And Revel. Looks like a decent place.
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Is the Hi-Fi industry inherently not adapted to the 21st century (serious discussion)?
- Thread starter AMPaul
- Start date
And Revel. Looks like a decent place.
“Millennials were the largest generation group in the U.S. in 2019, with an estimated population of 72.1 million. Born between 1981 and 1996, Millennials recently surpassed Baby Boomers as the biggest group, and they will continue to be a major part of the population for many years.”
I read the same thing in audio magazines 30 years ago when I was just getting into audio. But, look at the vinyl explosion of the past decade powered mostly by Millennials. The Music Direct catalog I got this past fall was the largest I’d seen in many years; I have a couple I keep on the shelf for nostalgia. It was chock-full of new turntables, vinyl records and vinyl gear. I think we will continue to have young people who can appreciate quality music on quality gear, but the formats will change as will the reproduction gear.
We will not likely return to the vinyl-centric heyday of the late 1970’s but I’d argue that music is more ubiquitous and more accessible now than it ever has been. The “real dollar” price points for high quality reproduction gear have plummeted in the past 20 years with the rise of Chinese manufacturing.
The youngest millennial would be 25.
I have corrected my original remarks. (Absolute numbers are still rising in the US as a whole, but the percentage is down drastically.)
It's pronounced, and obvious in both public and private schools in my region.
https://nces.ed.gov/blogs/nces/post...nt-decreased-3-percent-in-2020-21-school-year
https://apnews.com/article/religion...rus-pandemic-627786fc8a69f74bbabbdc2760da003b
This decline is not offset by Charter schools - there are no reliable figures regarding online enrollment, under age 18.
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cgb
Perhaps the picture is rosier, after high school?
*nope*
The percentage of 18-29 year olds living with a parent is the highest since the Great Depression.
That's the target market for audio gear - the first apartment rig.
https://www.economicmodeling.com/2021/05/25/the-decline-of-young-people-in-america/
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-ta...or-the-first-time-since-the-great-depression/
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I have been amazed by the growth in high-end headphones versus loudspeakers; the rise of Beats should have foreshadowed this for me. I grew up in the loudspeaker era and consequently made little investment in headphones.
The first apartment rig seems more likely to be headphone-centric than mine was. My first pair of apartment speakers were the large tower Boston Acoustics T1030's powered by a Proton A1150 amp. Hardly a Topping A30!
That Proton Amp was a gem - loads of headroom, dual mono.
I got started with tubes because I couldn't afford high dolla gear like yours.
Back in the day, it was Stax electrets for mine. I couldn't stretch to the electrostatic, and the required power supply.
This proves (once again) that I'm out of touch - I thought Airpods were trash.
https://wccftech.com/apple-airpods-separate-company-32nd-largest-company-us/
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The Proton AA1150 cost me $250 in 1990, which is about $520 in 2021 dollars. A Schiit Vidar amp goes for about $700 today, as an entry-level contemporary. For budding audiophiles today, there are a reasonable number of good, low-cost options, as there were also in 1990.
What I think has changed are listening habits. My kids immediately don headphones when I fire up my audio system. The ability to be mobile with higher fidelity than a cassette tape and wider music access than an iPod has changed how young audiophiles would think about a “music collection” or how to share music.
IronPyrite
Member
Point #1
We have amazing amounts of internet and streaming bandwidth, yet the industry refuses to use even the full bit depth of Redbook CD format from the 1980's.
People going back to vinyl wasn't out of a desire to regress back to some inconvenient form of media (although its a form of nostalgia for some), it was a backlash against the "loudness wars" of music producers pegging dynamic range to the loud end of the scale (vinyl can give you ~20 bits if used to its fullest). An MP3 created from a CD pressed pre-1992 (before the "loudness wars" when into full swing), will sound better IMO than a 96Khz/24bit modern remaster.
Point #2
So we have a new generation of music consumers, who understand on some level that the sound of their music doesn't sound as good as they remember growing up while listening to music on their parent's audio systems. Other reasons include music that's overproduced because technology allows for it ("perfect track placement, levels, autotune" vs. "a live human sound"). Also, streaming companies often starve bit-rates to save money on server infrastructure.
A degradation of sound quality caused by mis-application of technology and other factors above, combined by consumer ignorance, have allowed companies like MQA to spring up. "Your streaming music sounds like garbage, you say? Well, we're here to save you by using lossy compression and reconstituting information on the frequency spectrum; i.e. by reconstituting music from LESS information than we started with through best-guesses and interpolation, which...totally doesn't result in added distortion and artifacts. Nope. Honest. Just buy into our hype. Demand MQA and force everyone to pay more for DACs." So Tidal is both devil and savior in this case. Stream music to customers at bit rates lower than lossless formats -> customer realize it doesn't sound as good as listening to lossless -> convince customers that MQA will fix this this, just like they see on TV when CSI upsamples a 10x10 pixel image to something you could print and display in an art gallery.
We have amazing amounts of internet and streaming bandwidth, yet the industry refuses to use even the full bit depth of Redbook CD format from the 1980's.
People going back to vinyl wasn't out of a desire to regress back to some inconvenient form of media (although its a form of nostalgia for some), it was a backlash against the "loudness wars" of music producers pegging dynamic range to the loud end of the scale (vinyl can give you ~20 bits if used to its fullest). An MP3 created from a CD pressed pre-1992 (before the "loudness wars" when into full swing), will sound better IMO than a 96Khz/24bit modern remaster.
Point #2
So we have a new generation of music consumers, who understand on some level that the sound of their music doesn't sound as good as they remember growing up while listening to music on their parent's audio systems. Other reasons include music that's overproduced because technology allows for it ("perfect track placement, levels, autotune" vs. "a live human sound"). Also, streaming companies often starve bit-rates to save money on server infrastructure.
A degradation of sound quality caused by mis-application of technology and other factors above, combined by consumer ignorance, have allowed companies like MQA to spring up. "Your streaming music sounds like garbage, you say? Well, we're here to save you by using lossy compression and reconstituting information on the frequency spectrum; i.e. by reconstituting music from LESS information than we started with through best-guesses and interpolation, which...totally doesn't result in added distortion and artifacts. Nope. Honest. Just buy into our hype. Demand MQA and force everyone to pay more for DACs." So Tidal is both devil and savior in this case. Stream music to customers at bit rates lower than lossless formats -> customer realize it doesn't sound as good as listening to lossless -> convince customers that MQA will fix this this, just like they see on TV when CSI upsamples a 10x10 pixel image to something you could print and display in an art gallery.
Let’s not forget that the vast majority of audio systems have always sounded like Schiit. My first LP playback system was an Emerson “all-in-one” system with a built-in cassette deck, radio and “detachable” speakers. It was ok for a broke high-school student, but I knew many adults who never progressed much beyond that. Many of those who did were interested in a big “hi-fi” more as a status symbol than due to a genuine interest in musical fidelity.
Today, Crosley likely outsells Rega and Pro-ject combined at least 10 units to 1. There will always be a top tier of listeners who will strive for more and better, but the vast majority will be satisfied with something that makes recognizable noise.
Oh, by the way, don’t overlook that your “20 bit” vinyl is actual limited to a SNR of no more than 70 dB.
What I truly believe is that the first thing we should point out is the failure of the popularization of science, which includes hi-fi or whatever it's called. Both Amirm and Sean Olive (among other people obviously) seem to agree, hence the reason why ASR has now a Youtube channel.
I know it's easier to make clickbait thumbnails, to take the money a manufacturer gives you to say what they want you to say, or to say something without any scientific proof, rather than educating people who don't even know they need to be educated, but the truth is that the audiophile world has failed so far.
I don't know what should be done, but just like most scientific domains incompetent people are more vocal.
I know it's easier to make clickbait thumbnails, to take the money a manufacturer gives you to say what they want you to say, or to say something without any scientific proof, rather than educating people who don't even know they need to be educated, but the truth is that the audiophile world has failed so far.
I don't know what should be done, but just like most scientific domains incompetent people are more vocal.
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IronPyrite
Member
Agreed, prior to ASR, manufacturers would incrementally upgrade over time (if at all), and you'd have to audition them all to know which had better characteristics. Enter ASR on the scene, and now manufacturers are in a competition to reduce noise and distortion (and hopefully flatten frequency response) to the betterment of the consumer. Other subjective criteria still apply, but the impacts of ASR have been a huge step in the right direction.
I’m old enough to remember Stereo Review and Audio magazines before they went out of circulation. Julian Hirsch, like Amir, was a by-the-numbers, no-BS reviewer who was also reviled by the subjectivist audio community.
I would go to the library to consume piles of back issues from those magazines, armed with dimes to feed the photocopiers, making selected reproductions for future reference. Guys like Hirsch, DB Keele Jr. and Bascom King (in Audio magazine), were some of my first audio review heroes. They were all engineers.
The passing of that guard, the decline in print publications and the rise of social media left a void that Amir is admirably attempting to fill. The subjective community had grown online while the objective community had dwindled. I’m glad to see Amir is helping to spark a new interest in the real science and engineering behind the gear we enjoy so much, with no BS.
I would go to the library to consume piles of back issues from those magazines, armed with dimes to feed the photocopiers, making selected reproductions for future reference. Guys like Hirsch, DB Keele Jr. and Bascom King (in Audio magazine), were some of my first audio review heroes. They were all engineers.
The passing of that guard, the decline in print publications and the rise of social media left a void that Amir is admirably attempting to fill. The subjective community had grown online while the objective community had dwindled. I’m glad to see Amir is helping to spark a new interest in the real science and engineering behind the gear we enjoy so much, with no BS.
tuga
Major Contributor
Covid and shortages are only a tip of the iceberg. The real issue is the impact that human activity and consumerism has had on the planet.
Worrying about stock depletion of non-essential goods such as hi-fi gear is a ludicrous first-world problem...
Worrying about stock depletion of non-essential goods such as hi-fi gear is a ludicrous first-world problem...
Isn’t this whole site dedicated to “first world problems”? Certainly this thread is, but I find no qualm with that.
I wish I ha been there to buy that. From 2001-2018 I lived either on one of the following: Indian Ocean Archipelago's (below the equator), Islands in the Western Pacific (above the equator) or on board various ships. In not one of those places could I get a consistent enough signal to stream or download. Since I have been back to CONUS (Continental United States) I have yet to stream. Unless it is something that I have downloaded, all my media is physical. And if I have downloaded it (paid to own a copy of it or it is in the free domain) and it is music, video or both, then it has been recorded onto a CD/DVD/Blu-ray. Even here, I have a place on a river in the woods that streaming/downloading is not an option. So, yes, I am behind the times but I will have my music & video available to me. And I mostly purchase physical media. CD's, DVD's, Blu-ray, 4K. The spaces in the places I own where designed for LP's. Since the silver discs are smaller, there is still plenty of space (and I have no intention of getting a smaller place for many years, maybe by then I won't be able to hear anyway.
IronPyrite
Member
How I miss going to a music store, standing in front of racks of CDs, split out by genre, and alphabetized by artist. End caps of new releases, the smell of plastic gel cases permeating the air of the store. Reading the CD inserts. Overhearing the staff talking about their favorite picks with customers; even if it wasn't my favorite genre, you were sharing your joy of music with others.
I still purchase physical CDs, and then rip them with a USB reader and EAC. I don't have room for walls of CDs, so I store the CDs in a binder, save the inserts, and toss the gel cases, with the hope that I may one day have the room to re-constitute the CDs back to their retail display form.
I also buy CDs and then rip them. I use FLAC but in all honesty am playing a psycho-acoustic trick as I am just as happy with 320 MP3.
Did you know that there are starving kids, going hungry tonight?
I do, and I was still hungry at lunch.
Scolding us about our good fortune is akin to farting in an elevator.
