap, it's not because the **** aimed for China.
In fact, most SONY fans in China are looking forward to a flagship as milestone as Q010 or R10,but unfortunately,it is said the RRP is only around 1000USD……as we all know SONY died at least 110years ago.