I am relatively new to the audiocircles forums and for the most part I have been only following one or two of the specialty forums. But the other night I was surfing and saw this interesting topic and actually stopped to read a little in your forum. I thought about the question you asked on and off last night and today at work, slow day for once, and decided to toss out a few observations. Tonight I downloaded one of you e-zines, number 7, and took a quick read through to see what new slant you might have on audio. So I have composed the following essay.
The Probable Death of HiFi Audio
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If I look back at my growth in audio starting as a teenager and compare it to the parallel growth of my oldest child who is about the same age I was when I started collecting music and his audio experience, I see the decline of the audio market and predict the death of high quality music reproduction systems in the next 10 to 20 years. I'll start in the mid to late 1960's when I was just a little younger than my son is now, lived in this same town, and was finding I was very interested in popular music just like he is at this time. By drawing comparisons to what I experienced and his interests, I am not very optimistic for two channel high fidelity equipment.
My Path :
At my son's age I was already a big music collector. My entire allowance and any other income was typically spent in the record department of a large local department store. I bought the Beatles, Cream, the Who, and the Rolling Stones to name just a few groups. Big album jackets with covers to study and hidden pictures and lyrics added to the experience. I listened to these albums on my parents big console stereo cabinet and my brothers and I made plenty of smoke every time we blew it up forcing my Dad to replace the cooked tubes. When my friends got together, we listened to the albums in our collections which drove our parents nuts.
By the time I got out of college and started my first engineering job, I new the most important thing to buy was my own decent hi fi set-up. Again I saved and invested in equipment, upgrades, and even more albums. I read Stereo Review, High Fidelity, Stereophile and a number of other magazines. I frequented the half dozen or more local audio stores and bought equipment every year, probably every few months. As time went on, I dragged my new wife to many different audio stores, record shops, and friend's houses to listen and compare set-ups and music. Music and audio was my interest and still is to this day, but things have changed.
My Son's Path :
My son is 15 years old, he really likes music. My three children all play multiple instruments and are in the school chorus, band, or orchestra. They listen to music all the time on their boom boxes and iPods. But they have no interest in audio or the equipment. Why?
If I look at what my three kids like to do for entertainment the top interests are the computer, the playstation, and the iPods. When they get together with friends it is to use the computers or the Playstation, music is not a big part of the entertainment or of any significant interest beyond light listening. They own a few CD's but mostly they download music onto iTunes. The department stores where I first saw and heard a stereo system don't sell equipment anymore, the stereo stores I used to visit are all gone, and the independent music stores are all gone or bought by the chains that only stock about 10 different popular titles. Even the mid fi magazines are essentially all gone.
The other thing facing young people today who might be interested in hi fi is the absolutely low quality of the recordings they hear through their earbuds. Most of these "artists" have very little musical talent in my opinion and some cannot even sing. I had a young engineer visit me one nigh and we listened to my system with some of their popular music and then some of my classic jazz recordings from the 1950's. They were stunned at the compressed sound and really AM radio recording quality of their CDs compared to my run of the mill Blue Note CDs. I did not even need to break out the demo CDs I play for my audio buddies.
What I see today :
I consider myself to be a stereo nut, everybody's definition is different so I might not qualify in the eyes of some on this forum. But I do qualify at work where the population is more representative of a fairly well paid professional workforce. Nobody at work is really interested in audio and equipment anymore. Even my interest in the equipment is starting to die. Again, why?
The lack of an affordable quality audio retailers and decent music stores are two of the main reasons. The lack of magazines that feature reasonably priced high performing products also contributes to the lack of interest in myself and the general public. Audio is killing itself with its product offerings, magazine selections, and distribution network.
When I look at Stereophile and even your e-zine, I am immediately confronted with multi-thousand dollar preamps, receivers, and playback devices. A budget cable at $100. The only reasonably priced equipment is a few very small two way speaker at about $500, most people have no interest in something that is that plain looking and small. Pieces of equipment costing $5000, $10000, and even more are reviewed in glowing terms in the audio press and at the audio shows. Are you people on crack?
Only seeing this high priced gear in the audio press is turning many off to audio, why would they compromise on what they now perceive as some piece of crap receiver for $500 when the audio press gushes over a $10000 preamp that you have to have to make the music sound like it should. Why waste the money on something affordable when it can't compare to that fancy preamp in Stereophile's list of recommended components. People feel like they are wasting money and don't realize that the performance differences are probably very subtle. It has become an elitist group of buyers and reviewers looking down their noses at the unwashed masses. The gap between the average home audio system a family can afford and the audio industry is growing rapidly. The average young person can spend $149 on an iPod and a few hundred dollars on accessories and have a state of the art system in their eyes. Why venture beyond that level?
I could afford to have one of those Stereophile recommended component systems if I wanted it. When I upgraded my amp and preamp a year ago I looked hard at a highly rated high end set-up and eventually walked away from the local high end store that was showing me the equipment. I bought something more reasonable that I could justify the cost of to myself and whose sound was good enough for me. The selection of what I considered reasonable was amazingly limited! Oh, the high end store went under six months later.
Basically, the entry level and mid fi equipment seems to have disappeared. This is where the audio companies in the past sold to the masses and spawned the interest and obsession of the next generation of high end audio equipment buyers. The seeds are not being planted and the enjoyment of the hobby has been lost. Audio is competing with home theater, computer games, the Internet, and the multitude of video game systems. The only place young people are spending money on audio is on car audio, mostly big noise makers. Home audio is loosing quickly among the next generation of customers and even among the potential return customers when the kids leave the house. The audio industry needs to recalibrate and start offering high quality reasonably priced equipment that is accessible in retail outlets close to the customers.
I think people would return to audio if there is a selection of high quality receivers, preamps, amps, and Cd players in the $500 to $1000 dollar price range. They will spend more for speakers because the audible difference will be much larger as the price rises. Average people will spend $1000 to $2500 on a receiver, CD player, and speakers if the performance is really good, they can hear and touch the equipment, and they really enjoy music. Look how many people are buying Bose systems which are marketed to the masses, you may hate Bose but he is selling a lot of systems. Very few people will spend $5000 on one component and $100 on a cable or power cord. The high end audio industry is killing itself. Bose is winning with the masses.
Just my opinion sitting here in Upstate New York,
Martin
