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General Asylum General audio topics that don't fit into specific categories. |
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General Asylum General audio topics that don't fit into specific categories. |
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In Reply to: Are audiophiles an endangered "species?" posted by scruffy_ on October 28, 2016 at 08:44:30:
As far as audio is concerned, the world has been turning away from the lifesize and the big and towards the portable and the small. At the same time, TVs have gotten bigger and bigger - and they will probably continue to grow in size until they have reached true room filling proportions.What does this trend tell us? First of all, it tells us that the majority of modern people are willing to devote more space and money to visual forms of entertainment than to anything having to do with audio. This doesn't necessarily mean that there are fewer "audiophiles" than ever before, though.
Remember that very few people back then - even during the so-called "golden age of hifi" - could have been considered true "audiophiles". Just as, not everyone who owns a big and expensive TV today can be considered a true "videophile". Old trends dictated that, in order to be considered "hip", one should own a fairly impressive loudspeaker system. But even then, one got the feeling that not everyone who owned a big set of speakers was as interested in THE MUSIC as much as in "Winning Friends and Influencing People" (er, "making out to a background of music"?) in the social scene.
Ulterior motives abounded then, just as they do now. Big speakers impressed then, just as big TVs impress today.
And I'm not so sure that the percentages have changed all that much since the 1970's. The importance of video began eclipsing the importance of audio when videocassetes hit the scene and this trending toward video has lasted. But I think that, over the past decade and a half, we have been seeing a renewed interest in high quality audio component once again. It's just that today's crop of audiophiles have been following the familiar trail of miniaturization too.
In other words, the market for good quality headphone systems has been steadily growing just as full-size loudspeaker systems have been becoming less popular. "Headphiles" (headphone enthusiasts) are being born at a faster rate than old school "speakerphiles" types have been dying off, I think.
So "audiophilia" actually continues to thrive in mutated form.
Edits: 10/28/16 10/28/16 10/28/16 10/28/16
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