Boston Acoustics Steps Up Car Audio

By Amy Gilroy On Nov 10 2003 - 8:00am

After years of maintaining a low profile in car audio, Boston Acoustics says it is investing heavily in autosound and plans to expand its market presence.

The company will add more independent specialists to its distribution, from about 600 storefronts currently, to about 800, it said. Boston also hired a rep force specifically for car audio and said it will show a dozen new products at CES in January.

"We haven't had 12 new products come out in 10 years," quipped new national sales manager Dominick Aquilini, who was formerly of JL Audio and MB Quart.

Aquilini admits that car audio has played second fiddle at Boston. "We've always put out good products but there were resources that we weren't able to access, and we now have access to them. We have more engineers working on the products. There's no shift in product strategy but the line will be a little more accurately defined for the market," especially in the subwoofer category, he said.

Car audio will function as a completely autonomous entity from the home division and Aquilini who now reports directly to the president of Boston Acoustics, he said.

Although Boston is not announcing new products until closer to CES, Aquilini said it will show two new lines of subwoofers with a focus on high output and "exceptional sound quality." Models will fall in the $125-to-$150 and $350-to-$400 ranges. In amplifiers, the company is sticking to AB technology as Class D "is not a mature technology and its not reliable," said Aquilini.

In six-inch speakers, all the models except one have identical mounting flanges and ship with adapters to minimize installation time.

"We know the market is shrinking, but the dealers still have to be profitable and probably 75 percent of the companies they do business with are proliferated on the Internet," added Aquilini, claiming that Boston maintains limited distribution.