Sony--and I personally find this very hard to take after a long time of liking their stuff, but it is apparently true--has been having great difficulty making any kind of profit in electronics manufacturing for the past several years, and reportedly is under considerable pressure from investors to get out of the business and to focus on media production, which is apparently the only sector in which they've been making much money.
Their electronics product line is already much smaller than what I remember from decades past, and I haven't seen anything new from their pro audio division in a very long time.
Their Service department is also abandoning product. I used Sony DATs for many years, and when the PCM D1 solid state recorder came out I bought it (at around $1500, I recall). Although it was superceded first by the D50 and then the M10, each progressively cheaper and with longer recording times, Sony always claimed the internal mics and preamps of the D1 were superior. A month or two ago I needed the better mics and preamps and so got it out of a drawer only to find that one channel was dead, both for mic-in and line-in. I called Sony Service and described the problem, I was told that because parts were no longer available they no longer would service the machine. Paul at Prodigital got it running again with minimal fuss (corroded contact problem), but any new Sony gear I buy I'll count on having to chuck after five or six years. For a $200 shaver that's one thing, for a $1500 machine I'm not too happy with the prospect.
Jeff
Topic: What's next from Sony? (Read 15360 times)