There are lots of young audio enthusiasts who could potentially become audiophiles at some point. For a number of reasons, less and less of them are becoming audiophiles.
- some are turned off by the smug condescension many audiophiles have towards them
- Some with a technical or engineering background maybe be turned off by the amount of tweako nonsense that gets bandied around by many audiophiles
- Still others of limited means are scared off when they see some audiophiles discussing $600 interconnects, and other audiophiles agonizing over endless upgrades in the search for synergy
- Finally, many of them probably don't find it too inviting when audiophiles bash their musical tastes. Not everyone finds the music they like on Chesky or Telarc
For those who would like to see more young audiophiles - the best thing you can do is introduce some young people to audio, on a simple level, show them how it can enhance the music they like at a reasonable budget (note, a reasonable system budget for a young person is almost always less that $1k).
I was lucky enough to meet some people at a relatively young age, who showed me that audio can be fun and rewarding. They weren't experts, and had modest systems, but they were happy with them, and spent more time enjoying them than tweaking them. These people got me hooked.
If I had instead met some smug 'audiophile' who lectured me on classical and jazz being the only genres worth listening too, and pointed out the flaws and lack of synergy in all but the best systems we listened to, I would likely have never given audio a second look. Unfortunately we tend to see a lot of the online sometimes. Which is a real shame, because I don't want to be part of the last generation of audiophiles (a term I hesitate to self-apply).
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