How do we get more people excited about HiFi?

[Audiofire]

MP3 players and online file sharing botched the music industry, and probably hi-fi (computer speakers for example), to a certain extent. I believe that's why a flood of commercial trash took over by that time. Modern web stores have given independent musicians a new lease on life, but there is still a flood of commercial trash.

 

[mglobe]

Ll

Sorry, but I do not always agree with this specific comment of yours...

I do hope you will understand well how powerful excellent flexible reliable PC-based DSP and ASIO-routing as well as music-player software tools would be, after you kindly read through my latest system setup shared in my post here #931 on my project thread.

They are powerful but you’re not going to get people excited about HiFi by telling them to use a computer. Listening to HiFi needs to be no more difficult than watching a TV or toasting a piece of bread.

 

[Audiofire]

Listening to HoFi needs to be no more difficult than watching a TV or toasting a piece of bread.

There's a sucker born every minute (in keeping with the way people denigrate in this thread)
lulz

 

[Punter]

I remember when Napster hit cult status and everybody was downloading music. For many, the actual quality of the files was secondary to the content. I recall a friend of mine who worked in an open office where a bunch of people were working on authoring websites. I met him one day to have a beer after work and the first thing he said when he got out of the office was "If I have to listen to one more scratchy low-bitrate music file I'll go nuts!". For his colleagues, crappy low-res music played on nasty little plastic PC speakers was fine.... "It's Missy Higgins!"

I'd wager none of these people went home to an elaborate 2 channel HiFi and sat in the sweet spot listening to a fastidiously cleaned vinyl disc.

 

[Doodski]

I remember when Napster hit cult status and everybody was downloading music. For many, the actual quality of the files was secondary to the content. I recall a friend of mine who worked in an open office where a bunch of people were working on authoring websites. I met him one day to have a beer after work and the first thing he said when he got out of the office was "If I have to listen to one more scratchy low-bitrate music file I'll go nuts!". For his colleagues, crappy low-res music played on nasty little plastic PC speakers was fine.... "It's Missy Higgins!"

I'd wager none of these people went home to an elaborate 2 channel HiFi and sat in the sweet spot listening to a fastidiously cleaned vinyl disc.

That is a wonderful room. What are those big speakers in the background?

 

[Punter]

Don't know I just googled "audiophile HiFi rig" and this was in the images tab I agree it looks great. I'd love to hear it and have a dig at the owner if I spotted a magic mains cable !

 

[mglobe]

There's a sucker born every minute (in keeping with the way people denigrate in this thread)
lulz

Not sure what you mean by this, but my point was just that the majority of folks don't want to fiddle with computers. Turn on your system, select what you want to listen to, and hit play.

 

[10PSPMemSticksForMiku2007]

Most of my friends have decent headphones but their computer or TV speakers are very cheap. For people 30 years old and younger, they had to use earbuds during the time when they were growing up and getting into music. I'm glad that I grew up during the walkman/ipod wired headphones generation. Not many in the past or future will get to experience cuddling with their crush while listening to the same pair of earbuds together!
Also If much of your audio experience is online gaming, you need to use headphones for that. That's where the gamer money goes. In terms of practicality everything these days is pushing younger people towards headsets. This doesn't mean my generation doesn't care about sound quality. If someone is using a bluetooth speaker, it may not be because they don't care. It might be that they don't feel like wearing headphones in the kitchen while they cook. When you listen mostly on headphones, there is so much less to the hobby aspect. Barely anyone modifies headphones. All I've done to mine is replace the TRS connector. The hobby becomes music or games, not audio reproduction.
It seems normal to me that room-filling speaker systems are a niche interest. I'm sure my speakers are cheap compared to most of the members here, but I do have a 5.1 setup with bookshelves and towers in my computer room. Being a CHEAP system, it still cost an order of magnitude more than decent IEMs. IEMs are so good that they push the point of diminishing returns for audio to arguably less than the cost of a single bookshelf speaker. My friend asked me how much tripling the number of speakers increased my enjoyment of games. I told him maybe 3%.
If you really do want to get someone into hifi, I would suggest starting with parametric equalization. Even with headphones, this is a hobby aspcect that can really change or improve the sound of any system. It provides instant feedback but can be tinkered with endlessly. It's free and promotes general learning about audio which can be applied to any system.
Car audio is another great entry point. Adding a sub can be a great DIY project and lots of fun especially if you have friends to ride with you. A lot of younger people are driving older cars that do not have such great stereos. Many people including me in my previous job of 10 years spent most of their listening time in a vehicle at work, so car audio can become really worth it. Maybe it is sacrelige, but my favorite stereo I ever had was in the sealed off cab of a box truck. The cabin gain was immense and the stereo imaging was unbelievable.

 

[MattHooper]

I remember when Napster hit cult status and everybody was downloading music.

Back then, people were building hard drives, full of unbelievable amounts of music.

I had a friend who got hold of something like a 10 TB that had been traded around, each person adding all the music they had downloaded. There was like a bazzilion album and tracks on that drive.

He asked if I wanted to make a copy of it and I said no. The first reason was, I didn’t agree with the illegal downloading.

But another reason was it just didn’t sit well with me. There was something about having a drive full of vastly more music than I would ever be able to listen to, or curate, that just felt slightly obscene and wasteful. And also somehow diminishing somewhat of music.
It’s like you go to your favourite burger place and buy your favourite fries that you get once in a while, and someone shows up later in front of your house with a dump truck full of those fries saying “ Why not take all these?”

It is slightly different with streaming, but occasionally I get some of the same vibe.

 

[JeffS7444]

I think in the HiFi space many companies can't even create demand for a great product that many would really enjoy.

Maybe the real problem isn't a lack of awareness or accessibility of high-quality sound reproduction, but the inherent loneliness of being enveloped in a private head-fi cocoon.

 

[BobbyTimmons]

Literalist answer:

Because if the market grows, to some extent we should expect the variety of good gear to go up, and the cost to go down. This may benefit us personally even if we don't otherwise care about it.

It's not only influencing the market for music reproduction equipment. New music is getting more synthetic, young people are less interested in music as they have more distractions and the music reproduction equipment most people listen to on is more portable, multi-use and convenient, but has worse sound quality than in the past. These things feed into each other. Synthetic free music which is designed for laptop speakers is going to be different to music which was once sold on expensive LPs, which people spent a lot of their disposable income on and which they took home to listen to on a home hi-fi system. Changes in music reduce the need for hi-fi systems and the reduction in hi-fi systems changes the type of music people are listening to.

Most people listened with less distractions in the past, with more investment of time and money and on more specialized music reproduction equipment. The trend now is more towards multi-use technology like laptop speakers, phones or Amazon echos. Multi-use technology like laptops or phones are more distracting and encourage people to listen to different kinds of music than single-use technology, they might be listening to music more as a background accompliment to browsing social media.

 

[Blumlein 88]

It's not only influencing the market for music reproduction equipment. New music is getting more synthetic, young people are less interested in music as they have more distractions and the music reproduction equipment most people listen to is more portable, multi-use and convenient, but has worse sound quality than in the past. These things feed into each other. Synthetic free music which is designed for laptop speakers is going to be different to music which was once sold on expensive LPs, which people spent a lot of their disposable income on and which they took home to listen to on a home hi-fi system. Changes in music reduce the demand for hi-fi systems and the reduction in hi-fi systems changes the type of music people are interested in.

Most people listened with less distractions in the past, with more investment of time and money and on more specialized music reproduction equipment. The trend now is more towards multi-use technology like laptop speakers, phones or Amazon echos. The multi-use technology is more distracting and encourages different kinds of music.

A bit of revisionism here I think. Most young people in the 1960s or 1970s had little music systems with a ceramic cartridge multi play TT, and single driver speakers in boxes. Some didn't even have that. They still bought 45s and LPs and played them. So I don't know if today's little boxes are less good than that. Headphones in general are likely better even with some being so bad now.

Everyone imprints on the music when they grow into adulthood. Some find other genre's over time. I do agree there are more distractions now, but that is true in every sphere of life.

 

[Koeitje]

Here’s the sad truth. People old enough to have money can’t hear. People young enough to hear don’t have thousands of dollars. There’s maybe two percent that have both.

Sonos is better than the vast majority of pre-1990 speakers. I bet is also beats a ton of them after that. The average level of sound quality has gone up significantly when people moved away from the tiniest of tiniest surround speaker setups.

Plus many younger people only listen to headphones and in-ears. Modern mainstream offerings from JBL, Sony, Bose etc. are the best they have ever been. And its not even close.

 

[BobbyTimmons]

A bit of revisionism here I think. Most young people in the 1960s or 1970s had little music systems with a ceramic cartridge multi play TT, and single driver speakers in boxes. Some didn't even have that. They still bought 45s and LPs and played them. So I don't know if today's little boxes are less good than that. Headphones in general are likely better even with some being so bad now.

Everyone imprints on the music when they grow into adulthood. Some find other genre's over time. I do agree there are more distractions now, but that is true in every sphere of life.

Most young people listen on laptop speakers, iPad speakers and their phones, if they don't put on some headphones.

Phone speakers are probably worse than many 1930s systems. In the 1930s people would usually more attentively and with less distractions and noise pollution. 78 RPM records would need to be changed over every five minutes or thereabouts. But TikTok videos only last seconds and they one of the main ways young people consume music. There's also not the same financial investment in the music because it's become free and just something you click on. When you click on it, it's accompanied by video which is usually the main focus of attention.

 

[Galliardist]

Phone speakers are probably worse than many 1930s systems.

- 1931. There was a bit better around later in the decade.
Radio could be pretty good too. But all bandwidth limited. So maybe not.

 

[Cogito]

You need to make the gear affordable, easy to use and sound good. Easiest way to do that is via powered/wireless loudspeakers. Everybody has streaming gear (Smartphones) that can play high resolution tracks. No need for a spiderweb of cables and racks of expensive gear. Some great examples of these speakers can be had from the likes of Edifier, KEF, Q Sound, Swan, Audio Engine, Elac, Klipsch and more.

 

[Vacceo]

You need to make the gear affordable, easy to use and sound good. Easiest way to do that is via powered/wireless loudspeakers. Everybody has streaming gear (Smartphones) that can play high resolution tracks. No need for a spiderweb of cables and racks of expensive gear. Some great examples of these speakers can be had from the likes of Edifier, KEF, Q Sound, Swan, Audio Engine, Elac, Klipsch and more.

I agree with you.

After many years of not listening to much music, I gifted my mother with a pair of LS50 WII and a KC62.

It works as a soundbar for the TV and she spends every afternoon listening to music while reading. The speakers have worked like a charm and now she's super glad she is really getting a loooot better quality reproduction of her music and films.

That is why I honestly think this system should be expandable to multichannel and get a CD compatible with the phone app.

 

[dzerig]

The hobby is dead because you can buy transparent gear for $99, which will give you unlimited access to decades of music for $10 a month or so. There is no money in it anymore. Why would anyone pay $800 for top of the line dac when you can spend $200 and get within 1 db sinad? Never mind spending more. The best measuring amps are $1000 and very good ones are $100 or less. Polk speakers measure great for $200 - $600 pair, and will sound as good as anything you didn't design a room for.

There is no money in audio.

If the snake oil and lies were fully eliminated, that would go a long way toward building excitement. But, when people believe that they must spend thousands and thousands of dollars to obtain a high fidelity stereo system, some people just lose interest.

Actually it's the opposite. When a system is totl for $500 and can't be improved more than a db or two sinad, what's the point of spending more money?

Of course, most people spend more on their car audio system than they spend on their home audio system. People usually have good audio as an artifact of spending thousands on video systems. If I was going by measurements, my car system would cost more than a top of the line capable headphone/speaker system.

 

[Mean & Green]

I haven’t read through all of the replies, but I think being interested in high fidelity has always been a niche interest.

Decades ago people had stereos in the home, but most people plonked them wherever they could fit them without any thought about stereo imaging or accurate tonal balance, room nodes, peaks and nulls etc were completely unheard of. A stereo system was just a means to an end to be able to hear music. They are the people who have now adopted Bluetooth speakers and the like because it is more convenient.

Younger people today as well as some middle aged people struggle to get on the property ladder, never mind pursue luxuries like good hifi in a domestic living space.

Hifi in a living room isn’t easy, it takes up space and takes substantial effort to get the right results from it in terms of acoustics and placement that is also liveable. It takes what I consider a real enthusiast or audiophile to go to those lengths. Let’s face it a smart phone with a good pair of headphones will out perform poorly placed speakers in a far from ideal room.

Also I feel fortunate to live in a detached house. I dunno how any serious audiophile manages in a typical semi or apartment with a loudspeaker and/or subwoofer system.

 

[Mart68]

.

Also I feel fortunate to live in a detached house. I dunno how any serious audiophile manages in a typical semi or apartment with a loudspeaker and/or subwoofer system.

That's my neighbour's problem, not mine

(Seriously - I am respectful - never on in early morning or late night and rarely loud).

I moved in one place the landlord told me the old lady next door had complained incessently about the noise from the previous tenants.

Great.

So I was fairly cautious but I did let it rip a few times and nothing happened, no broomstick banging on the walls.

After a couple of months I was out front and the old lady appears. I said 'If the music ever bothers you just knock on the wall.'

'Music?' she says. 'I've never heard any music. The only reason I knew I had a new neighbour is I hear your front door closing shut.'

Went back in - right away hooked up a giant Yamaha sub