I couldnt help but notice this past month, that in the worst of times financially for me (and obviously the country) that the bargains in HT seem to be changing or dissapearing. I was shocked to find out the M60s crossed the 1k barrier today, and the Paradigm Monitor 7's which were around 700 when my friend purchased them not too long ago have jumped to 950. On top of that the amazing Oppo BDP-83 is mysteriously discontinued out of the blue along with the bdp-80. The legendary SVS-pb10 has also been discontinued out of the blue. These are a few examples Im citing, but there's more out there. I have this strange, bad feeling about the world of audio, anyone else? What do you think the future holds for making quality systems acessible to the average person?
I would suspect, no doubt, the Paradigms have increased significantly in price to its US customers because of the growing weakness of the US dollar compared to the Canadian along with other currencies AND they sell through dealers who are probably passing on the extra cost of importation to their customers. Because it sells direct, no doubt Axiom, can hold the line better on its US prices because it doesn`t have to deal with distributors and retailers and their additional markups. Keep in mind, with anything imported in to the US because of that steadily weakening dollar, it is going to cost YOU the customer more and more money. The vast majority of anything electronic is made overseas, hence, same story, imports will be more costly. SVS seems to be going through design changes and it has been pointed out elsewhere recently on this forum they changed their sub amps(Made in China?) since, I assume, the Bash amps, coming from Canada, were getting too costly to import.
Although Oppo has discontinued the 83 and 80, we have a couple of resellers in the area that still have the 83 and 83SE in stock. I must admit the introduction of the BDP93 came right out of the blue and you have to give them credit for being able to keep it pretty quiet. If the price is close to the 83 with all those extra updated features, they will probably sell boatloads of them.
