Is this what is wrong with this hobby?

[restorer-john]

They still don't realise why the TV colour went bananas one day and ended up being replaced........ Unshielded speaker magnets....

I did the same exact thing!! Lucky I knew the local TV repairman and I rode my bike as fast as I could to his shop, borrowed his degaussing wand and followed his instructions on how to fix the (now) magnetised shadow mask. I rode home and fixed it before my Dad got home from work. He would have sat down to watch the 7pm news and had a fit if he'd have seen the green/blue colours in the corners! The TV was new then. (It's the same 26" I referred to above)

I think I was about 15yo.

 

[garbulky]

They have no choice. The speakers in flat screen TVs are SO bad that the entire world got fed up.

I think you've forgotten how good the sound was in many CRT TVs. My 85yo Dad still has the 2nd colour TV we bought in 1982 (26"). He keeps it because it still works perfectly and it sounds like a hifi system- and it's only mono! I've given him a couple of flatscreens (42" and a 32") and although he likes the picture, one has a pair of floor standing speakers and an amplifier to give sound that is good enough to comprehend what mumbling actors say on TV these days.

Around 2000, we sold a Panasonic 29" stereo CRT TV called 'The One'. It had sound so good, I used to demonstrate it with a CD player fed into the line inputs. It was phenomenally good.

Here, I found it on youtube!

I don't think people are listening to any more music than we did. We had quality FM broadcasting in the 70s/80s and 90s. Lots of stations broadcasting CD content for free. Now FM is a wasteland of lossy, compressed garbage.

As for headphones, the quality headphones in the 1980s made for Walkmans were better than much of the garbage being sold now. I listen to my boys overpriced cans and they are putrid compared to even an ancient pair of Sony MDR-70s I bought in ~1983. Way more efficient, comfortable and better sounding. Sure, the high end modern expensive cans are considerably better, but not the mass-market stuff- it's trash and always will be.

It's handy to have actual physical references from the 1980s to compare old to new...:

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I use these old Sonys for the computer. They are so comfortable I often forget I have them on my head- lucky they have about an 8ft cord.

I will give you that tv speakers are god awful no matter what. I recall the old tvs being MUCH louder but not necessarily better sounding. The headphones that I remember listening to were just so hopeless. Now granted these were cheap headphones but I did use my fair share all of which were so bad. But that's essentially what I'm looking at here - cheap headphones! Also during that time period I don't recall most people really taking the time to get better sound. They may have an all in one cheap aiwa stereo (that sounded awful with zero soundstage) or something like it.

I do remember one big difference that happened which was when DVDs came out. Suddenly people encountered dynamic range. But what that meant on their tvs was that the voices were terribly quiet and their wimpy tv speakers simply couldn't amplify the sound to where you could hear the voices. And then when things got loud, they couldn't really handle that either because those wimpy amps and speakers were already pushed to the max. At the time I didn't understand why DVD's would do such a thing. I didn't think that they were designed for capable receivers and home theater speakers.

 

[Sal1950]

And don't forget many have piercings. I think I understand the tattoos more than the piercings.

Yea me too. I worked with a few youths that were into that large stretched out earlobe thing, too weird for me.
They ran with a bunch that were all into this schitt and I watched over the years as they seemed to be in competition to see who could get the most extreme.
Heavily tattooed, multiple piercings, big holes in the earlobes and sides of nose, nipples and genitals.
I just don't get it but guess I'm the square here.

 

[andreasmaaan]

will give you that tv speakers are god awful no matter what. I recall the old tvs being MUCH louder but not necessarily better sounding.

This is a by-product if the fetish for all-glass fronts. Older generation TVs incorporated front-firing speakers on either side of the display, while the current generation relies on small rear-firing (usually 2-2.5” full range) drivers.

 

[DuxServit]

For all you naysayers, there has never been a better time for the layperson in audio. And let me finish ... the layperson is absolutely what matters for audio! Not us. If one can get the layperson interested in better audio that's where the win is. As in...the words "sound" HAS to enter their mind. Yes it's that primitive. That's where the win is. And right now it is FANTASTIC.

I very much agree with this. Today music is available almost everywhere and easily accessible to the layperson. Yes the quality of recordings and playback-equipment may have gone down (commoditized) but that’s due to demographic changes and due to the speed of new content being pushed through the various digital service providers (i.e streaming, YouTube, etc). In fact, one could argue that today too much content is being created every day, competing for the diminishing attention of the layperson.

 

[Shadrach]

For me, the 'hobby' isn't and wasn't about the purchasing of main stream audio equipment; I would describe that as consumerism.
Nor is it to do with the availibility and love of music. A good tune is a good tune no matter what you reproduce it on.
The 'hobby' was and still is for me, the understanding of the principles behind audio reproduction, the construction of the replay equipment and the possibility of building 'better' than one could buy at a given price range.
It's a bit like cars or motorbikes. The hobbyist is the guy, or girl, that builds a street rod, the consumer is the guy, or girl, that buys the latest BMW.
Sure, there is always a gray area.
It's what I see as the decline of the hobby into consumerism I suppose I'm lamenting, but this seems to be the way of many 'hobbies', or maybe I'm just stuck in an era with distorted memories of what it was like.

 

[SiW]

Some of the best of the "good ole days" were the times when Nelson Pass was still depending on income from designing for outside firms like the amps for Adcom. Classic times.

His Soundstream car amps are still regarded as some of the best ever made.

 

[JJB70]

I really don't see the commoditisation of music sources and DACs as a bad thing. At one time good hifi sources could be pretty expensive, nowadays any tablet, smart phone or computer is a hifi source. And you no longer need a separate amplifier as active speakers are increasingly the norm. Good sound has never been more accessible or low cost, I think that is a good thing. Although it has also meant that parts of the high end of the hobby and some of the magazines have become ever more divorced from reality and are resorting to ever less convincing arguments.

 

[Frank Dernie]

Depends on which ones. I'm using some Bluetooth speakers at the moment that do a remarkable job, especially when a (consumer grade) subwoofer is added.

And I would aver that Quad ESL57 or Rogers LS3/5A from the "golden age" would also "never be able to reproduce the sound of a symphony orchestra or a rock band."

I think the big change in proper Hi-Fi has been the power of amplifiers and power handling/maximum loudness of speakers.
These speakers and the Spendor BC1, which was a landmark low colour action speaker here were pathetic when it came to going loud with contemporary amplifiers. The Spendor coped with 15 watts and sounded great on quiet speech and string quartet. Piano was hopeless at anything like real life volume and rock music or symphonies? Pitiful IME

 

[Frank Dernie]

My top share tip, buy shares in laser treatment tattoo removal specialists and wait.

Yup. When I was a young fashion victim a tie-dyed string vest with flared velvet hipster trousers were in fashion, when they ceased to be I could take them off and throw them away.

 

[SIY]

Another I've heard more than once is "my tattoos remind me of who I am". Okay.

My aunt Goldie had some numbers tattooed on her arm. They definitely reminded her of who she was.

 

[Sal1950]

I think the big change in proper Hi-Fi has been the power of amplifiers and power handling/maximum loudness of speakers.
These speakers and the Spendor BC1, which was a landmark low colour action speaker here were pathetic when it came to going loud with contemporary amplifiers. The Spendor coped with 15 watts and sounded great on quiet speech and string quartet. Piano was hopeless at anything like real life volume and rock music or symphonies? Pitiful IME

I vividly remember the times and listening to these speaker types at dealers and shows, then going home and turning on my Klipsch La Scala's and thinking "this is progress in the SOTA?, can't they hear how much they have sacrificed for a little lower coloration?" For 30+ years those speakers remained in my system as I never heard anything new, that I could afford, that made me want to replace them. If they would have fit in my new retirement digs I'd probably still have them.
YMMV

 

[Sal1950]

My aunt Goldie had some numbers tattooed on her arm. They definitely reminded her of who she was.

Horrible. We should never forget!

 

[Kal Rubinson]

In any case the multich music market never took off in any big way and the any hope for a revitalized high fidelity market died with it..

Amen.

 

[Killingbeans]

Are you talking about the push for 'Quadraphonic' sound in the 70's, or have the industry tried to recycle that "great" idea again in recent times?

 

[restorer-john]

@restorer-john what was the standard for stereo TV in Australia prior to DVB?

Here you go:

 

[Hypnotoad]

Back in the late 70's my (ex) brother-in-law purchased a B&O music system with the 4004 tangential turntable, a slick system that sounded great, he paid $3,000.00 for it. I was flabbergasted at the price of it, it sounded really nice but the cost?

I was at a little HiFi botique store a little while later and the owner a really nice man was showing me his newly imported Janszen electrostatic speakers, Z-30 & Z-40's, he had the Z-30's connected up to a nice looking Yamaha YP-D8 turntable with the newly released Denon DL-103S, the new elliptical stylus model, in the middle was a Yamaha A1 amp. He said the whole thing could be had for just under 3k.

The sound of this system was glorious the detail, soundstage, and clarity like nothing I had heard before, it would blow the B&O system out of the room, my (ex) brother-in-law loved his though and would rave on about the merits of the tangential tracking of the turntable.

So each to his own, he was happy with it and he had even said at times he had heard others systems that sounded better than his for less, but "they" didn't have the B&O name. If I had that money to spend I would have bought the latter system.

 

[jsrtheta]

Yea me too. I worked with a few youths that were into that large stretched out earlobe thing, too weird for me.
They ran with a bunch that were all into this schitt and I watched over the years as they seemed to be in competition to see who could get the most extreme.
Heavily tattooed, multiple piercings, big holes in the earlobes and sides of nose, nipples and genitals.
I just don't get it but guess I'm the square here.

Which is why I counsel the young to go into plastic surgery. All of this personal, permanent self-customization will pass, and the market for plastic surgeons will skyrocket.

Of course, the surgeons will invest their profits in ludicrously expensive audio gear, but you can't have everything.

 

[Kal Rubinson]

Are you talking about the push for 'Quadraphonic' sound in the 70's, or have the industry tried to recycle that "great" idea again in recent times?

No. I was referring to discrete lossless multichannel as offered on SACD, DVD-A, BluRay-Audio and downloaded files.

 

[M00ndancer]

What we need is good music, well made recordings and good reproduction of it.

This is the real problem, properly mastered recordings. Live or digitally made doesn't matter. 24/96 is for studio use 16/44.1 is for consumer use. But I'm old and can't hear above 14k. But I can hear a crappy recording/master.