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In Reply to: Something is very wrong in audioland: yesterday, posted by tinear on May 6, 2007 at 06:17:40:
The best stuff in the big box stores is getting worse and worse. The typical home theater in a box is incredibly bad. The difference between average audio and good/high-end audio is increasing.The opposite is happening in video. The cost of plasma and lcd televisions that have excellent pictures is dropping quickly. Front projectors, the ideal for home theater, are ridiculously cheap. I bought a $1,000 projector a couple of months ago that is far superior to what was available for $5,000 3 or 4 years ago. It's hard to find video that's anything less than very good at any price.
I believe that there will come a point when the current trend will naturally reverse itself and audio will regain focus. The typical audio system will once again become the bigger investment and video will return to second place. The reason for this is that audio is so much more difficult to get right. With digital processing video has progressed from low resolution tube and very poor rear projection sets to spectacularly good plasma and lcd sets and front projectors in only about the last 5 years. Full range audio systems that can play loudly with low distortion and actually sound good in a particular room will always require a sizable investment and careful setup. The digital front end has become cheap and good amplification may become cheap but good speakers will always be expensive. The other areas where I think there's some room to grow are in custom installation and room treatments that don't look wierd. If someone invented some room treatments that were reasonably priced, effective, and didn't stand out in a typical living room quality audio could become popular with normals again.
The problem is that high-end shops are still trying to sell thousands of dollars worth of wires to people like me who can't hear much difference and aren't sure the differences they hear are improvements. This despite the fact that they audition their equipment in terrible sounding rooms that easily overshadow any improvements made by tweaks.
I think high-end audio is just going through a much needed natural selection process where a lot of BS is going to go extinct and real quality and value will remain for the minority of people who care about it.
Follow Ups:
Fewer and fewer people are being exposed to what I think is good music.....(And even if they are exposed to what I think is good music, the digitized playback of it would likely stifle the perception of it being good music.)
If I had the perspective that it doesn't get any better than the Foo Fighters and Arctic Monkeys, and that MP3s sound just as good as CDs, I too would think Bose was the end-all in audio.....
... by your comment "fewer people are being exposed to... ...good music".Although, I might re-phrase it to read:
"More people are being exposed to bad music" :-)
My two kids are more interested in today's "heavy metal", "grunge" and the like than in the music of the mid-to-late 20th century - classical, jazz and nostalgia rock hold little or no interest for them.
They are, I believe, representative of their respective generations (they're 12 years apart in age) and give a pretty good indication of the listening priorities of their generations.
So, if all one wants to listen to is heavily distorted noise, then why bother with high fidelity reproduction of that distortion? :-)
Someone else also touched on a key factor - the availability of time for dedicated listening. The ability to "multi-task" that something like an iPOD brings (Gym & listen, Jog & listen, etc) does much to address this time issue.
These are just two aspects of the differences in priorities and "drivers" that influence the allocation of disposable income in the youth of today - there are probably quite a few others...
DevillEars
"I believe that there will come a point when the current trend will naturally reverse itself and audio will regain focus."I think this is wishful thinking. In my opinion, there is no chance of this ever happening. The only thing constant, for better or worse, is change. 2 channel and high-end audio will be a memory in another generation. That's only 20 years. Dealers who don't adapt won't be in business. Most of us, who've been doing this for 40 or more years will be taking dirt naps by then. There won't be anyone left to care.
Typical old fogey talk. I'm 30 and have been interested since college. We don't disagree on that much. 2 channel and tubes may die but they are just types of high end that appeal to people in a particular age bracket. They aren't synonymous with high end. Like I said, there will always be a minority of people interested in quality audio just like there are a minority of people interested in quality everything else. The problem is that many audiophiles mistake the end of particular trends with the end of the whole thing. The new high end will be different than the old high end but will exist in one form or another.
Who you calling old?! You young whippersnapper! Dagnabbit!!
Sadly, I agree!!Many got started in this hobby building dyna kits or radios, etc.
But now, most are entering audio listening to the ipod/ mp3. And we audiophiles still think it is about sound quality! Ipod clearly shows that convenience is way more important to most people.
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