Our tete-a-tete with Jean Marie as below:
Denom(D): What brings you to Mumbai/India. Have you ever been here before?
Jean Marie(JM): It was my second time in India. For Métronome, it’s really important to be present in many countries since the global audio high end market is a niche. In this perspective, emerging and fast-developing countries are very important in our strategy.
D: What is the Metronome brand all about/philosophy?
JM: As I always say, at Metronome we are first of all music lovers. We only use technology to get the most analogic sound, the famous Métronome sound profile. Metronome is a small company and will stay such. We want to take pleasure with our business and give pleasure to our customers. The other major point is that we do everything from design to final quality testings in our workshops : 100% is made in France by our handcrafters. So in two words, Metronome’s philosophy : music first and handcrafting
D: The CD Player as such is a dying product, streaming is the new way to go with loss less files / DSD, your opinion on the same?
JM: Yes, this is absolutely sure. I don’t believe CD will die like vinyl died so quickly in the nineties, but for sure everyone including most requiring audiophiles already stream or will stream in a very close future. As per DSD, this is another matter, I’m not convinced it brings so much to listening, but its’ just a personal feeling. So we made DSD versions of all our converters and combos, like the CD8 S we introduced in Bombay
D: The relevance of a Transport in today’s day & age. We have a section of audiophiles, who swear by their custom made for audio only computer to do away with transports completely
JM: I agree also more or less, but as long as (even a few) people require CD transports, then we shall build them!
D: What is the future of the CD player / Transport, where do you see the industry heading in 5 years time with the focus of metronome being on?
JM: I’m surprised you ask me, because we already moved from CD players to DACs and servers. CD playing has already become a secondary function of our DACs, and we’ll go further in the way of streaming, believe me. We don’t want to be considered as the vintage brand of CD players, because it’s really not the case anymore.
D: What is your observation of the show that took place? the good, bad & the ugly ?
JM: The show was great indeed, with a good mix of professional and individual visitors. As an exhibitor, we always look for big attendance, which was not the case in Bombay, but finally too many visitors are difficult to handle.
We thank Mr. Jean Marie Clauzel, for spending a few moments to answer our questions and wish him and Metronome Technologie the very best in their endeavors..
Team HifiHunt