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This about sums it upBig speakers are furniture - not sound gateways
to the new generation....from the Boston Globe website today :
http://www.boston.com/business/personaltech/articles/2007/03/14/ever_lower_fidelity?mode=PF
Follow Ups:
One reason I still like my turntables is the vast amount of music available in that format that hasn't and probably never will be converted to CD or future formats. It's the main reason I go to thrifts now as I have way more equipment than I need(although it doesn't stop me from buying more). I feel sad for the gradual demise of the "album" as an art form independent of what media its stored on. Today's music is moving rapidly to individual songs rather than album's. That's certainly not unlike 45's used to be but I love a good album. I read one article giving the Beatles much of the credit for establishing the concept of album vs a collection of songs. No argument here.
Gary
Growing up in the 60's and 7-'s I could have never imagined being able to afford owning more than 100 albums. Now I have about 1000...
Think back.How many people who had record players in the 50, 60's, and 70's had magnetic cartridges? What percentage of people in that period had well matched, well set up component systems?
How about the 70's? Probably the golden age as far as numbers of component systems being sold. Yet, how many of those buyers could have been considered serious hobbyists? Most just stuck the speakers in convenient locations and let it go at that. For them, components system or not, it was a music playing home appliance. Heck, most people who had access to FM of some sort listened to Top 40 or Drive Time stations.
The walkman was a big hit and so were car cassette and 8 track systems. For most people it's having the music and convenience and portability is more important than sound quality.
Some few of the iPod people will grow into good systems and a few of those will seek out older stuff like we do. Except, of course, older stuff for them may be 80's or 90's or even 21st century gear.
I guess my bottom line in this ramble is that we've always been a minority. We're probably destined to become an even smaller minority.
Eventually, the huge reservoir of '70s gear will dry up or become too old to be reliable without a complete rebuild. But unlike 60's tube gear, the parts for the 70's and 80's stuff is unavailable. Already, a lot of CD players are unrepairable.
was about as crappy a fidelity medium as possible..when heard over a handheld transistor radio with a simple earplug. Today's Mp3 players and Ipods sound a whole lot better than even the radio in my parent's 1967 Olds (AM only). I think the "low" sound quality of today is far and above what people routinely used in the 1960's and 70's.
I got started with a Zenith portable AM radio that I would hang on the bed post and listen to at night. Boy, would I have enjoyed having an iPod in those days! Even a CD walkman would have been amazing.The cost of finding good sound continues to go down.
Can remember aweful portable radios. Even the larger ones with the handle and FM were bad, really really bad.
I agree too. I grew up in the 1970's and 1980's and until CDs took over, I remember lots of 8-tracks, cassette tapes, and stacking turntables with scratchy LPs and worn styluses. Sure, there WAS truly great gear in that period but most people did not own it or care about it. Today's ipods and CD's do a better job than many of these setups, for a lot of people they are an improvement. They sure beat 8-tracks and stacking turntables, which beat the crap out of your records but that didn't stop people from using them.
That's good news for audiophiles -- yet something of a non-event for many consumers. Fred Pinkerton , product manager for the portable audio line at Cambridge SoundWorks, believes that "there will continue to be a small percentage of people interested in the best quality audio."And the rest?
"They just want to get the song."
This quote from the article sums up the HISTORY of reproduced sound and the buying public. Look at the junk that was always available. If anything...shitty systems sound better today than the ever did.
Audiophiles (and yes the term is old...I came across it in a 1956 issue of Popular Electronics yesterday) were always a small minority (who spend lots of money) and barring the era of the 1970's when it was hip to own a big stereo system...it has always been the pursuit of people that the rest of society looks at with disbelief and sometimes scorn.
Sometimes people on this forum get their panties in a bunch thinking that "younger" people do not care about sound. The correct term should be "most" people don't care about sound. Last year at the Vacuum Tube Valley Expo in NJ...the majority of the people I saw seemed to be between the ages of 20-40...which falls below the "boomer" cut off date that many people here seem to think drops you into the I-Pod listener catagory...in fact the people I know that are really into I-pods, Bose Wave radios, etc are over the age of 50.
Curiously- tho - Cambridge Soundworks
has closed all their retail storefronts
except for 2 in The Boston area
maybe they hope to survive on catalog and internet salesthe company was puchased a while ago by the Creative Ausio
(PC soundcard folks ) from its original owners
Hi, el 37:You wrote:
"Last year at the Vacuum Tube Valley Expo in NJ...the majority of the people I saw seemed to be between the ages of 20-40...which falls below the "boomer" cut off date that many people here seem to think drops you into the I-Pod listener catagory...in fact the people I know that are really into I-pods, Bose Wave radios, etc are over the age of 50."
Granted that most of this is true.
However, observing that those who attended Charlie K's "Vacuum Tube Valley Expo" in NJ, and fell into that age group, might possibly reflect the fact that those of us who are significantly older, already know much of this stuff backwards and forwards, since we were avid enthusiasts living during that very period.
To paraphrase the guy in "Treasure of the Sierra Madre":
"I don't gotta show you no stinkin' badges!" I got them already!
:-)
Just more good, bulky vintage gear for me. Whoopee.I don't mind listening to lo-fi sound if I'm on the patio grilling up a varmint or in my car where the engine & road noise drown out half of it anyway. But in the house, hi-fi is king.
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