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172.4.51.86
back,in the day the coolest thing you could own would be a great stereo. Kids would come over after school and listen to records. It was a great social scene. Nowadays you would never catch a bunch of young people gathered around a stereo system. They don't believe in sitting in one spot and listening to music. When I have had young people over here they look at my audio gear like it's a 100 year old antique. To them it is just clutter. When I was there age I would go Gaga if I saw an audio system in someone's house.
Follow Ups:
The advent of moderately priced VCRs killed hi-fi as the mass obsession it had been in the '70s. VCRs offered a whole new realm of access to movies, etc., hadn't previously existed. I think the average Joe was and is more engaged by video than buy sound alone.Hey guys, I was into hi-fi throughout the '70s 'till today: I say it all happen.
I love the music of ...... Gustav Mahler
Edits: 10/13/14
He wondered what these speakers were and wanted to hear them.
After asking a few more times while the new Contour DVR box with 6 tuners and a 1TB HD was installed, I played Hotel California.
He was blown away, like the Memorex man with his hair blowing, asking if it went louder.
"And the Eagles", he says. Thank God, I guessed right say I to myself.
-Rod
... I think you should invite my mate, Sudz, over to have a listen. If Sudz says he is blown away with how your speakers sound, I will believe it.
Will I tell Sudz to expect an invite?
Cheers
d:O)
Oh, nice speakers!
Smile
Sox
Good stereos are COOL. It's the people who don't recognize it. Too bad for them.
I go out of my way to be uncool.
Especially around people who are so cool that uncool people bother them.
Hang on. Gotta go. Cool person needs me to help with speaker placement.
They're doing it wrong.
HEY! Get those speakers at least 3 feet away from the back wall you cool person you!
Go!
I do not understand
This is what people attending a concert normally do
They sit, keep silence and listen to the music
In a disco is different of course
Kind regards,
bg
Edits: 10/12/14
In a concert you have concert ambience. The venue, the live performers and the members of the audience too (no matter how still they might be) help to turn the musical event into something else besides.That said, I pride myself on my ability to "tune out" my surroundings at will. Others involved in this hobby probably know what I'm talking about here.
Being able to tune out one's surroundings might make one profoundly uncool. Or maybe not, because so many people today are so very good at tuning out their surroundings so long as they have an iPad thingy to fiddle with.
Edits: 10/12/14 10/12/14
Yes i see
My point is that i usually listen to music sitting in the so called sweet spot without doing much else and not moving around
So i believe in sitting in one spot and listening to the music
The people anyway have different priorities and tastes
I am sure that who listens to an ipod is not interested as i am in the virtual soundstage quality for instance
It is a very basic approach to music
As an aside i have a young cousin and out of curiosity i listened to what he was listening through his earphones ... deafening noises hardly music.
Maybe it is a sign of the times.
Kind regards,
bg
Edits: 10/12/14 10/12/14
I have no trouble believing that you can tune out, none whatsoever. I seriously doubt you can do it at will though.
Unless someone deliberately threatens my peace or unless I'm driving without auto-pilot, I'm usually OK.
I know my friends were quite impressed with the stereo I had at the time.
But the reason we sat in one place was because we were too stoned to move about, except perhaps to go to the kitchen to grab some munchies.
That said, I'm not terribly hip to the notion that you can only properly enjoy music by sitting in one spot.
So it does'nt bother 109 of you that you took the time to respond to what
amounts to nothing more than "Forum Graffiti" ????
I don't think it's forum graffiti at all. I think sudz was just posting an observation. One that actually holds water if you lift your head out of our geekhaven. Personally I think stereos are super cool. But my kids friends see the stuff and kind of look through it.
They think my water cooled gaming rig is awesome though.
They don't call it the "Asylum" for nuthin' ya know.
Come on!! It's like saying "Vanilla Ice Cream is not cool anymore"
Whether it is or is'nt exactly why should this matter ? are you going to stop eating it ? Or hide the fact that you are still going to eat it ?
The most a comment like this warrants is a "Well,that's interesting!!"
You are interested in "Your" stereo or you've moved on to something else
who buy the how-to-parent self-help/self-improvement guides BUT resent any suggestions from others about how to raise a child i.e., practical help on the side.
for you, as for so many pragmatic parents that can't see beyond their own noses, it's all about 'what works'
using your vanilla flavor ice cream as example, it so happens that this is the #1 choice of flavors (for Americans, I recall) AND that is more than just ''interesting'' because to see such a bland and neutral choice of flavors is quite surprising: more and more we see products that are more colorful (tennis balls, for example or even stereo amps like 'son of ampzilla' with its striking blues) and captivating. so, your example works against you. plain ole vanilla is actually favored (in ice cream), not what marketing does today in appealing consumers.
but if your only purpose to visit a hobbyist site is TO SEE WHAT IT CAN DO FOR ME PERSONALLY IN UPGRADING EQUIPMENT, then you miss alot of worth.
thanks for interest.
(or importance)
roger wang
Do you feel better now ???
I honestly have no "Philosophical Agenda" that I have an overriding desire to let everyone else know how I feel about "Observations". We all make thousands of them everyday.
I forget that being an International forum,not everyone realizes when you are using 'figurative' examples or talking 'literally'. My apologies if this
is somehow lost in translation.
(Yes,I suppose it was a bit 'shortsighted' of me to 'chide' others for
'their' interest in something I did'nt recognize as subject matter for
discussion. Please exclude me from any further involvement in this particular thread. Thank you)(I'm going to label this as "Steve's Recant"
& refer anything further with this back to this)
i overreacted to your overly interest in practicality ("What do I care if....?; my will stay the same anyway" thinking)
roger wang
And you're replying because...?
Public service announcement !!!!
(I'm sure most people just had momentary lapses of intellect function
& it was then they decided to send in their comments. I mean think about
it.... Commenting on 'Subjective Opinions" is like saying to your dog(after he scarfs down a dog yummy) "Tastes good,does'nt it boy")
the Audio Asylum is about audio. The vast majority of posts here are subjective opinions. By your logic the whole site should be shut down.
Perhaps Hydrogen Audio would better suit you. They don't allow subjective opinions over there.
Noooo !! subjective opinions are fine, I just think that "Observations"
are either something you find "interesting" or "obvious" for various reasons.(I really did'nt want to join this discussion,but listening to Mahler at
2:30 AM put me in a "Mood" I guess.. Heh,heh,heh)
Edits: 10/11/14
Even in the 70's when I was a little kid they weren't cool. In the 80's when I was a teenager, if girls didn't care about a thing, then I didn't care about a thing...and girls have NEVER cared about a stereo.
The boy/girl ratio here must be 10000/1 so I will venture to say they still don't think stereos are cool.
But now I'm 47 and I could give two shits what girls think is cool.
Stereos are cool.
And to everyone accusing the OP of trolling... gotta admit..it's a pretty troll smelling title. but upon reading the content I don't think he's a troll.
I can agree with you on one thing. I don't give a shit what girls think either.
I dunno, when I was growing up in the 70s, most every kid I knew lusted after a cool stereo system. No, the girls weren't interested. But the guys were.
And no, sudz is not a troll. I've spoken with him many times. While he has opinions and observations some may not agree with, they are sincere.
If you got it because you thought others would think it's cool, then it's not cool. If you got it because you think it's cool, and could give two shits about what everybody else thinks...well then that's pretty cool.
But I will concede that lots of kids did want a shiny Fisher stereo and the more knobs and lights and meters it had, the better. I grew up in Queens, NY and in 1977, Fisher was the ultimate stereo to all of us 9 year olds. I don't know if other areas were the same.
Back on topic... I think sudz is right. Every single high end condo or new house I visit has the stereo hidden away so no one can see it. I walked into a 30 million dollar mansion a couple of weeks ago and all the speakers were plastered into the walls and the equipment was hidden away in a closet.
There's a fair amount of high end gear made today that I'd want to hide in a closet too. ;-)
Ha... true.
Seriously.
"I can't compete with the dead". (Buck W. 2010)
Dude. Harsh.
was that directed to me Chip647?I think it was, if so, you shouldnt take me so seriously, no need to hate a stranger on a forum or even insult a dummy like me. You have closer people in your life to hate, im sure.
Edits: 10/11/14 10/11/14 10/11/14
No, it was directed at suds. There are some here who are intolerant of opinions other than their own and attemp to dismiss those with differing opinions as "trolls." They wouldn't know a real troll if one bit off their pecker so they use it as a catch-all term of denigration.
...
University freshman, Fall '72. The guy in my dorm with the decent integrated, AR speakers and Dual TT...definitely cool! Hi-Fi remained so through the '70s...witness the rise of the discount stereo warehouses that marketed Japanese SS to the masses on an industrial scale.
nttttt
That's often true.
Ditch the bow ties, replace the record album book that the lady is looking through with a copy of Vogue or the Macy's catalog, and the picture might seem halfway realistic though.
And replace the record player with a TV the has an xbox on it and place a bong on the table and now you're approaching reality.
Why, you're right! I'm so behind the times, that much is obvious...
Haha... I'm sure I'm also at least 20 years behind as well. Who knows what the real scenario is. Maybe they are drinking sparkling water and eating kale.
...some shorter than others.
Dean.
reelsmith's axiom: Its going to be used equipment when I sell it, so it may as well be used equipment when I buy it.
Does anyone use CBs anymore? I would think there are still useful for some real time road information but perhaps Google has figured it all out.
next Sunday night i'll be hosting a group of 6 in my 2 channel room that paid $2700 to win a live auction for an Evening of Music and Food. the auction benefits a local High School award winning Jazz Band.Food and Wine will be provided by audio asylum forum member and good friend Jazdoc and his wife, who's son was a member of this band in previous years but is now attending Berklee College of Music in Boston.
this is the second year we have done this. last years winners apparently thought Stereo's were plenty cool.....this year even more so.
mikel
Edits: 10/11/14 10/11/14 10/11/14
Charging people, even if it's a charity auction (do you have a permit for that?), and serving alcohol could be a problem for you if someone decides to report it.
Being a legal eagle and perhaps a bit overboard, but you might want to be very careful.
Myself, I would never accept money under any circumstances. If someone brings and consumes alcohol it's up to them, but I don't serve it, either. It's all about potential liability. That aside, I consider charging a fee of any kind to be arrogant, but that's just me.
Brian
So much music, so little time!
Tell us something we don't know.
Perhaps, I'll think of you as M-Squared...Magnanimous Mike!
Seriously, good show, Mike.
You, Jazdoc, and all involved are to be commended :-)
Vbr,
Sam
thank you Sam.
mikel
They could buy their own stereo system for $2700??
How do you do it? Is that 20 people at $135 apiece?
in April there was a Live Auction event at a local Club with likely 200 people in attendance. mostly parents, relatives, friends, teachers, and band members. it's a fund-raiser for the band to help with trip expenses for low income band members, and instruments for low income band members, and other band expenses. having a jazz band in a High School costs money....most of which needs to be contributions. really a first class event i attended last year but not this year. the band also finds a nationally known Jazz luminary to attend and play as an added attraction.there are many types of things auctioned, one of which is this Night of Music and Food. last year they ended up auctioning 2 different nights for $500 each. this year it was one night for $2700. this dollar amount is a contribution from the winners. and it happens to be one of the groups from last year....and trust me, they had a great time. so did i and Jazdoc and our wives.
as far as how the winners view the $2700 and how they rationalized it, i have no idea. but obviously they saw the value somewhere for it. i was not present for the bidding but i'm told there was much interest.
as far as value for the $2700....you have not been to my room......or witnessed Jazdoc's jazz and music knowledge on display. :-)
my wife has always said i should charge admission.
stereo not 'cool'?....hardly!!!
mikel
Edits: 10/11/14 10/11/14 10/11/14 10/11/14 10/11/14
.
thanks for kind comment.seriously; if you are ever in the neighborhood you would be most welcome to visit for a listen. i noticed from some of your recent posts that you live in Canada, and have been here in the Seattle area recently. so if you get down here then contact me and we can set it up.
and even though my wife is serious about her comment about charging admission, i only require having a common ground of enjoyment of fine audio and music...nothing more. i enjoy meeting like minded audiophiles.
mikel
Edits: 10/11/14
cool!
"Once this was all Black Plasma and Imagination" - Michael McClure
+1
Smile
Sox
ive read most of this thread and you guys have missed maybe the most important thing.Im 27 years old and seriously, 99% of people my age doesnt really listen to music anymore. Not like I do and not like you guys do. They dont even know what it is to dig a artist and listen to every note he plays, or follow all the musical lines of a song, ect.
People my age and younger have been expose to crap pop music, and have been sort of raised like that: to not listen to the music. I dont blame them because the musica we are now expose to is pure SHIT.JAzz is indeed seen as weird, heck even rock is seen as a thing of the past. Electronica and rap and pop is the only thing we know.
Nobody cares enough about that music to want to invest in a systemThat said, anybody my age who listend to the many iteration of my system all said the same thing: HOLY fuck, didnt thought it could sound that good.
Then, since nobody is ever expose to a good sound system anymore, its like the circle has ended. no body is faced with a good system enough to even know that amazing sound is possible. They just dont know what they are missing; its not advertised anywhere anymore. You do not see big speakers nowhere, not even in videoclip, on tv, or movies.
Its like a sound system is not part of our culture anymore.
oh well, were the lucky ones!
Edits: 10/11/14
"It's like a sound system is not part of our culture anymore" that to me is the bottom line. If young people are not interested in good sound they never will be. Like I have been saying since I got on this site we are the last of the dinosaurs. And you know what happened to them.
indeed.They are not interested in music anymore, so a sound system is the last of their needs.
Its really sad and worrysome. ITs like, they cannot even concentrate enough to listen to real music anymore.
Electronica has really changed the way music is seen and what music is suppose to be and sound like.
Dont get me wrong, theres still amazing music being made today, but its sparse and theres a lot more crap then before.The crap is much more crappier then 30 years ago, and a lot more people listen to that crap so that tells you how bad the situation is.
And to think that Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix or Zappa was considered popular at one time and mainstream is amazing to me. Music is just not the same. Originality and research of something different musically is mostly gone. Electronica made possible for anybody to make cool sounds and music. Melodies are more and more cheesy or simply elementory. The drum work is now not a part of the music but just something to respect the rhythm (tony william would be considered too much for example), ect.
Ive been a electronica fan all my life and if one dig deep enough, theres truly amazing musician in the elctronica realm. but they are rare, really rare. Most are not musicians, and what thye do could barely be considered music. Sure, its music, but really really bad imo compared to even the 70s and 80s and 90s. Worst is that the good music from the past is seen like too old and bad Truth is, most cannot understand Miles, Jimi or Zappa genius; the intelligence behind their music is really not understood.Again, its not that people doesnt have taste anymore, its simply that their taste cannot evolve due to the lack of exposition to real music. Just like when I was a kid and couldnt appreciate wine, coffee or mushrooms.
Anyways!
So with all that said, nobody cares about music anymore, so a sound system is the last of one needs.
when I say no one, its a broad generation of course.
Edits: 10/11/14 10/11/14
I grew up on frank Zappa and I don't remember him as mainstream. Maybe some other members here can comment on this. It would be interesting to see what they say.
Did you read what he said sox? "Kids my ago don't even listen to music" there goes your theory on young people being audiophiles.
... Opinions are like bottoms, everyone has one.
I really couldn't care less what a pessimistic old douche like you says.
There has never been so much affordable high-end audio equipment so readily available from all over the world than there is now.
I have late teen and twenty something kids, they are all into audio and so are their friends.... maybe not as fanatical as us goomers on this site but the passion is there. Your continued broad-brush pessimism is banal and boorish.
Is what my kids and their friends do representative of the demographic? No, but it never was. I repeat, it never was. High-end audio was always a niche and the majority of people have never been into it. Maybe the percentage of people who are interested high-end audio is lower now but it is far from dead, no matter how many times you espouse its demise.
Smile
Sox
Sox, I don't care if they are giving it away for free. Most young people don't care about it. Why do you have such a hard time with the truth. Some of you baby boomers are in such denial. I'm not telling you to abandon your love for audio. All I'm saying is the kids growing up in 2014 don't give a rat's ass about it.
.... They never did!
Read my post again then take a valium.
Smile
Sox
lol
Edits: 10/12/14
the thing about headphones is really true. More and more, people listen to music with headphones.
I know that the headphones market as exploded, as well as headphones amps.
I personally have grown up listening critically to musiuc on eahdphones, never on speakers until I found out how good a good system can be. But I still listen every night to my ehadphoens system because well, you hear better with headphoens unless you can crank the stereo.
Ive talked to Thorsten loesch about that, and yes audiophiles are using headphones more and more, the young audiophiles...
peace and love
typewriters (now, of course, computers): none of them involve any skillful work: just "plug and play."
Involvement in audio requires effort. Actually moving stuff around. Vinyl? A real nightmare, for today's kids. All the cartridge, needle, platter, etc. adjustments are a non-starter.
Yes, a few kids are into it. Many are the same kids that wear bell-bottoms or dye their hair green and have fanciful tats.
It's over.
Evolve or die.
You absolutely do not know what you are talking about, your opinions are worthless to me...
-RW-
but there are plenty of cars with things you can adjust or those wanting more performance out of a car modify the car.
One can get as tweaky and fiddly with a car or a motorcycle as a serious turntable.
You do not seem to know all that much about high performance cars and motorcycles which are akin to high quality audio.
tinear did not offer advice here, it is a fact.
I sure get lots of interest in my systems everyone who stops over asks for a listen and comments highly on the sound quality. They particularly enjoy the old RCA MI gear with modern amps and a nice TT for source.
People those days had less distractions. However to say stereo isnt cool anymore is premature. That's same as those who were singing about the death of CDs and Vinyl or even VHS.
I'm sticking to 2 channel, thanks.
easier to sell 5 channel for the wife and kids....
Lady Gaga?
;-)
I recently retired from a college teaching job. I have had several young people of undergrad college age recently who were very intrigued by my audio system.
One young man from China had never seen or heard a real turntable playing a real LP. He was fascinated. He came by my house at least three times while he was finishing his education to listen. We compared LPs to CDs and several different speaker and amp combinations so he could hear some of the differences that audiophiles love to discuss.
I do think it is true that most kids nowadays want it personal, portable, small and downloaded or streamed, but there are a few who are interested in conventional "stereos", collect LPs because they like physical media, cover art, etc.
What got me interested in audio was the "fascination" in hearing a semblance of real live music out of a pair of loudspeakers.... All the rest is history.If a young individual is fortunate to hear enough unadulterated live music, and then hear a pair of speakers recreating that experience, he'll be fascinated too. This has nothing to do with generation, technologies of the time, or even cultural surroundings.
The only difference between when audio was popular and when it wasn't is simply the amount of unadulterated live music young individuals have been exposed to. We simply need to provide avenues for our young people to discover music acts outside the mainstream that they might enjoy. Which in turn could drive a passion to recreate the experiences via quality sound reproduction.
Edits: 10/10/14
While in our immediate circles we see a new interest from young kids in two channel audio,the masses have not yet caught on..It is changing a bit however,you don't see the socializing around the stereo like we did years ago..Of course,the computer has changed everything from how we play videos and watch sporting events and listen to music.
We also need to take into account how many young kids put money in their car stereo before they will a home stereo.Things change little by little and we are seeing movement with vinyl..Any growth we get is encouraging.
Honest amplification is better than excessive 2nd order distortion anytime.
Edits: 10/10/14
I enjoy listening and looking at my stereo systems, both in the car and at home. I have a pretty decent car system with Dynaudio speakers, JL Audio sub, and vintage Soundstream amps, and my latest amp acquisition for my home system - a Neodio NR-600 Signature has my Merlins singing better than ever (this from a solid state amp!).
My stereo is so cool that it can make popsicles in its shorts.
Edits: 10/10/14
~!
The Mind has No Firewall~ U.S. Army War College.
Yep- that is how I got started in this hobby-
I'm not sure I know the answer. Do you?Headphone related stuff might be the closest thing to "cool" in electronic entertainment nowadays, but I'm thinking that the concept of "cool things to own" may have finally run it's course. Unless you're talking about women and their ongoing addictions to shoes, clothes, and cosmetic refinements that is...
IMO, today's people don't want to think about things that might need care, cleaning, or maintenance. Everything useable must also be disposable - the more disposable, the better. If there is anything that is considered cool nowadays, it has as much to do with *concepts* (such as "connectivity" and "communication") as it does with any physical THING. If the home audio experience is to exist at all, it is best kept confined to one's own head.
Edits: 10/10/14 10/10/14 10/10/14
.
.., and it doesn't take a big living room full of electronic gizmos to accomplish that feat.
Or didn't that occur to you?
Observe, before you think. Think before you open your yap. Act on the basis of experience.
...our parents didn't try to be cool or be our friends - they were our parents.
We on the other hand are trying to be cool.
Anything we like our kids will reject because that makes it not cool.
Take Facebook, for example - once all the moms got on, the kids bolted to Instagram and other sites.
Audio equipment?
Kids don't care about it, cool or not, because they get their music from downloads or streaming and listen on their smartphones.
Muscle cars and Corvettes were cool when I was growing up - now it's smart cars and Priuses.
.
and unfortunately sometimes around their kids.
Give me rhythm or give me death!
would disagree.
They both love records, and the older refuses to listen to anything else, including radio. They report that many of their classmates are the same, and records are now cool again, hell, even the local Frys has a pretty decent collection for sale.
Serving up content-free posts on the Internet since 1984.
I've never meet nor do I think there is any kid (male) that thinks a Prius is cool.. Ferraris are cool, Porsches, McClarens, and Lambos are cool.. Big block anythings are cool. Prius.. not so much.
Most kids aren't even into cars nowadays. I think most kids spend their time on social media.
Tuner cars are in. Take a look sometime.
enjoy,
mark
...think green is more important than flash today.
Green is in, flash is out.
It's not just stereos, it is anything that does not move after 3 seconds.
It started with MTV videos and the attention span since then for young people is nill.
Coming from an area that has a rather robust Amish community ... numerous hand made furniture outlets is my point here.
Collector cabinets do not sell in near the volume that they used too. The local merchants tell me that the young people they talk too have absolutely no interest in collecting. Customers are late middle aged and are continuing to trend older.
Is it a cultural life style change (minimalism) or lack of disposable income that's driving this? Take your pick. Stereo's seem to be in the same category IMHO.
If you understand, things are just as they are; if you do not understand, things are just as they are.
--Zen Proverb
You must be either kidding, or else very, very old, to think that stereos were anything close to "cool" at any time in human history.
Too funny.
If you actually grew up in the 60's and 70's you would know that stereos were cool. That's a no brainier!
I'll bet you also thought ham radio and playing the sousaphone in marching band were cool.
I never thought that.
For one, I do this for ME and ME alone. Do I have friends and family who dig it? You bet, but they are besides the point.Now, I've had more than one of my friends kids turn mini audiophile after hangin' out with my stereo. Two of my 3 kids are audiophile bound. My early 30's Daughter and Son-In-Law just bought a turntable. As far as my friends are concerned, their better 1/2's just wouldn't allow it and that's why we hang out here :) which is cool because I don't have to drive home tipsy.
Edits: 10/10/14 10/10/14
most importantly today's smartphones with Pandora, et al; are all responsible for taking the glam away from home stereos.
... Still plenty of youngsters love & appreciate good audio equipment.Of course there are now 50 other things to spend their limited money on. Many kids around here love decent audio gear and do sit around listening to it and often have an instrument or 3 to jam along with it. It certainly happens here in my humble lean-to with late teens & twenty somethings.
In this part of the world kids will take some powered speakers fed by an an iPod filled with lossless files, a generator, drums, guitars, brass etc and jam down on the beach or the like.
I live in a very musical and creative part of the world.
Life is good, so is high-end audio, no matter what your pessimistic carcass says.
Edit; Syntax
Smile
Sox
Edits: 10/10/14
Used to be every Tom, Dick and Harry had one trying to be cool. These days only people who are actually cool have them.
Give me rhythm or give me death!
Edits: 10/09/14
N/T
"Once this was all Black Plasma and Imagination" - Michael McClure
you are unbdoubtabley coeerct in at least some ways. I think the main thing is just that there is so much more around these days for kids, and people in general. Home hifi was the start of home entertainment- then cam tv, videos, gaming, home computers. Hifi is somehwere there, but just part of a big mix
...among the millenials, like my daughter.
They need something to play them through which is a stereo.
Maybe it's just stereos without turntables that aren't cool anymore.
Although her friends are impressed by the music playing through mine...
Most of the kids doing the turntable thing now are doing it as a fashion trend, rather than from any appreciation (or even concept) of superior sound quality.
How much quality can you get out of a cheap entry-level TT with a terrible groove-chewing cartridge, anyway? Especially one with a built-in AD converter and a USB output? So you can dumb your expensive 180g virgin vinyl records down to MP3s and listen to them on your i-phone, through mud-thumpy fashion statement headphones?
Ain't gonna last. These kids are not budding audiophiles, just trend followers soon to be distracted by the next flashy trend.
Couldnt agree more.
They get vinyls to be cool, and buy the new vinyl, even though they sound absolutely worst then the digital version.
Buying vinyl now its totally useless and not audiophile. Everything is made into a computer and to be able to press a album into vinyl, you have to make it go thrue yet another DAC. Whats the point.
I only buy Jazz and classical vinyl from the time where everything were recorded on tapes.
Worst, audiophile now are seen like all ridiculous fools chasing a ghost and dumb and naive enough to believe that a dac can be worth more then 200$.
Im on a good bunch of music forum, and they just dont care, most of them, about sound quality. Those who do mostly get ``studio`` monitors and think they have the best sound possible.
You can read such stupid article on how digital audio all sound the same, and they take that as a reference and think that the soundcard is good enough and all there is to audio.
That is so true!
But if you're cool that doesn't bother you.
And cool is such an old fashioned word.
Excellent stereos are totally rad.
-Rod
> > Excellent stereos are totally rad.
Don't you mean "sick"?
If you don't become the ocean, you'll be seasick every day.
—Leonard Cohen
Isn't rad a Southern California slang? I grew up in Michigan and we never used that word. Back in the day they used to say" that's the bomb"
Bitchin!, Bitchin is the California slag for cool, rad, and bad all rolled into one word....
...I didn't realize it was popularized by the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles." My stereo gives me great pleasure. I'd shout it from the rooftop if I didn't have vertigo.
our daughter's friends (25-35yr old) go gaga when they come over to our house and see my rigs. Very recently our daughter's 30 yr old Dutch friend, a STUNNING, single, beauty, walked into my man cave and said, "Yup, I want to live here." No comment, other than to say that at least, for a moment, I felt pretty f'n cool ;>
--------------------------
"E burres stigano"
.....the mainstream media has shielded the masses from music that would motivate them to reproduce it with better fidelity.
Think about it, how often do you hear classical (orchestral) music, classic jazz, or even classic rock on the mainstream networks? (Contrast this to the mainstream media prior to 1970.) Or recent independent acts (like Porcupine Tree or Zero 7) that might actually light a passion?
It also doesn't help that most mainstream acts today use so much processing, even the decent ones sound more like cartoon caricatures than real performers.
When you were a kid you likely swore you'd never be like that when you heard the older generation moan. ;)
Todd Kreiger, you make some excellent points. I enjoyed reading them.
I've heard this all before & I say pooy !
who say's kids don't get together & listen to music?
Your wrong!
Are you telling me kids sit in a 100 square foot room listening to vinyl for hours? If it is true I would like to see it.
mainstream, at all, but a tiny niche that has legs.
I am sure it happens sometimes but I agree with you for mass majority nah....
filled with Thoras and Scarletts and I am Steve Buscemi. And to that I say, so what! My rig is a purely selfish endeavor.
I still like mine.
enjoy,
mark
Mark III, neither do I. I, like you, don't care what "they" think because I don't have my stereo systems for THEM.
One's life is generally more enjoyable once one learns to not really care that much what other people think of him.
ymmv,
roN
I remember those days, those were good times. Guess I was in my early-mid teens and we'd listen to my dad's stereo when him and mom were out, system was an allied receiver, garrard tt, not sure which cart but probably a shure, dynaco A25 speakers, nothing special but not half bad either. I remember playing Boston's and Van Halen's first albums, great stuff and great memories.
The coolness of stereos from 1956 to 1986 was a one-shot deal--a "perfect storm" of developments in societal structures, social mores, cultural developments, and advances in material culture and technology.
Here's the recipe that cannot and will not be repeated:
Start with a World War that followed a Depression.
Get to the point where there is a huge population of young men who are not only ready to settle down, they have had technical training and in some way usually some exposure to cultures other than their home town or farm, who qualify for free education under the GI Bill, and who in many cases yearn to be "Blue-Collar Intellectuals."
The development of the Long-Playing phonograph record coincided with the high point of the popularity of symphony music and with the revolution in small-combo jazz that had been fueled by the stupid wartime "Cabaret Tax," that priced big bands out of business. Toscanini and Charlie Parker could both be cool at the same time.
The advent of stereo coincided with the rediscover of Blues and the Folk Revival, followed by the Singer-Songwriter revolution in pop music, wherein artists like Joni Mitchell could actually lay claim to some sort of mainstream career. Ambitious artists made the "concept [LP] album" an art form.
MOST OF ALL: The only music-media competition for most of that time consisted of radio, where someone else picked the music, and TV, where music was featured only a few hours a week.
So, seeing as NONE of the factors that made stereo cool 1956-1986 exist today, why are you unbearably surprised and uncomprehending that between Twittering and Facebooking and texting and sexting and porning and selfieing, young people today do indeed regard LPs as our younger selves would have regarded illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages?
It's really really simple. Things change. Nothing lasts forever. You can't un-ring a bell.
JM
But you have to admit, there are advantages to the current state of musical affairs. My teen-aged daughter is a huge fan of Joe Cocker (we brought her to see him live) and Jimmi Hendrix (we couldn't arrange that) as well as all sorts of current stuff I've never heard of. Every now and then she texts me about an exciting "new" discovery (the other day it was The Red Hot Chili Peppers). She can get all of this and almost anything else on her iPhone in a matter of seconds.
Some day she may become interested in the music of Coltrane. Or Scarlatti. And she may even figure out that better-than-iPhone sound quality is possible.
JM ,
Really well said. Every person who sings that lament, or people have no appreciation of sound quality today, or the demise of brick and mortar, or outrageous cost of decent gear should be sent a copy of your original response.And you are dead on about Playboy.
Best,
Dave
Edits: 10/11/14
Agreed John;
I graduated high school in '86 and would agree with you that it was the tail end, if not the end of the stereo era.
When college came along, so did the GSL (guaranteed student loan) loans.
We all jokingly referred to them as "guaranteed stereo loans".
When my GSL arrived I did the prudent thing and spent a good chunk of it on some Adcom separates and a pair of Kef speakers.
I can still recall my excitement as I hauled the gear back to my off campus apartment to set it all up. My roommates and other friends had a lot of good times listening to that system.
Do young men do the same today? No.
Do I worry about and lament the passing of the era? No.
It is what it is.
300 years ago young men gathered in a similar manner to shoot their long bows. Time marches on.........
Great post - you nailed it.
I was a vegetarian for 15 minutes, until the main course.......Meat; It's the right thing to do. Romans 14:2
Agreed- In Ontario Canada, we had "O.S.A.P."- the Ontario Student Assistance Program, which we all half jokingly refered to as the Ontario Stereo Acquisition Program. This was in the mid 1990's!
Dman
Analog Junkie
Whether anything worthwhile is left afterwards is another story. Maybe the surviors will learn how to play records with wheel hub and pine needles attached to a rolled up sheet metal horn or something.
Mad Max movie, the last with Gibson (Thunderdome), had the stranded kids, sans adults, with the "sonic"...an LP, but without the engineering/scientific/cultural transmission of knowledge adequate to make it play.
BTW, when I was a kid, I read how to stick a needle into the narrow end of a paper cone and play a record w/ 0 watts, electrical. Of course, I did it. (Recapitulation of scientific discovery is a wonderful way of learning.) Would younger age cohorts know that? Not judgement,here; just observation.
"The coolness of stereos from 1956 to 1986 was a one-shot deal--a 'perfect storm' of developments in societal structures, social mores, cultural developments, and advances in material culture and technology."
Interesting you chose "1986".... Of course it was around the time digitized audio became the mainstream medium of choice.....
I think from the music angle, enough great acts from the 1960s have faded away..... And the pop culture has seeded the notion in our youth that classical music and old-school jazz were "uncool"...... (I fought this personally in school. Fellow kids in my classes thought it was "strange" that I was interested in Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and Rachmaninoff. And in retrospect, I've been troubled over what may have motivated young people to think this way. And I'm certain it's worse now than when I was in grade school.)
"Here's the recipe that cannot and will not be repeated:
"Start with a World War that followed a Depression."
I don't think that would be requisite for the enjoyment of music and audio......
"Get to the point where there is a huge population of young men who are not only ready to settle down, they have had technical training and in some way usually some exposure to cultures other than their home town or farm, who qualify for free education under the GI Bill, and who in many cases yearn to be 'Blue-Collar Intellectuals.'"
I'm not such an individual..... About three-fourths of my audiophile friends over the years weren't such individuals......
"The development of the Long-Playing phonograph record coincided with the high point of the popularity of symphony music and with the revolution in small-combo jazz that had been fueled by the stupid wartime 'Cabaret Tax,' that priced big bands out of business. Toscanini and Charlie Parker could both be cool at the same time."
But people like the music because it was music.... The tastes in music at the time was eclectic..... The media reflected those tastes.... Where today, the media shapes those tastes.... (By first giving people a false impression of popularity, then the masses going for the music because it's perceived as "popular".) The eclectic interests in music died because the mainstream media only fed its audience what the media execs wanted them to hear.
"The advent of stereo coincided with the rediscover of Blues and the Folk Revival, followed by the Singer-Songwriter revolution in pop music, wherein artists like Joni Mitchell could actually lay claim to some sort of mainstream career. Ambitious artists made the 'concept [LP] album' an art form."
Just a few parts.... The variety of music choices in the mainstream at the time was endless...........
"MOST OF ALL: The only music-media competition for most of that time consisted of radio, where someone else picked the music, and TV, where music was featured only a few hours a week.
"So, seeing as NONE of the factors that made stereo cool 1956-1986 exist today, why are you unbearably surprised and uncomprehending that between Twittering and Facebooking and texting and sexting and porning and selfieing, young people today do indeed regard LPs as our younger selves would have regarded illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages?"
I'm not surprised, but my contention is that the prefabricated music that dominates the modern mainstream is not exactly material that makes people strive for high-fidelity sound reproduction.... Not to mention the audiophile community viewing such music with disdain, it lacks the artistic depth that makes those people want to enjoy it on a good audio system.
"It's really really simple. Things change. Nothing lasts forever. You can't un-ring a bell."
I think if that were true, there wouldn't have been a vinyl revival.... There are young people out there going for music beyond the mainstream, and some of those people have the same passion for quality sound reproduction that we had.
... the penetration of the VCR was the start of the era of "on demand entertainment" with video stores and recording TV shows.
By the 1980's the price of VCR's had fallen enough that nearly anyone who wanted one could have one, and the stereo was relegated to the background.
The number of entertainment options really proliferated starting then, where now, there won't be any one dominant media, for very long anyway.
I suppose streaming media is the likely end game for passive, but who knows what the next decade will bring?
============================
As audiophiles, we take what's obsolete, make it beautiful, and keep it forever.
Hey! I have a blog now: http://mancave-stereo.blogspot.com or "like" us at https://www.facebook.com/mancave.stereo
and
In my book both Toscanini and Parker are still cool. :)
I see you keep referencing 1986 as the day the music died. What happened in 1986 that caused this change?
Very few people remember (or have learned) that Henry Kloss, formerly of AR, KLH, and Advent, in 1976 had staked all his chips on projection TV.
His business venture failed because the technology was unproved and very expensive. And hard to set up.
However, 10 years later, companies with sufficient backing and clout had established high-quality and relatively affordable video playback and projection. The first LaserDisc player with a solid-state laser was Pioneer's LD-700 of 1984.
For not insane money, a yuppie in the mid-1980s could see operas, music videos, or soft-core porn on a 10-foot diagonal screen from an Ottoman-sized three-gun projector, and all the "aspirational" magazines like Playboy and Esquire abruptly stopped pushing audio and began pushing Home Theater.
End of story.
JM
Are you saying that back in the 60's and early 70's playboy had an influence on stereo buyers? If that is the case I have never heard that before.
Yes, that is what I have been saying for more than 6 years, and you have not been paying attention.
In the 1960s and 1970s Playboy's circulation was 5 MILLION copies a month; Playboy was read by appx. 25% the college-age men in the US (on the assumption that most copies were read by the subscriber and from 2 to 4 friends--and barbershop copies were probably read by 50 customers a month).
I wrote about this phenomenon in Stereophile's August 2008 "As We See It."
JM
JM,
It would help my understanding of your post and your hypothesis if you would cite any peer reviewed research that studied the effect of 'reading' Playboy on the college age demographic and purchasing audio equipment during the "baby boomer' years of the 1960s-70s.
Thanks.
And I don't need peer-reviewed research because the fact of the matter is that hi-fi companies were frequent advertisers in Playboy from 1956 on through the time I cite as the changeover from stereo to home theater. Companies that buy ads in the wrong media often don't stay in business.
But there actually is some peer-reviewed research I am aware of that indeed does cite chapter and verse for the strong linkage between the urban/indoors ethos of Playboy (versus the suburban/outdoors ethos of Esquire), hi-fi, and Hefner's particular vision of "the life well lived."
From JSTOR:
“ 'Turn it down!' she shrieked: gender, domestic space, and high fidelity, 1948-59”
Keir Keightley
“Popular Music,” Vol. 15, No. 2. (May, 1996), pp. 149-177.
“Popular Music” is currently published by Cambridge University Press.
# # #
I attach only two pages, in the spirit of Fair Use. Yes, that study ends at 1959 but by then the die was cast as far as Playboy's embrace of both hi-fi and jazz as signifiers of Hefner's ideals of modern male life.
Perhaps there is more research that is on point but I am more than satisfied that my thesis holds water, and more to the point so is JA, and he matters a lot more than you do. And I have discussed my thesis with academics in American Civilization and Musicology, and nobody has ever said, "You are barking up the wrong tree."
The book that someone has to write is about how Hefner, I believe, did more than anyone else during the years when Rock was in its ascendency to keep Jazz on life support, so to speak--one of the few instances in which Hefner consciously took a position that was uncool by the prevailing standards of the time. And perhaps it was Hef's continued showcasing of relics like Mel Tormé that was the chink in Playboy's armor that let Guccione's Penthouse come into the cafeteria and eat Hef's lunch... .
Have a nice day.
jm
JM,
It is an easy call to agree that Playboy played a not insignificant role in shaping the aspirational ethos of post WWII, white middle class males during the 1950s.
I specifically refer to the generation of white middle class,'Baby-Boomer kids who came of age in the early 1960s to the mid 1970s.
I would suggest that the Playboy aspirational life style ethos and view of the world was, in any practical sense, absent, if not anathema, to the life style of the aforementioned kids. They were, in fact, the adolescents and young adults who were in active revolt against their parents and who formed the core soldiers of the political and cultural struggles of those times. I remember the struggles of those times quite well. Music propelled the struggle. We bought audio equipment. Playboy was as dead as the proverbial door nail, just, as we thought, was our parents way of life; the former was a solid truth; the latter, well, we learned a lot about ourselves and attempted to pick and choose among the bones of what we rejected and arrived at our middle age a wiser lot.
I distinctly remember that not all Baby Boomer kids were the same. Indeed there were the rebels or the *progressive* kids, but there just as many who were traditional consumerists happy doing whatever it took to keep the finances and the flow of goods rolling. For every kid who struggled against the legacy of former generations, there was at least one other who carried the torch onward - even though it may have been "uncool" to admit doing so.Soon, the yuppie wasps would arrive (L.L. Bean catalogs in tow) in swarms, stinging and biting all in their path. The internet was ready to explode, and explode it did.
Today, we see that almost everyone is the same.
Edits: 10/12/14
To better understand the people involved in this topic it would help to know there age, where they resided between 1960-1969, their educational and draft/military status at the time. While many of us were united socially and politically the transformation (or when one may have dropped acid) occurred at different times.
In very broad terms the social changes between 1960-65 were different from those between 1964-69. Ones opinion of when the 'Summer of Love' actually took place and was that the West Coast or the East? Beat or Hip? Elvis or the Beatles and on and on? Regardless, it seems everybody at least flipped through Playboy regularly.
During that decade there was very little in the way of commonly available audio orientated periodicals and Playboy, regardless of its other lifestyle content, was providing the Jazz Poll and a usually interesting photographic look at the rapidly growing High Fidelity industries offerings beyond Heathkit.
Look at age breakdowns in the 1968 and 1972 national elections. Nixon got lots of young voters. Arguably, they were his margins.
You are lapsing (I think) into the mindset that when a year ending in "9" ends and a year beginning with "0" starts, it is like flipping a light switch. In most cases, not so.
All one has to do is look at Playboy's still-astonishing circulation and ad revenue figures from the 1960s through the mid-1970s, when Penthouse began spanking Playboy's rear for its complacency.
Indeed, the "real" Playboy died with the early death of Auguste Comte Spectorsky, the guy who was able to get world-class writers to swallow their pride while pocketing their check. Hef wandered around in his satin bathrobe while Specs put out a world-class general-interest magazine that also featured bare boobs.
Anyone who lived through that era (I still can hardly believe with the bad lottery number I got, I was not sent to Vietnam) can remember (selectively) what they wish to, in however self-congratulatory a way.
I not only lived through it, I studied it at the college level and have continued my studies in History and Material Culture and Technology as academic subjects, life-long. I am currently reading a Niall Ferguson essay on chaos and determinancy in History, and, frankly, it's hard work.
Indeed, later in life I met and was influenced by an important member of Shure Brothers' outside ad agency in the 1960s and 1970s, and for them, Playboy was a supremely important "get." And I don't think they were living in the past, they were reading the sales reports. Playboy's circulation in that time frame was more than TEN TIMES Stereo Review's!!!
Let us not forget that counter-cultural as they were, The Grateful Dead splurged on McIntosh amplification for their PA system. The revolution might not have been televised, but they like them their nice stereos.
JM
nt
Altho, GQ just ran an article about Return to HIFI. Sadly, not enough momentum reversing the pendulum but apparently it's COOL to have a hifi again.
The latest trend for metro sexuals: drink micro brew whisky or burbon with wagyu beef and spin vinyl records.
Edits: 10/09/14 10/10/14 10/10/14
...what sort of man reads
Way before Holt (much less HP) held court in these parts, Playboy would feature articles about stereo gear. After all, if you wanted to get laid, a great stereo could help set the mood. (along with the round bed!)
So what are you saying the manufacturers want you to buy big TV's and 7 channel amps and 7 speakers and a sub instead of a two channel amp and two speakers? Huh, imagine that, business wanting customers to buy more.
ET
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