The future…what is the landscape in 10 years?

[Waxx]

If you think about it. the only really hard thing left in speaker design is squeezing out bass from small drivers.

Then you will have to focus on a way to move air in a different way, because with conical membranes you run into iron laws of physics. A small speaker cone can only move a limited ammount of air. There is no replacement for displacement they say...

 

[Mort]

I, for one, will welcome our new AI overlords!

 

[kemmler3D]

I have slowly started to question my own interest in audio and wonder if the ordinary bluetooth box buyers are actually right. Ordinary people do not usually become audiophiles after someone demoes ”good (according to us) sound” to them. They may say ”wow, good bass, I can hear everything so clearly” and then go on with their lives. They hear the difference, sure - the same difference we do - but they do not find it important enough to care.

Let’s mark a theoretically perfect system with 100. A truly high end stereo reaches 25. A mediocre consumer store home stereo reaches perhaps 21. Ordinary consumers realize this. Why would they put the time, money and effort to reach utterly marginal gains?

Ironically I think average people actually respond most strongly to the most expensive things in audio: Clean, clear, (read: low distortion) balanced (read: reasonably flat FR) sound at high SPL, and low, loud bass. If you ask regular people what they look for in audio equipment, that's basically what they tell you.

Where I agree with you is that ordinary consumers do not see an ASR-approved 2.1 system as the best way to achieve what they're looking for. Portability is often a core requirement these days. But more importantly I think the value proposition of a $2000 2.1 system vs. a $300 BT speaker is not clear to most people. Especially when the $300 BT speaker goes just as loud with plenty of bass.

Average people will immediately hear the 2.1 system is better in a side-by-side, but in terms of clarity, volume and bass, $2000 is way past the point of diminishing returns for them. The $300 party speaker is already an 80/100 for that listener. The 2.1 system is an 83/100 because there is lower bass but it's not much louder, and the clarity is great but not worth an extra $1700.

 

[pablolie]

Then you will have to focus on a way to move air in a different way ...

That's why I mentioned soundbars before. They have come a *very* long way. I used to think them utter garbage, but I have been quite impressed with some recent ones (but they're not cheap), clearly a large number of smaller drivers with a lot of DSP thrown in can do pretty cool things, and due to the self-contained nature they're quite room friendly, it seems.

We will probably see our "traditional" audio systems integrate more of this "trickery".

That said, I don't want a total black box to be my audio system, I always want some visibility into the whats/whys/hows. Perhaps that makes me "old", my tendency to not simply trust a black box to be perfect and completely self-configuring.

 

[Waxx]

That's why I mentioned soundbars before. They have come a *very* long way. I used to think them utter garbage, but I have been quite impressed with some recent ones (but they're not cheap), clearly a large number of smaller drivers with a lot of DSP thrown in can do pretty cool things, and due to the self-contained nature they're quite room friendly, it seems.

We will probably see our "traditional" audio systems integrate more of this "trickery".

That said, I don't want a total black box to be my audio system, I always want some visibility into the whats/whys/hows. Perhaps that makes me "old", my tendency to not simply trust a black box to be perfect and completely self-configuring.

I would not say that soundbars give good bass. Those small drivers forced with dsp include a lot of distortion because they are pushing those laws of physic to the limit. No dsp can fix that. I'm really talking about new ways to move air, not with cone drivers. As long as those are the way, we run into hoffman's iron law.

 

[Mike123]

I don't see any acoustic music lovers around. Smartphones have killed photography. Smartphones are killing acoustic music. There will be some kind of smartphone and Bluetooth headphones analogs .

 

[Mort]

Government (FCC) auctions off all OTA TV frequencies; then, FCC --itself-- gets duly dissolved.

Nah they are going to be managing drone warfare frequencies.

 

[Petrushka]

Maybe not in ten years, but there will be cures for hearing loss.

 

[geol]

My anxieties about the future don't really concern audio-video-computing. But anyway...

 

[wadude]

Google glasses for visuals/i.e.m. for audio. WAF eliminated.

 

[pablolie]

Google glasses for visuals/i.e.m. for audio. WAF eliminated.

I HATED wearing IEMs around my GF... she made me take them off constantly. It was a source of tension, the fact she thought her urge to immediately communicate every random thought was far more important than letting me relax and chill listening to music and reading, which is how I renew myself...

 

[xanalog]

Google glasses for visuals/i.e.m. for audio. WAF eliminated.

In 10 years from now, I predict this argument:

I HATED wearing IEMs around my GF... she made me take them off constantly. It was a source of tension, the fact she thought her urge to immediately communicate every random thought was far more important than letting me relax and chill listening to music and reading, which is how I renew myself...

"IEMs" will be replaced with "Google glasses" and "WAF" will become WTF is a W?

 

[wadude]

23rd letter of the alphabet?