apple to the rescue

i read that visitors to this year's CES were all stricken by one stark realization - that today's high-end is losing its perspective with regard to pricing. when you call an item with a price tag of USD10,000 as "mid-priced", you know the manufacturer has completely lost touch with reality. i mean, RM40,000 can almost get you a MyVi and for some mid-level executives, it is equivalent to their annual salary.

while there are enough budget gear to entice the newbies, it’s the gear in the middle, the gear that those budding audiophiles will aspire to move up to when they’ve outgrown the entry-level stuff that got them hooked to begin with, that’s sadly in short supply. incidentally, mr. ling's of tong lee has echoed this sentiment to me last week, that's why he is bringing in more mid-fi stuff to his shop.

back to the subject, with rising material and labour costs in the US and other european countries, which manufacturer really has the know-how, capacity and ability to cater to this critical segment of the market? china? not really. you will be shocked at how they price shanling these days. not all MIC stuff are cheap!

i feel that to do mid-fi stuff successfully, you need a radical approach that is going to change the paradigm of how mid-fi is being engineered and manufactured. i think you know what i am thinking, you smart readers.

who's in better position than steve job and co? who has better credentials and capacity to revolutionize this (mid-fi) other than apple computers?

if apple were to take up this challenge then we audiophiles are promised a bright future. i could envision music servers that have superb UI (user interface) much like iPhone - one could flip the virtual album covers when selecting songs; one could, by using fingers' movement, enlarge and reduce the album cover, rotate the viewing angle , and many other cool features that's unheard of in traditional two-channel audio.

the price would be less than RM5K. executives or fresh graduates aged 22 and above could save up two months' salaries and afford it. they may not even need to buy expensive interconnects or speaker cables, or power conditioners. and what's most importantly is - the sound is truly mid-fi!

all these are not make-belief or fantasy. with apple's track record and its "mover and shaker" reputation, this vision is palpably real.

the only question left is, of course, whether apple sees money in the hifi industry.