Why no love for Simaudio?

[taters]

Agreed. Why do you think that is so? Lack of show participation or dealer network size...advertising, perhaps?

I see them at shows and they have good dealer representation. I really believe it's a matter of perception.

 

[caesar]

Applying economics and behavioral sciences analysis, here are the main reasons:

- Neutral is perceived as boring by many audiophiles, who want exciting SS, like D’Agostino (or the naturalness of tubes). Furthermore, there are other brands that already own that "neutral" space in the mind of the customer. And the niche market for neutral is only so big.

- It is not priced high enough to be considered elite. Soulution and Consolation are priced much higher, and let’s be honest: high end audio is a luxury industry - people feel good about themselves when buying and owning expensive gear, no matter how much engineering excellence is preached in their marketing. For a reality (vs. bulls*hit check), just take a look at and feel the finishes on magicos and wilsons.

- Priced too high compared to other neutral gear. Bryston owns that lower-priced segment: neutral sound and even more power than Sim to drive any speaker. Sim, then, is stuck in a bad space between the cheaper Bryston and more expensive Soulution and Consoulation- the worst place possible for a luxury product.

- No marquee reviewers worshiping their gear, like TAS guys and others worship Soulution, Consolation, and Magico. And, of course, Wilson, over the years. Because it’s not mentioned by authority figures frequently, people don’t know what the brand story is all about. Occasionally, there is a product that is reviewed positively, but the impression is that it’s a one-off, not consistently woven into the story of excellence for the brand. That's why so many companies are willing to provide free long-term loans to reviewers, so the brand story gets pounded into the heads of the audiophiles.

- The guys who do review it, don’t talk about it from a sense-of-life, emotional, perspective. In other words, when reviewed by an audio nerd is that it’s a bunch of soldered chips and wires vs. something that lifts your emotions and makes your life better.

- Lack of sense of scarcity: big dealer network

- Lack of regular people talking about SIM. This signals that it’s not a popular product. Furthermore, people enjoy chatting up their gear. There is a big social aspect to this hobby. Talking about gear is similar to re-experiencing it. (How many times do people re-tell great vacation stories, even after many years?) Based on the initial chatter and buzz, audiophiles can go to dealers and hear a product. Many will buy it and start yapping about it to their friends and online…And it’s just human nature to yap about a popular product than a more obscure one, which may just absolutely kick the popular product’s ass in every way possible...which I believe is your argument in favor of Sim audio gear. But sadly, many folks on the forums only talk about the popular products because they get extra enjoyment of discussing shared experiences of products they own or are familiar with. So many ARC fans are ARC fans only because others are ARC fans. The technical term for this phenomenon is “social proof”, but such is human nature. Whether people realize it or on, popularity happens to be a HUGE signal for quality in our hobby.

Your thread title further reinforces this perception!

- Mediocre, bordering on ugly, industrial design. Soulution and D'Agostino are opposites. Soulution is very understated. It has won a Red Dot award for design excellence. D'Agostino, on the hand, is kind of gaudy and overdone, but a lot of people think it's eye candy. (For full disclosure, despite the looks, I will take the sound of D'Agostino over Soultion any time.)

These are just the reasons I brainstormed in 5 minutes, and they capture the crux. But I'm sure there are other reasons as well.

 

[taters]

Applying economics and behavioral sciences analysis, here are the main reasons:

- Neutral is perceived as boring by many audiophiles, who want exciting SS, like D’Agostino (or the naturalness of tubes). Furthermore, there are other brands that already own that "neutral" space in the mind of the customer. And the niche market for neutral is only so big.

- It is not priced high enough to be considered elite. Soulution and Consolation are priced much higher, and let’s be honest: high end audio is a luxury industry - people feel good about themselves when buying and owning expensive gear, no matter how much engineering excellence is preached in their marketing. For a reality (vs. bulls*hit check), just take a look at and feel the finishes on magicos and wilsons.

- Priced too high compared to other neutral gear. Bryston owns that lower-priced segment: neutral sound and even more power than Sim to drive any speaker. Sim, then, is stuck in a bad space between the cheaper Bryston and more expensive Soulution and Consoulation- the worst place possible for a luxury product.

- No marquee reviewers worshiping their gear, like TAS guys and others worship Soulution, Consolation, and Magico. And, of course, Wilson, over the years. Because it’s not mentioned by authority figures frequently, people don’t know what the brand story is all about. Occasionally, there is a product that is reviewed positively, but the impression is that it’s a one-off, not consistently woven into the story of excellence for the brand. That's why so many companies are willing to provide free long-term loans to reviewers, so the brand story gets pounded into the heads of the audiophiles.

- The guys who do review it, don’t talk about it from a sense-of-life, emotional, perspective. In other words, when reviewed by an audio nerd is that it’s a bunch of soldered chips and wires vs. something that lifts your emotions and makes your life better.

- Lack of sense of scarcity: big dealer network

- Lack of regular people talking about SIM. This signals that it’s not a popular product. Furthermore, people enjoy chatting up their gear. There is a big social aspect to this hobby. Talking about gear is similar to re-experiencing it. (How many times do people re-tell great vacation stories, even after many years?) Based on the initial chatter and buzz, audiophiles can go to dealers and hear a product. Many will buy it and start yapping about it to their friends and online…And it’s just human nature to yap about a popular product than a more obscure one, which may just absolutely kick the popular product’s ass in every way possible...which I believe is your argument in favor of Sim audio gear. But sadly, many folks on the forums only talk about the popular products because they get extra enjoyment of discussing shared experiences of products they own or are familiar with. So many ARC fans are ARC fans only because others are ARC fans. The technical term for this phenomenon is “social proof”, but such is human nature. Whether people realize it or on, popularity happens to be a HUGE signal for quality in our hobby.

Your thread title further reinforces this perception!

- Mediocre, bordering on ugly, industrial design. Soulution and D'Agostino are opposites. Soulution is very understated. It has won a Red Dot award for design excellence. D'Agostino, on the hand, is kind of gaudy and overdone, but a lot of people think it's eye candy. (For full disclosure, despite the looks, I will take the sound of D'Agostino over Soultion any time.)

These are just the reasons I brainstormed in 5 minutes, and they capture the crux. But I'm sure there are other reasons as well.

Were you referring to Constellation?

 

[caesar]

Were you referring to Constellation?

Yep! That damn spell checker! And, of course, it has lost out to Soulution in the eyes of TAS guys, who have strongly promoted the brand.

 

[taters]

Yep! That damn spell checker! And, of course, it has lost out to Soulution in the eyes of TAS guys, who have strongly promoted the brand.

You mention the TAS guys promote the brand. Do you think they receive perks for it?

 

[caesar]

You mention the TAS guys promote the brand. Do you think they receive perks for it?

I sure hope not!!!!!

Like everyone else here, I wish I were a fly on the wall listening to a negotiation of a 2 year free loan for a $250K speaker, $100K amps, 100K preamp, $250K wires, or a $100K source. Many of the reviewers are as poor as church mice in real life. So in many cases, a reference system they got for free probably costs more than their home!

All we can do is look at people’s actions and analyze them. For a manufacturer, that $250K speaker will be re-sold at 40% of off. So they have made a modest marketing investment for some reviewer to harangue his readers for a couple of years with his brand story and tell readers the speaker is the BEST.

As for many (but not all!) of the reviewers, it is pretty clear that they don’t give a hoot about the audio fans. Their incentives don’t line up with that of fans, and sometimes don’t line up with the incentives of the magazines they write for. They frequently omit the negative performance elements of a piece gear, only to come clean 4 or 5 years later when the next model comes out. Sometimes they don’t come clean at all, making themselves look like idiots.

Many of the reviewers pretty much despise the audio fans and don’t engage them in a human way. The sad thing is that in most human endeavors, people look to the more experienced for leadership. In high end audio, however, fans look at the reviewers with disgust and derision. And the shame is that a lot of good reviewers get painted with the same filthy brush.

After all, the only thing that matters to so many of these guys is that they like a piece of gear, and they crown it the champ, kind of like Hulk Hogan is the best wrestling champ in the world. (Heck, I like Ric Flair better!)

In the end, as long as they get their favorite gear and get some people to come to their site to read about it, that’s all they care about.

 

[JackD201]

I think they have a branding problem. Check out the History page as well as the Product page. MOON was supposed to be the reference line but where was the standard line? So all products ended up MOONs. Then they branched MOON into different series' further compounding the problem. My theory is that people who get confused from the get go rarely follow through. It's a case of, I don't get iit, movin' on........ So I think they should finally figure out if they will actually use MOON as the Brand and Neo, Evolution, etc as the lines of that brand instead of lines within a line. Crazy huh? Crazier still since the fix is obvious. MOON never stuck. We're all still calling them Simaudio. Dump the MOON. Fixed.

 

[Johnny Vinyl]

I think they have a branding problem. Check out the History page as well as the Product page. MOON was supposed to be the reference line but where was the standard line? So all products ended up MOONs. Then they branched MOON into different series' further compounding the problem. My theory is that people who get confused from the get go rarely follow through. It's a case of, I don't get iit, movin' on........ So I think they should finally figure out if they will actually use MOON as the Brand and Neo, Evolution, etc as the lines of that brand instead of lines within a line. Crazy huh? Crazier still since the fix is obvious. MOON never stuck. We're all still calling them Simaudio. Dump the MOON. Fixed.

This could very well be a major part of the problem, because I too think it's confusing as hell.

 

[KeithR]

haven't really thought about Sim since the Moon I-5 integrated back in the day- which was super cool looking and reasonably priced. Sim has really moved more upscale these days.

 

[NorthStar]

They have some really nice designed products...for all taste...from streamline...Classe look...Attraction style...Solid inspiration...heavy duty construction...etc.
...Black...and silver...some gold accents...nice feet on some components...top loaders...heavy metal/aluminum...clean interiors with premium parts...etc.

* I like Chord electronics too...the look/design in some of their products. ...Not from Canada though...from UK.

 

[caesar]

Gentlemen, I respectfully disagree about solely tweaking the website. The website may be bad because no one complained about it. No one seems to be sure if customers are even going to the website. And those customers that do hit the site, no one probably knows why they are there or what outcome they want from the website.

Furthermore, if there is truly a less than stellar response to the existing product line, why not go back to the drawing board and hone it to something more explosive? If the customers, have not been pulled in yet by seemingly excellent products, why expect them to come now?

The big business challenge is rarely technical - usually it's more fundamental. Remember the money spent on pets.com and thousands of other websites during the .om boom?

Before fiddling with the website, they need to be clear about the strategy: why does the Sim product fulfill a real and compelling need for the group of audiophiles (that we assume want "neutral" sound)? They need to clearly articulate to the consumer why their product and not someone else's will meet their needs. What is it specifically about sim vs. competitor (whomever it is- and this may be unclear to them) that delivers a successful outcome for whomever is using their gear. What is the most important thing their product is solving for the consumer?


Once these bigger questions are answered, then position your product in the market to achieve that for your customer. This may take new products, new engineers, new industrial design, new marketers, etc.


Customers go through various stages in the purchase decision journey (and this frequently happens in loops vs. sequentially): awareness, need, research, compare, decide, purchase. Once they have a strategy in place, they will need to not only update the website with better and appropriate content, but also make sure their dealers and reviewers are all telling a consistent brand story.................

 

[JackD201]

This is much more than just sprucing up a website. This is a complete overhaul of the product matrix nomenclatures to delineate clearly the hierarchies within. Give anybody three categories Neo, Evolution and Moon without looking at the prices, how would people rank them by name? Does MOON come first? MOON is supposed to be the Reference Line problem is they're all MOONs. So are the MOON Evolution and MOON NEO lower than MOON? The products show otherwise. Then there's Legacy which has a negative connotation in the computer age and a Special Editions category but special editions of what? The three Moons or the Legacies. So again this is much more than cosmetic changes to a site. This will have a bearing as early as design, planning, budgeting and pre-production, all fundamental internal concerns. We haven't even gotten to communicating the same to the public yet. Compare this with strat defines brands Vitus, ARC and many others where the hierarchies are much clearer in both nomenclature and differences in industrial design. It's added work for the comsumer who let's say wants to do comparisons between classes. That's where I think people get turned off and start looking elsewhere.

 

[ack]

It's too bad they have these branding problems (which means, I agree), because the product sounds really good and the execution shows engineering prowess. A recent example for me was comparing their top phono with the Pass XP-25 I eventually bought and modified: e.g. excellent shielding of the power supply and phono board, vs the Pass aluminum case which does nothing to prevent hum pick-up. But at least the Pass sounded better, after the modifications. I preferred the execution in the Sim, but apparently the Pass circuit is superior, but perhaps not as well executed.