Agree with you on the lackadaisical approach from PSB
But I would beg to differ that if there isn't much buzz, the product ain't worth it.. That's like saying off the shelf streamers are better than PiBased streamers.. Just because only fewer people know what PiBased streamers are able to deliver, it doesn't mean it's bad product. Enough and many examples of this in the audio world.. That's just my view, agree to disagree?
Thats quite the binary choice. However, I will both agree and disagree to a certain extent
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An example from my own experience are the Mission QX2s. There was not even a whisper about these till almost 3 years after availability in India. I finally got a chance to listen to them last year and was simply blown away by the VFM that it offered - i would say the best compared to any other speaker below 1L by a huge margin if you consider all things including build quality. I wrote about my experience on this forum when there were absolutely none (actually one where the person had not set it up correctly and the resultant sound was weak) and an FM questioned my take on these speakers, stating that if these were indeed that good, they'd be sold out everywhere and people would be talking about them, to which my response was that any product needs to have visibility, either through professional and user reviews or marketing. Even then, a product might fail. My take on the Missions encouraged others to take the plunge and when a number of people started raving about it on HFV, suddenly it was sold out on a number of websites including hifimart.
I don't expect the larger consumer market to give two hoots - they are happy with their bluetooth speakers which peak at Marshall or Bose. But in a forum like HFV which caters to this very niche market and where people talk extensively about their speakers, to not rave about the speakers that they own indicates, to my mind, while they may be very good, they don't particularly stand out in any way. Poeple always want the best at something i.e. either they are looking at particular attributes that a speaker excels in or it should be the best value overall at a certain price category. When i look at user reviews of PSB on this forum, i don't see much on either aspects.
In fact, your very example about raspberry pi streamers bolsters the abovesaid take on the matter i would imagine. While it would be a bit much to expect the general consumer market to care about them when streamers from companies which market them aggressively to and have better visibility amongst the larger consumer market lead to higher buzz and sales overall, if you look at forums which cater to the AV niche, there's a huge community of users, both old and new, who rave about raspberry pi based streamers.
I had no clue about either Rasperrby Pi based streamers, much less Allo devices though i'd read hundreds, if not thousands, of popular AV magazines (i've been an avid reader since 2008) and browsed around online hifi stores till the time I came across this forum, which was last year i.e. 2020. The user reviews encouraged me to take the plunge and next thing you know, Im raving about it!
Plus, history is witness to plenty of other products which were targeted at the larger consumer market and were very good in their own right but were not succesful, the Sony minidisc being a good example to my mind. It didnt have the requisite quality for audiophiles and they were not VFM either for the larger consumer market since the cost of adoption was high in addition to certain smaller issues which led to its ultimate failure.
