If you’ve spent the past 24 hours hiding under a rock, newsflash: Bose Corporation announced it was acquiring McIntosh Group, the parent company of luxury audio brands McIntosh, Sonus Faber and Sumiko Phono Cartridges and the Fine Sounds distributor. The deal sees Bose take on McIntosh Group ownership from the American private equity firm, which only acquired the group in 2022 for an undisclosed fee, and expands Bose’s consumer audio portfolio, launching it into the high-end audiophile game for the first time.
It’s pretty big news in the audio world and is reminiscent, you could say, of Samsung’s acquisition of Harman in 2016. And understandably our readers have plenty to say about it, with the majority of comments on our related Facebook post pretty negative about the whole thing – ‘RIP McIntosh’, ‘BoseIntosh is born’ and the like. ‘The world is ending’ was the most thespian of them all and, would you believe, actually appeared more than once. (My personal favourite: 'I always wanted a set of Sonus Faber 901s.')
