News Revox Joy network music player ‘Revox is 6
part of music history…’
Swiss audio brand Revox celebrates its 70th birthday this year and is relaunching in the UK with a new range of premium network music players that it wants to sell through specialist, independent audio dealers. Sean Hannam spoke to export sales director Steve Croft to find out why it could be time for a Revox revival…
Q: Revox has a great heritage, doesn’t it? Steve Croft: We’re 70 years old this year – we started in 1948. Revox was founded by Swiss engineer Willi Studer. He was passionate about music and he started to design and build reel-to- reel machines because he wanted to get better quality sound recordings and playback. They were quickly adopted by recording studios and became the preferred way to capture music. A lot of the great music in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s was recorded on Revox reel-to-reel machines – The Beatles, James Brown, Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd… We’re part of music history. In 1967, we produced the Revox
A77 reel-to-reel consumer product, which grew the company massively –
we sold 150,000 of them worldwide, they became the benchmark for audiophiles and off the back of that success we produced turntables, amplifi ers and loudspeakers.
Q: And now, after several years’ absence in the UK, you’re back, with new products… SC: We’ve been out of the UK for quite a while, but we believe that, with our new products, it’s the right time to come back and introduce people to Revox. We have to move with the way consume
people music – we’re
coming back with a range of new, all- in-one, integrated, one-box network music players called Revox Joy, with a built-in, high-quality amplifi er, wi-fi and a streamer.
The beauty of the product is that it
can stream music from the cloud – like Tidal, for example – and you can use
it to access internet radio and listen to podcasts. It can also stream music from a hard drive and it has traditional inputs to connect other devices – it’s a high- quality music hub.
The Revox Joy can play 24-bit studio master fi les natively – that’s why we came back into the streaming space, because we can make a great job of it. Not only did we capture great music back in the ’60s, but we’re now playing it back on a Revox Joy. All our products are designed in Switzerland and Germany – we produce them in our German factory and they’re built to a very high standard.
Q: What’s your strategy for selling the new products in the UK? SC: We’re looking for specialist dealers to work with in the UK who understand music and understand quality – we’re just starting that process. The products are available now and we need to build up a specialist dealer network – we’ll give them the opportunity to tell the whole Revox story. It’s early days, but we’ve got the
products and we’re ready to roll.
Q: Are you looking for a specific number of dealers? SC: Initially we’re looking at 20, to give us good geographical coverage. We don’t want to overdo it.
Q: What’s the Revox company set- up in the UK? SC: We have a sales and marketing set- up in the UK, but as we build the market, it’s not out of the question that we would start a UK subsidiary.
Q: At what sector of the market are you targeting the products? MG: It’s not esoteric hi-fi , but it’s not entry-level, either – it’s mid-range. Prices start around £850 and go up £2,350. Revox Joy is a family of three products – a network music player, a CD player and a ripping audio server. The products have Bluetooth aptX and our intention is to build more music services into them. We want to be agnostic – to take music from everywhere and make it sound better.
Revox Joy CD player
We’ve been out of the UK for quite a while, but we believe that, with our new products, it’s the right time to come back and introduce people to Revox Steve Croft, export sales director, Revox
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