Well, it seems the community has found a way to take the thread and repurpose it. No offense OP, you meant well. We also have to realize that how people consume music is very different, and has been for quite sometime. Space is often limited for younger working adults, and they may move more frequently making big audio equipment out of step with their needs. As people have noted, this is likely cyclical, at least in terms of how younger people perceive their audio needs as being.
I ran an electronics recycling depot and I intercepted many great pieces of gear. One older woman was downsizing and she brought in a perfect pair of Celestion speakers and a mid-level, but completely competent Yamaha receiver. I asked if she was fine with me diverting them from the program to keep them in use (which is of course better than recycling as reusing should come first) and she was delighted that I would be able to reuse them. I personally had no need for them, but I decided to use them as a portable house party music system. This is where I will tie the story into the theme that has been getting developed here.
One of the staff members where I worked at that time was a younger woman, absolutely, devastatingly beautiful, body that would stop traffic, but to boot she didn't seem to know it and was very sweet. I was too old to even think about it seriously, but the staff there liked to party and she had just bought a new house and was having a little gathering. Me being me I asked if she had a stereo to play music on and she said no that she just used her laptop (in my experience many young adults did this then, about 2015). Of course inside I wept for the state of home audio in this exquisite creatures life and offered to bring over the Yamaha and Celestion speakers along with a little Schiit DAC I had on hand and use my laptop to provide music. She accepted of course, we actually got along well and I remember being a little unsure if she was attracted to me as we talked al the time, but I digress. This is where the story joins the conversation above.
At the party while all the young lovely people were arriving I was hooking up the stereo they were watching me with fascination. It was a cold snowy Ontario winter night and that is the best time for a house party! Anyway, they are watching me and I am not sure why when one nice young dude walks up and tells me how cool it was to see me hooking up speakers as he had never seen it done before! Seriously, he was in his late 20's early 30's and he had never seen this before? He didn't even know why I needed a DAC as he just used his phone, laptop or single Bluetooth speaker for listening to YouTube or Spotify. Hard to believe, by that age I had probably owned several systems and screwed around with plenty of gear.
Needless to say things got cooking when I had the tunes pumping through as the evening progressed with plenty of alcohol and lots of pot, I mean these are young Canadian adults, they like to drink and smoke when they are out having fun. A makeshift dance floor happened and I didn't mind when after a while people came and browsed YouTube for music. I knew some pretty solid contemporary stuff as I wasn't out of touch and I also played some pretty great party tunes, but it was awesome when they kept playing stuff that I didn't really know. Man was it fun bumping away on the dance floor with those young beautiful women, all facilitated by some good old 80's audio gear that was supposed to be downsized for newer lifestyle products. Not that I'm against lifestyle gear as it does fill a genuine need, it was just gratifying to see that no matter, audio gear that can pump out some nice sounding SPL will always have a place on a snowy Ontario night. I miss those days, damn pandemic.
