Question for the boomers: what was it like to live through major improvements in audio fidelity?

[Soniclife]

Streaming as the main source of new music was weird (still feels odd) ... how do people get into new stuff when they are not forced to buy one album and listen to it over and over again until it is driven into them - and until it is time to buy the next album days or weeks later!

I feel the same, it's so tempting when there is so much music you haven't heard out there to just bounce around and never listen you the same new thing twice. But a lot of my favourite albums required multiple listens before I got it, so I do try to listen multiple times, but it's impossible to know which ones need work.

 

[DSJR]

I was interested in music and the means of reproducing it right from toddlerhood in the late 50s. I grew up using one of these (my parents loaded the records up when I was too young to do this for myself) - I was fascinated by the auto record-size sensing, where the arm would lift high enough to 'touch' the edge of the record to be played (the US had the models made under the Magnavox label). Two way speakers and a proper transformer coupled 7W approx valve amp.

My proper HiFi obsession started with buying Hi Fi Sound magazine in 1967 (sadly, they were loft-storage damaged and were chucked out when my dad moved in 1999). My first 'HiFi' system was in the mid 70s (Lenco deck, sweet-toned Lustraphone LP100 amp and Audiomaster speakers) and it all went helter-skelter from there, most of which I've shared already

CD caused consternation in the UK HiFi fraternity, the 'classical/jazz music' Quad amp and Spendor lot embracing it with open arms and the Linn-Naim PA system owners hating it with a vengeance as it then sounded totally opposite to the usual Linn vinyl sources which at the time, had massive bass issues partly disguised by speakers with sahrill top and no deep bass! Thank heavens this has changed now...

I'd say today, the significantly lower priced excellent digital sources and now amps too, have made a superb sound quality complete system available to all for what in the 1980s was an add-on or upgrade price (I'm talking what was a midrange MC cartridge, add-on power supply for deck or amp or a swanky set of speaker stands (a German maker do some plain black painted wood stands with an add-on woven story/spell and sell 'em for a grand or more the pair).

Here's the Conquest changer in operation - fascinates me to this day...

 

[ta240]

This thing changed music playback for me. Having my entire music collection connected to my amplifier, where I could access it from any computer in the house or just a remote control was amazing.

I remember when I first got it in and everyone else was using an ipod in a docking station (usually with its own speakers) to listen to their music. The people I knew looked at me funny when I'd tell them about it and they'd usually go "why not just use an ipod". Now, 20 years later nobody would go "why not just plug something into your stereo when you want to listen and get up and walk across the room to change the song and not be able to see what is playing from across the room?"

 

[teched58]

For you younger folks, a decade before the CD there was an important development which I haven't seen in this thread.

1972 was the year that cassettes "grew up" and became what was considered at the time a high fidelity medium. 1972 was the year that the famous Advent Model 201 cassette deck with Dolby was introduced. (Many other Dolby decks, like from Sony and Pioneer, were also introduced that year.)

 

[elshaddai]

Gen X here - don't think I had my first CD player (a portable DiscMan) until college in the early 90's. Grew up playing a few things from my parents small vinyl collection and using my dual-tape boom box to record songs off the top-40 radio broadcasts and create mix tapes. Was still buying albums on tape through the 90s since that's what my beater car stereo had. Honestly, though, the biggest change was being able to rip all of my CDs to FLAC and play them on my computer.

 

[Soniclife]

My parents were in Hong Kong around 1979 when the Sony Soundabout--later known as the Walkman--came out. He bought one and brought it home for me and within seconds of putting down their bags he handed it to me and told me to listen to it. I was astounded by the quality of the headsets--I think they were among the first to use rare earth magnets. I thought at the time that if they ever brought this to the U.S., they would sell like crazy.....

I still have the player, but, unfortunately, the ground breaking headsets are gone.

The Walkman, or in my case a series of other rubbish till I got a lovely tiny Aiwa was a huge thing. Your own personal world of sound available anywhere just opened up music for me, swapping tapes with other kids at school, borrowing then from the library, and other types of borrowing just hooked me on music.

If only that had worked it would have saved me a fortune in physical media over the next few decades.

 

[DanielT]

Yes, the move from cassette tape to CD... was a game changer.

Also, the shift from basic sound chips like the C64’s SID or early PC beeps to the power of the Amiga’s Paula chip and later soundcards on PCs was revolutionary for home music creation. The proliferation of "tracker" software in the late 80's and early-to-mid 90's let hobbyists and musicians compose music using sampled sounds.


JSmith

Same here, CD = game changer.

But that's nothing against the enormous development of computers, software, the internet and...well everything that has to do with data/ computer development. One of humanity's greatest technical achievements ever. Even if the CD player was a great development then compared to computers so ...well.

Everything that has to do with computers such as:

Biggest improvement is active DSP use! Not that there weren't good made and behaving semi costume (PEQ alike) EQ's even in lamps time. For me lo fi casete time whose most fun (basement recordings and such). Digital audio got commercially superb with first higher grade Creative Audigy almost at the beginning of millennium (24 bit 103 dB SINAD on Platinum Pro). However DSP use whose hard path from useful user side along with FP rounding back to integer overflows that took time addressing. LP's had and still have warm feeling regarding my when it comes to cover art and promo.

If I look back on the last four decades, digital has had the greatest impact on audio/Hifi.Regarding CD. It was ten years ago that streaming took over. Plus the retro nostalgic boom for vinyl in recent years. Probably more since 2022 when these bars are from:

 

[sergeauckland]

As a 'boomer' indeed, I lived through some pretty amazing improvements in audio quality. 7" singles and AM radio was where I started, and the first massive improvement was stereo. The idea of being placed in front of an orchestra and identifying the position of the players was pretty revolutionary. The second major improvement I went through was FM radio, firstly in mono, then stereo. Having the finest (for the day) audio quality piped into my home for free was great. I remember when I first heard a BBC Prom live from the Albert Hall in stereo! That was a WOW moment.

At about this time I started recording stuff from the radio onto tape, but it was expensive, and at 15ips (I couldn't bring myself to record at slower speeds...) recording time was limited even with 10.5" reels. I thought Dolby B was a noticeable improvement, but it was Dolby C that made me give up R-R for cassette. Finally, recordings that were quiet enough to do credit to good FM and with a Nakamichi, a full-range frequency response and low enough distortion. The downside was that the machine had to be immaculately lined up for every recording, and that was a pain.

Finally, came CD which as I working for Philips at the time, I'd heard a prototype a few years before the public release, and it was everything I had imagined. It really was Pure Perfect Sound Forever. It was the pinnacle of home music reproduction, and it still hasn't been technically superseded as streaming is data compressed and most modern recordings are now also dynamic range compressed and limited, even clipped, by the mania for loudness.

Sadly, listening to music as a dedicated activity has been replaced by music 'on the go'! (hateful phrase) or as an adjunct to doing other things, as evidenced by the interest in IEMs and headphones generally.

S.

 

[Frank Dernie]

No real idea what boomer, gen x etc really means to people, it means nothing to me .

 

[wwenze]

And stereo FM with bad signal can be changed to mono FM with good signal. Technology is cool.

 

[DanielT]

Sadly, listening to music as a dedicated activity has been replaced by music 'on the go'! (hateful phrase) or as an adjunct to doing other things, as evidenced by the interest in IEMs and headphones generally.

S.

Wear and tear listening. A few minutes of music that is rented from a digital crane.

Listening patterns have changed but even the young people are rebelling against it with their craze for vinyl and listening to entire albums instead of individual songs.

But ok. That is an small industrialized world problem if it can even be considered a problem? If people can't discipline themselves or concentrate on listening to entire albums, the world won't fall apart.
Unfortunately, it can have the consequence that fewer artists invest in making complete good albums. In itself, the world isn't going to end because of it either, but I can still complain a little about that, right?

Speaking of solid, good albums. I watched a YouTube video yesterday. In that video it was listed groups with only perfect albums. At least four albums made was the requirement. Guess who won? Clue, their last album came out long before streaming became dominant. That album was released in 1983:

Spoiler

The Police

 

[JeffS7444]

Although I was around during the Summer of Love, and have memories as a child hearing "The Age of Aquarius" playing on my mom's AM radio, I didn't understand the significance of it, and had no basis for gauging sonic quality, nor any expectations that it should somehow sound lifelike. But by the mid and late 1970s, hifi was hot, and department stores routinely devoted space. Some stuff was seriously expensive, like big Marantz receivers. And the sound? Usually too loud, with too much bass and treble, because the salesman (and it was always men) had tone controls maxed.

Some of the sound heard from parties, cars and on the street (boom boxes) was awful by today's standards with heavy clipping. It was only in the 1980s that an Alpine rep gave me my first demo of high-end auto sound. Until that time, I had never heard so much clear and powerful bass, let alone in a car. And today, the sound from college frat/sorority parties may still be too loud, but it's not distorted! Probably a big JBL or Sony BT speaker there. Even the personal concerts from people living on the streets is worlds better than it once was.

You could still get crap sound in the 2010s from computers (I'm thinking Thinkpad X200) and Bluetooth speakers. I thought the latter class of product suddenly started to deliver flattish frequency response in a short period of time, like one generation of JBL or Sony speaker would have bumpy frequency response, but the next generation would measure a lot better. I guess I was pretty satisfied by the time JBL's 3rd generation Charge arrived, because I mostly stopped buying the things at that point. More recently, I bought a very inexpensive novelty BT speaker, and wouldn't you know it, even there the presence of DSP was evident, and though the response wasn't flat, someone had deliberately shaped it. And for a product sold as an impulse-buy item, I thought it was remarkable.

 

[Vacceo]

I'm not a boomer and I remember perfectly the casette to CD jump.

It meant being able to get very obscure stuff without the risk of vinyl braking on the envelope and forgetting about the noise of the casette.

 

[PierreV]

I was moonlighting as a DJ in a rock/psychedelic disco during my studies. A trip to the record shop every Friday at 5PM to get "new" releases, intense listening sessions up to 10PM, while checking for blown light bulbs in the lighting systems, to find usable material for the week-end. Technics turntables, Shure MK V, Cerwin-Vega speakers and McIntosh amplifiers...

I used part of the money I earned to jump on the first CD player I could find. I was so blown away by the CD that, for a (short) while, I was buying Japanese imports of music I did not like just to go "wow" on perceived quality. As far as the disco is concerned, it really took a long time before it used CDs. I remember going back there after my longish studies were completed and they were still on turntables.

 

[DSJR]

For you younger folks, a decade before the CD there was an important development which I haven't seen in this thread.

1972 was the year that cassettes "grew up" and became what was considered at the time a high fidelity medium. 1972 was the year that the famous Advent Model 201 cassette deck with Dolby was introduced. (Many other Dolby decks, like from Sony and Pioneer, were also introduced that year.)



View attachment 444776

I was given one of those (as in Neal 102) in sadly worn out condition and a noisy rumbly transport. In those days before the internet, spares were difficult to come by and of course decades later, these are now collectors items with replacement idlers and so on available.

 

[Robin L]

I started recording various Classical ensembles around 1988/89. My first recordings were via a Tascam 32, half-track, 1/4" tape, big (10 & 1/2") reels, recorded at 15 IPS. But very soon thereafter had access to a Sony 501es ADC and a Sony Betamax tape recorder. So, I was off and running making digital recordings, 16 bit, 48kHz. The difference between the two was stark. The digital relay pretty much sounded like the microphone feed. Later ADCs I used sounded completely like the microphone feed. The analog tape had audible tape hiss (didn't use noise reduction, didn't have it), reduced high frequency content and audibly compressed the signal at peak levels. This was the single biggest improvement I've heard in audio. Before I was recording music I had listened to CD players but felt that the digital playback somehow was lacking "something". After my experience recording using digital gear, I was disabused of that notion.

I think that once Redbook became the standard, there weren't any meaningful improvements in sound quality. My RCA Living Stereo SACDs sound just as good via their PCM layer as the DSD layer. The same is true of most of my SACDs. While digital formats have made surround sound practical, surround recordings of quality were made in the analog era. The greater improvements in audio as of late have much more to do with convenience than sound quality.

 

[RayKay]

I was born in 1951 and have been into audio since my teens.

As far as technological developments in my lifetime goes, I concur with the many other posts that digital audio, specifically the CD medium, was the ultimate breakthrough.

As far as my enjoyment of audio and my understanding of what I can and cannot hear, what spun my head around was my firsthand exposure to the concept and process of controlled double-blind listening tests. That fundamentally changed how I allocate my time and financial resources in selecting, purchasing, and in many cases, building my own hardware.

I have gradually shifted my focus to attending live concerts and have come to view my home audio system as a backup instead of a primary source of music.

Ray K

 

[Barrelhouse Solly]

Born 1946. I learned to operate my parents' Magnavox radio/phono console when I was 3. I loved watching the record changer. When I was a little older they gave me one of those RCA 45 players with a built in preamp and let me plug it into a modified table radio. I loved playing their LPs of musical comedy songs. When I was in high school I took apart a stereo record player and with the help of my grandfather put the turntable on a separate bass. It was my bedroom audio setup. I also bought a low end Grundig AM/FM radio. In 1965 I saved up my McDonald's earnings and bought some used mono components. Brociner power amp, Fisher tuner/preamp with a bunch of 78 record EQ settings as well as RIAA and variable loudness contour. I went stereo in 1970. The big thing I've noticed over the years is gear has gotten cheaper and better. My Brociner power amp had a great, for the time, 60 dB dynamic range. That mono setup including turntable and speaker cost me $300. The minimum wage in CA was $1.25 an hour. I have a desktop system with an Ayima A07 amp, S.M.S.L. SU-1 preamp and Pioneer sp-bs22a-lr speakers that cost me less than $200. I feed it from a Raspberry Pi 3B with a used JustBoom transport HAT that set me back another $55. It sounds a lot better than my living room system did in the '70s. It's true that there haven't been any huge design innovations in a long time. Things have been refined. One more thing: headphones have gotten a lot better than the Koss Pro-4A pair I bought in the '60s. I was thrilled by CDs. I had broken '78s and damaged vinyl quite a few times. The CD's sounded better too. Lossless audio files are even better. You need to do backups, but they can't be ruined by scratching them.

 

[Snarfie]

80ties from analog to digital major breakthrough 1. Basicly for the first time dead dead silence as it suposed to be with quality full digital recordings.
Recent Using since 6 years DSP room correction major break through 2. Without redecorating your room imaging staging to another level.

 

[Vacceo]

I also find it interesting how much our imagination patched up the graphics back in the day. I remember the games of the 90s as having really good graphics and I had no problem immersing myself in the stories, while in reality it looked like this.

View attachment 444748

Some of the mechanics were incredibly ingenious, such as in Loom.