Starscream Sessions: Scott Newnam, Audio Advice

Starscream Sessions is a new series of interviews from audio PR agency Starscream Communications by industry expert and award-winning journalist Sean Hannam.

Over the coming months, we’ll be looking into the world of global hi-fi and speaking with retailers, record labels, audio brands, media and more to discover how the world of hi-fi connects with music fans in 2026.

Audio Advice CEO Scott Newnam kicks things off with a valuable insight into the creation and future of Audio Advice alongside his thoughts on the future of the industry and expansion….

Award-winning, specialist US retailer, Audio Advice, was founded almost 50 years ago in Raleigh, North Carolina, and sells audio products, home theatre and smart home systems. It has five showrooms, including a brand-new, purpose-built store in Nashville, Tennessee.

Can you give us some background on Audio Advice and how it has expanded?

Scott Newnam: The company started in 1978, as a stereo store, and then by the ‘80s and ‘90s, it had expanded into home theatre and smart home. I came in as an owner in 2006, and my goals were to have best-in-class customer experiences and to begin expanding it, both geographically and channel-wise, so we entered e-commerce. We began to expand geographically first in North Carolina – we went to Charlotte and then Wilmington. We purchased Innovative Systems to enter Charlotte; and then a company called The Audio Lab in Wilmington, in 2024. Then last year, we acquired a company in St.Louis called The Sound Room – they were all stereo stores that also sell home theatre and smart home. It’s been an incredible ride, but we continue to play in all three markets: stereo, home theatre and smart home. We have large showrooms with huge audio rooms, and we have multiple theatres in every store – you can experience a $35,000 theatre or a theatre for a quarter of a million dollars – and we have smart homes – fake homes – in each store. We’re about to have the grand opening of our Nashville store.

Nashville is a city with a great music heritage, so, strategically, it’s a good move for your business…

It’s Music City and I love going there. I’m a musician – I’m a sax player, and my wife and I met playing in a jazz band.

“We’ve built one of the world’s biggest YouTube followings in the high-performance audio and home theatre space”

You’ve been acquiring stores and opening new ones across the US. How does the bricks-and-mortar side of the business work alongside your online operation?

It’s very complementary. About 13 years ago, we decided to invest very heavily in shooting videos of products, how-to guides and buyer’s guides. We’ve built one of the world’s biggest YouTube followings in the high-performance audio and home theatre space. That drives traffic to the online store, but also to the bricks-and- mortar stores.

How’s business?

The upper end of the market – ultra high-end speakers and high- end theatres – is holding strong – it’s doing great – but the middle of the market is a little softer, and the entry market continues to be strong.

What are the main challenges in audio retail and how are you addressing them?

The middle market is the greatest challenge – business is highly competitive, so we have to be competitive on price. Amazon is massive in the US, in the mid and entry-level markets. We compete directly with Amazon on products, so we have to provide a level of sales experience where people can talk to us – whether that’s in-store or online – and get good sales advice they can trust. Then we have to match Amazon on price and two-day shipping and give after-sales support. When people come to us, we want to deliver a superior sales experience, and we design our stores so you can touch and feel things – obviously you can’t do that with Amazon or Best Buy.

What consumer audio buying trends are you seeing?

We continue to see strong growth in streamers and integrated DAC streamers – both entry-level and high-end. Some people who had systems with a CD player, a preamp, an amp and speakers, but who had avoided streaming for a long time, because of the compression, now want to move to a good streamer and improve their DAC because we now have true lossless audio – there’s a real trend for that. What’s also interesting is the opposite of that – we continue to see high sales of turntables. We also see people that want a turntable for their vinyl and a streamer for digital music. I have a lot of background music that I stream all the time when I’m at home, but when I want to have an experience where my wife and I open a bottle of wine and sit down and listen to an album, I’ll put an album on the turntable. It’s a different experience to streaming.

Is the vinyl revival here to stay, or do you see the market levelling off?

Great question – we debate that all the time, internally. The sales of turntables aren’t accelerating – they took off during the pandemic and sales are still strong, and so is vinyl production and sales of vinyl, but we currently expect it to continue at a normal rate. I don’t think it’s going to drop off a cliff, but I don’t think it will massively accelerate either.

What does the future look like for consumer audio tech?

I think we will continue to see simplified and easy-to-use, high- performance audio solutions. Firstly, these will come in multiple ways, including combined streamer/preamps that give consumers the ability to easily browse and select music on their phone or computer and control the volume and source all from the same app. Secondly, the next step is to take it further, with all-in-one speakers. There are options, like the KEF LS60 or Focal Diva, where the streamer, preamp, amplifier and speaker are all built into one solution. We will see more manufacturers building these, as they appeal heavily to luxury customers who are focused on performance and aesthetic, but also want simplicity.

Can you tell us about your show, Audio Advice Live, which is happening in August this year. It’s rare for a retailer to have a show these days – how did it come about?

During COVID, one of the big shows in the US, the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest, had to shut down, which opened up an opportunity. My chief revenue officer, Jonathan Stephens, came to me and said: ‘Hey, there’s a slot open – this is one shot. Are we going to take it or not?’ That was during COVID… So, we bought out a hotel in advance – we really believed in the space, and we thought COVID would end – and we called all the brands and said: ‘If we do this, would you support us?’ Sure enough, the US opened up and let people go out in public – at our first show, a lot of people still had masks on – and now we’ve run the show for four years, and it’s grown to become the second largest audio show in the US. We have all the major audio brands there and you can hear all their new products. For the theatre rooms, we had to get permission from the hotel to wire in full Atmos systems, so, consequently, we have the biggest show where you can see full home theatres from Bowers & Wilkins, Focal, McIntosh or JBL. It’s incredible, and it’s grown every year. A lot of brands will launch products at the show – last year there were maybe 12 big launches and there will be an equal amount this year. There’s something for everyone – you can pretty much see every major brand in the world, and most of what I call the ‘tweaky’ brands are there as well, for someone who wants to geek out on something very specific. The show runs from Friday to Sunday, and it’s designed so that consumers can come and experience everything – on the Friday, everyone who has a ticket for the show also gets a ticket for a concert that we buy out just for Audio Advice Live attendees and presenters. We try to make it fun and we do giveaways throughout the weekend.

How do you see Audio Advice developing?

Our plan is to continue to expand, but very strategically. You’ll notice that we’re mainly in large markets in the US because our stores are very big – we have a lot of stuff – and it doesn’t make sense to put them in small markets. We’re not trying to grow crazy fast – our last two stores were acquisitions, so we’re actively talking to people in the US who’ve built great companies and are ready to retire but want their companies to continue. We only want to be the biggest top-end player in the market, so it limits the companies we can talk to when we are looking to expand. We built the Nashville store because we wanted something that was bigger and better than anything that existed in Tennessee.

For more information, visit www.audioadvice.com.

Audio Advice Live runs from August 7-9 2026, at the Sheraton Hotel, Raleigh NC. Click here to see more.