I remember both of those proprietary systems. What about the Luxman of the same vintage?

Just remebered antother one

Kyocera anyone ?

I often wonder why the Luxman name was never resurrected.

It may still be owned by the Alpine company...
or maybe it was Lux that owned Alpine, I don't know which way it was, but I remember there was a connection in the early 90s.
anyone?? anyone??

As recently as 97-98, Luxman had some really interesting looking products with thick brushed aluminum faceplates with champagne finish.
Kind looked like Accuphase, except it definitely wasn't Accuphase...

It was priced up in that McIntosh price range, just below the super high end stuff like Accuphase, Krell, Levinson, Linn, etc.

As far as I know, Luxman is still owned by Alps. It was always nice, moderately expensive stuff, but the brand folded around the same time that home theater came into play.

Maybe its been gone too long to have any name recoginition left.

It just seems that in a day and age where Yamaha, Denon, Marantz and Onkyo are all sold through distribution, and dealers are begging for exclusive lines that someone would step up to the plate with something new, different, and protected.

Then again, look at what happened to Alpine.

I did more that a few of the Luxman 3 zone preamps (or was it 2 zones...man I'm old), back in the late 80's early 90's. It was cool piece for the time.

My wife just got a Kyocera cell phone... does that count? ;]

The store I worked for had some Kyocera stuff when I was a customer in the late 80s... They had Linn, Naim, and Mission Cyrus too...

It was all gone by the time I got there.

I guess Kyocera had some killer mid-fi CD players in the late 80's-early 90's. Approaching the best for just a little more than the Denon, Yamaha, etc...
Kinda like the rep that Rotel had in the 90's for CD.

AHEM - point well taken... you also made the comment that I shouldn't credit Niles with establishing the high-fidelity distributed audio market. (I didn't, but symantics, schmenatics)

I do work for a manufacturer, and have a manufactuer's bias. I think we could look back at many (most?) industries and find examples of how the craftsmen and artisans of the world start out making custom solutions, and later a manufacturer applies broad market concepts and manufacturing economies of scale to open the market beyond where it could have otherwise gone. (Air travel, automobile, computers, etc. etc.) The time and costs associated with custom development of unique solutions (not to mention the post-installation support headaches) prohibit it from being the dominant mechanism for getting technology to people.

So, with all due respect and kudos to the geniuses on the front line who take all these "compromised" manufacturers products and turn them into real solutions, I'm curious if there is a turning point that can be identified when distributed (whole house) audio shifted from typically highly custom to typically product-centric. Nile's website leads me to believe it could have been them that did it... who am I missing?

Thanks,

Norton

YES WHEN BACK IN 94-95 IT LOOKED REALLY KOOL

I saw Luxman about 2 years ago @ CES. It was a small booth (I mean real small) with a few pieces of crap sitting in it. The asian gentleman there said they had bought the name, but all of the products were their own. I'm not sure if it was chinese or korean but all of the stuff there looked like the type of product you'd see over in the chinese section of CES at a company called Knock-offs. CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP

In fact a/d/s/ is NOT mobile only, the home product line is in production/stock/readily available. We have exhibited at the past two CEDIA events, and in the South Hall at CES this year. We have a National Sales Manager and a number of independent and direct reps covering the US as well as international territories. Sales continue to rebound after our acquisition of ADST back at the end of 2001. Y

You can see the current product line here:

[Link: adst.com]

The dominet multi-room product line was discontinued back in 2003 after a painful prolonged effort to maintain production of the SC4, but current speaker & subwoofer offering is healthy and doing well.

John Durbin
Audio Product Category Manager
Directed Electronics

On 03/20/05 20:07 ET, 2nd rick said...

I wired my own house during construction in latter half of 1990 with the Sony DST system, which is still in place and 100% functional today. Only repair that it's required in that 14+ years was some resoldering on a room unit/amp that had developed an intermittent channel. Say what you will about Sony, but they build "mission statement" products to last a lifetime. My former boss also has a system in daily use that I put in for him around 1993-1994 timeframe.

John

Do any of you guys use the Linn Knekt multiroom system?

Best of luck with this...
A part of me would like to see a/d/s rise again.

I owned a LOT of a/d/s/ car stuff in the 90s, and my old house likely still has the original a/d/s/ inwalls.

I dont recall the part #s, but I believe it was something with "250" in it...