Re: Stock audio: what's Audi doing wrong?

[Ron Mruss <rmruss@pangea.ca>]

"Bose is a leader in speaker innovation in the States and has a great
reputation."

I have to disagree with the first part of your statement.  I think that the general public thinks that Bose is great, but this is in large part due to a LARGE marketing budget.  As someone who carea A LOT about how music sounds and worked at an Audio-Visual store for a few years I can assure you this reputation is undeserved.  We sold Bose at the store and all the salespeople (I wasn't one of them) thought it was, to be frank, junk.  But it sold well, because people asked for it, and if one of the salespeople tried to tell a customer it wasn't that great, the customer thought they were lying.

I overheard a salesman respond to a customer's question once by saying "They do if you think McDonald's makes the best hamburgers.", but didn't hear the customer's question.  I asked the salesman later what the customer had asked and he replied "Bose makes the best speakers don't they?"

I don't know of any stock stereos in cars that are great, particularly when you see what they add to the purchase price (and yes I realize in higher end cars it's often not an option) and what aftermarket equipment you could buy for the same price.  What bothers me more is the fact that in a lot of expensive cars a CD player is not standard equipment.  Case in point, the new Porsche Carrera 4 (not that I'm in the market to buy this : )):  it costs over $100,000 CDN and comes with a cassette deck.  That's ridiculous.

Jeff Mruss