[dB Cooper]

Just saw this story and hadn't seen it mentioned here anywhere. A lot of it resonated for me (part audio joke, part true).
This is what the 'hobby' gets for pushing $1K power coords if you ask me. The times they are a' changin'.

https://www.cnn.com/2013/09/27/tech/innovation/death-stereo-system/index.html

[jcsperson]

Add in that the music itself is largely trash these days.

There is a lot of good music being made, but it's hard to find. Meanwhile, celebrity-driven "pop" music is unmitigated garbage yet it gets hammered down our throats in the media and on TV. Most of it is so synthetic and overproduced that it has no real sonic merit. Good equipment is a waste.

[twitch54]

just evolution, like cars, we gave up on carburetors years ago .........

[dB Cooper]

Add in that the music itself is largely trash these days.

There is a lot of good music being made, but it's hard to find. Meanwhile, celebrity-driven "pop" music is unmitigated garbage yet it gets hammered down our throats in the media and on TV. Most of it is so synthetic and overproduced that it has no real sonic merit. Good equipment is a waste.

I appreciate your reply and largely agree. To me its more that it's hard to know where to look. You gotta sift through a lot of sh!t to pick out the peanuts. Commercial outlets like Spotify etc. are designed to give you more of what you already know, not help you explore new directions. It's in their commercial interest to feed you the same thing every day. Just listen to your local [insert format here] station if you doubt this. When the drummer is a synthesizer, the bass player is a MIDI loop, the 'acoustics' are generated by a computer algorithm, and the lead singer is autotuned, there is no original acoustic event to have fidelity to and therefore no reason to buy good equipment to play it on. I mentioned Ella Fitzgerald to a twentysomething acquaintance and all I got was a blank stare. Sad. There is good music from all eras, but it is more and more becoming just another mass-produced commodity, so no wonder there is little interest in reproducing it well.

[kingdeezie]

The article is seven years old.

There hasn’t been a better time in history to get your hifi fix in all budget ranges. Elac, Kef Wireless, Kii. All evolving to meet the needs of the younger generation. It’s not over yet!

[Norman Tracy]

The death of the home stereo system
By Todd Leopold, CNN

Updated 7:25 AM ET, Sat September 28, 2013

 

Guess we be dead men walkin'.

[Tyson]

Welcome to the thread where old men complain that things were way better "back in my day".  Haha.

[dB Cooper]

Yes, they congregate at all the high-end shows because there isn't enough demand or interest to support a retail infrastructure.  The show demographic is old. I saw one gentlemen who had peed himself walking about as if that was the norm for him.

FWIW, I have never seen any of the brands mentioned at a show. They are often looked down on as 'mid-fi' which is off-putting to potential new converts. Exhibitors want to sell $50K systems, not $5K systems. Now they want you to spend $5K just to cable it up.

The fact that the article is seven years old does not make it any less true- if anything, the opposite. The average cost of systems I have seen at the shows over that period, which corresponds neatly with when I started going to shows again, has steadily climbed. The 'starter' systems have vanished. The one area of audio hobby which actually IS growing- especially amongst the hobbyists of tomorrow-headphone and personal audio- has been ignored almost completely at Capital Audiofest the last two shows.

I won't spoil anyone's day making any of the other points I have made in the past.

[Big Red Machine]

Welcome to the thread where old men complain that things were way better "back in my day".  Haha.

Hey, I resemble that remark!

[jcsperson]

Welcome to the thread where old men complain that things were way better "back in my day".  Haha.

They were!

[charmerci]

Add in that the music itself is largely trash these days.

There is a lot of good music being made, but it's hard to find. Meanwhile, celebrity-driven "pop" music is unmitigated garbage yet it gets hammered down our throats in the media and on TV. Most of it is so synthetic and overproduced that it has no real sonic merit. Good equipment is a waste.

To me, the best "new" source of music are the album tracks where the oldies hits that I like/love came from.

[Freo-1]

I've come across new music via the You Tube music channel, some of which is pretty good.  Turns out a fair bit of the artists making new music have actually been at it for some time.  Here's a few that I found via You Tube music:


- Hauser (2 Cellos)
- James Hunter Six
- Avalon Jazz Band
- Khatia Buniatishvilli
- Anna Feddorva
- Martha Argerich
- Yuga Wang


The list goes on. 

[charmerci]

Guess we be dead men walkin'.

Hey, I resemble that remark!

[JohnR]

There hasn’t been a better time in history to get your hifi fix in all budget ranges. Elac, Kef Wireless, Kii.

I agree. And TIDAL, Qobuz. I don't understand people saying they are forced to listen to whatever on streaming services, just do your own searching.

[Letitroll98]

I agree. And TIDAL, Qobuz. I don't understand people saying they are forced to listen to whatever on streaming services, just do your own searching.

The free streaming services only offer "channels" where you can pick a genre, but have to listen to the service's selections like a radio station.  I would imagine most audiophiles like you and I pay for Tidal or Qobuz, which opens up a massive library of music for us. 

I have two sons in their thirties, one could care less about music, the other is building a system with turnable and LP's.  So I have no clue what the future of audio will be. 

[findog3103]

I agree. And TIDAL, Qobuz. I don't understand people saying they are forced to listen to whatever on streaming services, just do your own searching.

Most people, just like in the days before the Internet, don't search for new music. In the "old days" you had to go left of the dial. I think in some ways it's even more difficult to find new music as there are a handful of platforms (Tidal, Spotify, YouTube, Amazon, Apple) and they all promote the same music on their homepage. There are great articles written about this monoculture. Also, in America, it's even more difficult as the platforms are profit-driven, besides NPR which plays some music, and promoting new music is risky. In Europe, most of the platforms (BBC for example) are not profit-driven so they play an immense amount of interesting music. Try BBC6 as just one example.

[vilding]

Weeeeell...... I have to say, there is a staggering amount of GREAT music being made right now. In all genres (even though I don't really listen to a lot of like, "classic rock"). And I think more and more people are coming around to hifi again. Especially as was mentioned the headphone side of things.

Btw, there is no such thing as capturing and reproducing an acoustical event. Do you know how they created the reverb on the later Beatles albums...? They had a huge basement at Abbey road where they put a speaker in on corner and a mike in the other. Then they played the recording through that, recorded it and mixed it in to the music to create ambience. Later this was made with plates and now it's mainly digital. A very small portion of the recording industry uses only room reverb, no compression or eq. It can sound amazing on the right gear with acoustical instruments, but a funk band, or a hip hop act. It would just sound thin. You just can't convey that ooomph in a straight up recording. Compression is your friend. Ok, ok getting off track here...

I don't think the home stereo system is going away any time soon. To much good budget stuff out there! But the prices of high end components is just ridiculous. I don't have anything against the existence of luxury items/jewelry/furniture, don't get me wrong. We just need to understand that that's what it is.

Best regards
/actual living, poor, audiophile musician

[Freo-1]

Many folks employ their HT system for music.  I've heard several of their HT rigs while visiting friends and relatives that sounded pretty decent.  Perhaps not Hi End per se, but enjoyable none the less. 


Many people aren't even aware that one can attain high end sound from a stereo.  People who visit are amazed when listening to a stereo geared for high end two channel playback. 

[jcsperson]

I've come across new music via the You Tube music channel, some of which is pretty good.

Yes. There is a lot of great music on YT, but you have to look for it or stumble upon it because it somehow ended up in your recommended list. But even popular YT artists have only thousands of followers, perhaps tens of thousands, unlike the old days when, if you had truly arrived, your albums were in every record store and you toured regularly. There are few mega acts today like the Stones, Led Zeppelin, the Who, etc., and even second- and third-tier bands then could open for bigger acts and tour to promote their albums. The gulf between even a third-tier band that was touring and making albums and a bar band was immense.

The good news is that those outfits that would've just been bar bands back in the day have a greater opportunity to gain a following thanks to YT and other media.

[mix4fix]

FYI: don't ever trust media's opinion on things. They have agendas behind it. I lost count on how many "this food is good"/"this food is bad" or "this car is good"/"this car is bad" or "this city is good"/"this city is bad" articles I see on a daily basis.

I don't believe for a second that this guy has ever been to an audio shop (let alone an audio festival), nor even looked at (let alone joined) an audio forum. The writer has no knowledge of our hobby. Even with a lock-down, we are still buying, selling, or building speakers and amplifiers.