[DaveNote]

As the thread slides off into other territory..
Plenty of younger people are interested in music and listening to music.
Just thier idea of how it should be done is not the same as the old method.
So i definitely count all those MP3 player users as music lovers.
Then as they add computer playback. gradually they may want to hear them with some better stuff. And again, that may not be in the way the old stereo users think of.
So i have no doubt that music apprciation is here to stay. just the forms the hardware take may differ.
And, possibly, just like the growing interest in retro owning a turntable.. other old fashioned audio things may get boosts here and there.

Golden age 1950's to early 1970s. Silver age the 1970's to late 1980s.. Then the rise of the Diamond age, late 1980s to current, where big money rules. And a stereo can cost a half million bucks... a cable can be the cost of a GOOD new car..

Admittedly, Elizabeth, I'm new to this forum and cannot speak with your authority to what is or is not appropriate to a topic, but in this case, I can't see wandering from it if some may want to discuss the possible meanings behind or implications of the trends of the poll intended to solicit the ages of audiophiles here. In short, if a topic, by its very nature, is open-ended, as this one is, then calling any of the comments so far off topic is, at best, a stretch or at worst, just a trifle punctilious.

I'm encouraged about hearing that some of the encounters with younger people have prompted new interest in better sound.

Dave

[OgOgilby]

I reluctantly added another vote to the 50-59 category. I do think this poll is more about the age of audiophiles participating in the Bryston Circle as opposed to the age of audiophiles in general.

-Greg   

[neekomax]

I reluctantly added another vote to the 50-59 category. I do think this poll is more about the age of audiophiles participating in the Bryston Circle as opposed to the age of audiophiles in general.

-Greg

Mmmmm. I doubt it, honestly.

Think of high end audio as a luxury pursuit like being into sports cars. Who buys Porsches? 55 year old dudes, that's who.

[servingko]

I too, am in the largest group and got my start into the world of better sound during the mid 70's.  I agree that we are headed for tougher times and a lost appreciation for "good" sound.  My 13 year old son however, is keenly aware of the deficiencies of MP3 sound and a low budget system.   Whether he can afford to do anything about it in the next 10-20 years or more is another topic for discussion.

[HsvHeelFan]

My kids (late teens to early 20s) love and appreciate my Bryston powered system.

They just don't have the financial means to have terrific audio, yet.  They're working on it.

HsvHeelFan

[amblin]

.
....So i definitely count all those MP3 player users as music lovers....

 It's 80% the love of Ipod in their minds, and 20% music. 'Yay! dadyy just brought me an IPOD! Time to put some music into it'... It's just like the old days when the mighty 'WALKMAN' was running the house. Everybody wanted one, and one of those funny mine sweeper's headphones.

I played with a friends ' digital media server' the other day. Controlled by an iPAD, i was impressed, very impressed and i admit it's very convenient that the music i wanted would start to play simply by flicking some fingers and tapping into some menu, on a screen.  He called me a 'dinosaur', well, maybe i am.

In my opinion, music must have a physical medium, be it  LP, some cassettes, or CD. It's all part of the fun or, 'the love of' buying them, sorting them, taking care of them, looking at them, putting them into a player and most importantly, listening to them. It's a token of the artists' hard works, of the moment when 'art' finally become a physical and touch-able form.

I'm not in the record business, but i can imagine how happy it's going to be the moment when an artist finally got a finished retail copy of his/her work in hand. looking at the cover art, the disc, feeling the weight and everything.  But how about this, in the 'trully digital age' : Behold! Your tiny little convenient micro SD card! everything's in it, and off you go..

[srb]

That sounds like 80% love of media and 20% music.
 
Steve

[amblin]

That sounds like 80% love of media and 20% music.
 
Steve

I'd say the hearing part of pleasure is the same, Digital streaming and CD, no conflicts there. Some high quality digital files may even had a technical advantage or two.  But, it's the physical part they'll be missing out.

Here for example is a CD (1:1:1 first run) i brought while i was just some regular young dude. the jewel case is definately showing it's age. After all the years, i'm now a man waiting to get bald.  But it's still with me. Seeing it alone is kind of a pleasure.

[srb]

Well, I still refer to my stored CDs on occasion, for the liner notes and such.  Since the CD inserts are so small compared to vinyl albums though, I would prefer to see it full screen on the computer than the tiny, often hard to read CD inserts.
 
It's unfortunate that the digital media files and tags have not become standard to include all of the liner notes and lyrics.  Some of that is available, but it's not an automatic online database acquisition like the basic file tags are, and would require a lot of work per album to get it.  Not to mention that many of the software players that can display it have a poor interface as far as liner notes and lyrics are concerned.
 
Steve

[matt.w]

My wife and I are 24. I've been involved in the hobby since about 16 or so. Started off with and still primarily am involved in headphones, but there's a pair of Audiokinesis Planetarium Alphas hanging around our home 

In college, at Northwestern, I was a member of the marching band and music fraternity, as was my entire social circle (well, add in the music sorority too). Fraternity/sorority was just as much about performing as it was socializing with chapter choir, quarterly recitals, numerous small groups, etc.

In short, I know a bunch of mid-20-something music lovers. Not one of them cares about our hobby, yet many are continuing the performance side as a personal interest/hobby. None of this "damn kids aren't cultured" sort of crap, they just aren't interested in the reproduction side. An iPod dock speaker thing, or on the personal side earbuds, are good enough.

I don't get it either.

[amblin]

Well, I still refer to my stored CDs on occasion, for the liner notes and such.  Since the CD inserts are so small compared to vinyl albums though, I would prefer to see it full screen on the computer than the tiny, often hard to read CD inserts.
 
It's unfortunate that the digital media files and tags have not become standard to include all of the liner notes and lyrics.  Some of that is available, but it's not an automatic online database acquisition like the basic file tags are, and would require a lot of work per album to get it.  Not to mention that many of the software players that can display it have a poor interface as far as liner notes and lyrics are concerned.
 
Steve

Yeah, i asked my friend about the same problem.  He's very optimism and told me the notes r just one google search away since the Pad can access internet (duh) and there are already some 'add-on's able to display lyrics simultaneously on the Pad thing while a track is being played. I was very interested. Because if the thing can display all the libretto (original and translated) line by line (like DVDs) ,  then i'll buy it just for this feature. 

But unfortunately only the more popular and much shorter pop & rock songs get this feature..

[DaveNote]

amblin, there is much precedent for your attachment to old media. People for milennia have held onto old technologies every time a new one has been introduced - clay tablets over papyrus, manuscripts over the printed page, vinyl over CDs, books over e-readers. But economies of production, ease of use and ubiquity usually triumph. Micro SD? No way! Most music now is delivered to users wihout hard media at all, often through iTunes, the world's largest seller of music. You are nostalgic, which is understandable.  Audiophiles share their own kind of nostalgia and regret as shown in this thread - the potential loss of interest by new generations in high quality sound reproduction. As I near 70, I will now return to my purely digital music via my BDP-1, while reading a wirelessly downloaded Kindle book on my iPad, while you will enjoy (no sarcasm meant or intended) flipping discs and pages.

Dave

[HsvHeelFan]

I still have a wall full of CDs and that's what I listen to.

I have plans to build me a pc as a dedicated music server to feed my system.

I'm planning on using the ASUS Xonar Essence STX sound card.  I'll be real disappointed if it doesn't provide equivalent or better sound than I already have.

I will rip all of the CDs to FLAC and take it from there.  I'll also store the data on 2 different 1 TB drives.  One will be strictly for backup.

As much as I would love to have the Bryston Digital player, it's currently out of my price range and I think i would still need someway to store the digital files from the CDs I have.

HsvHeelFan

[HsvHeelFan]

On a related note, I still prefer to read books.  I'm not a big fan of reading books on Kindle's, Nook's or computers.

HsvHeelFan

[GaryArthur]

On a related note, I still prefer to read books.  I'm not a big fan of reading books on Kindle's, Nook's or computers.

HsvHeelFan

At age 58 that's exactly what I said and I do have a large library. But now at age 59 my last 10 books were read on my birthday present, an iPad2.

[Diamond Dog]

Think of high end audio as a luxury pursuit like being into sports cars. Who buys Porsches? 55 year old dudes, that's who.

And trust fund kids...

So...unless audio manufacturers ( not the mass market guys, the "quality sound guys" ) can finally grasp the concept of how to interest young people in this hobby ( and from what I see, that's not gonna happen ), they are going to have limited choices in terms of finding a clientele : Do the seagull thing as the available customer base erodes ( most will go this route - its just easier ) or try to find a niche upmarket selling to the trust-fund kids and the 55-year old Porsche owners ( note that I do not refer to them as Porsche drivers ) but to do that they have to learn how to sell to that market because again, with some exceptions, most of these guys don't understand how to do that either.
 
This is a marketing issue. It's not about kids not liking music ( they do - what they don't like is paying for music ) or about file compression lowering the bar or the spiraling price of gear or any of those other canards that come up in these threads where the greybeard audiophiles gather to wring their hands and wail about the impending doom "the hobby" faces.

Its a marketing issue.

D.D.

Neeko : I was able to limit myself to just one zoological metaphor - progress!

[TONEPUB]

Bought my first Porsche when I was 27 and I was never a trust fund kid.  Had a $20k system in 1980 when I was in college. Drove a $100 car so I could have a great system. 

There are plenty of people that drive $50k worth of Harley and Harley accessories that have normal incomes, and other people that invest in similar things on modest means.  If you really enjoy something, you make sacrifices in other areas to pursue the thing you really are into.

And all the snobbery about 35 year old Porsche owners not being Porsche drivers is really boring.  That's why I eventually stopped owning Porsches.  At 29, I had attended a number of driving schools and was blowing the 50 somethings into the weeds at PCA events on a regular.  But I wasn't a real Porsche driver because I was young and I wasn't a real Porsche owner because i had a 944. 

It's the same reason people aren't interested in audio.  They're sick and tired of a bunch of old, opinionated geezers trying to tell them what they should think.  It was boring in the mid 80's and it's equally boring now.

[neekomax]

Hmmm, next poll:

Age of Porsche Owners/Drivers

[neekomax]

This is a marketing issue. It's not about kids not liking music ( they do - what they don't like is paying for music ) or about file compression lowering the bar or the spiraling price of gear or any of those other canards that come up in these threads where the greybeard audiophiles gather to wring their hands and wail about the impending doom "the hobby" faces.

Its a marketing issue.

D.D.

Neeko : I was able to limit myself to just one zoological metaphor - progress!

Nice restraint, D.

Being new to 'the hobby', and as someone who is professionally involved in marketing (aren't we all ), I gotta say that even if you didn't know that hifi was a 'niche' market, you'd guess it based on the clumsy, esoteric advertising that predominates these parts. Even the companies who are getting the look and industrial 'feel' of the products seemingly right, I go to their websites and I'm like, 'who forgot to finish this page?'. Or, 'where are the photos'? It's just surprising, frankly. Then the copy talks to you like you're an electrical engineer. Specs and details are good, necessary, and interesting, but you've got to tell a story, too. Why should I care? How will it make my listening -heck my life- more enjoyable, fix my self esteem issues, make me feel powerful?  I kid, but, seriously, that's how you're going to get people juiced. Apple knows that. What if the next iPhone campaign were "Now, 26 Gigaflops of Capacitator Bandwidth!" or whatever. Gigaflop indeed. Yeah, they'll get to that, but only to help tell the story. Marketing may be BS, but it's BS that's based on deep human needs and desires (just ask Edward Bernays, Freud's nephew and the inventor of public relations. For real.)...

Anyway, what was the topic? Oh, right. I'm 35.

[BrysTony]

110 votes in 24 hours -- great response guys.  The poll says that 58.1% of the respondents are over 50 and 82.6% are over 40 with one outlier at 70 or older and one under 20.  Some great comments about what it may mean for our hobby.  Funny thing is I have been messing around with audio equipment for almost 50 years and I feel like my enthusiasm for the equipment and the music has remained pretty much constant.  After all age is just a number.  How old would you be if you didn't know how old you were?

Tony