sqlsavior
Lunatic Member
Cardboard box? You were lucky!My first "system" of my own was a SOUNDESIGN and a BSR turntable. I could only dream of having Panasonic Thrusters back then.
High Fidelity: Decades of Decline
- Thread starter Lossless
- Start date
a_retent
In memory of Trixie woo-woo
My first "system" of my own was a SOUNDESIGN and a BSR turntable. I could only dream of having Panasonic Thrusters back then.
Me too. AM/FM, 8-track, BSR changer with removable auto-spindle and ceramic stylus. And 8" air-suspension speakers with cheezy horn tweets.
Geez I used to piss my Dad off with that thing, it got so bad once he came downstairs and clipped the speaker wires with his pocket knife...lesson learned that day.
ev13wt
Super Member
Or possibly the stupidity of people has increased, and they have more disposable income.
New is "always" better, as is more megapixels or more cameras in smartphones. More is always better as well.
Or you could say: hifi peaked in the whatevers, but marketing departments figured out that flat tonal response (hifi frequency response) is what nobody wants to listen to. 90% of music consumers really want that fun sound.
Now with the coming of the bluetooth headphones, the OEM has complete control over the DSP and the amp. It sounds like it sounds, you cannot use a different amp. Think about it.
I really feel that in some ways we as humans are evolving forward - but many things evolve backwards. Or get forgotten. Kinda strange, really.
ev13wt
Super Member
The people saying "old music" need better systems is pretty much correct. A real instrument needs to sound like a real instrument, any synthesised instrument or sound is already a sound that is not "real". So in reproduction, electronic music is (mostly) easier to play back - mostly because nobody knows how the original sound sounded like.
Electronic stuff, no matter how complex, alsways tends to sound clean - when the same system is breaking apart with a multi instrument cresendo at the same volume.
Many people will call my setup boring - no bass, no highs. Until they listen to three or four songs. If the desired effect is still missing, I turn up the bass and the highs. Then it sounds like what they are used to.
I have had kids (friends, brothers kid) telling me to turn it off, it sounded like **** no matter what I did. Then I -12dB everything from 1000 down. Suddenly they like it and said: "No it sounds correct like it is supposed to." Kid only ever listened to music from his smartphone and sometimes apple ear buds.
Electronic stuff, no matter how complex, alsways tends to sound clean - when the same system is breaking apart with a multi instrument cresendo at the same volume.
Many people will call my setup boring - no bass, no highs. Until they listen to three or four songs. If the desired effect is still missing, I turn up the bass and the highs. Then it sounds like what they are used to.
I have had kids (friends, brothers kid) telling me to turn it off, it sounded like **** no matter what I did. Then I -12dB everything from 1000 down. Suddenly they like it and said: "No it sounds correct like it is supposed to." Kid only ever listened to music from his smartphone and sometimes apple ear buds.
thirsty93
Just a bunch of Nht stuff
i think that the general public is oblivious to what music is supposed to sound like.like when you go to a concert and the bands sound is horrible and everyone cheers.Ive seen it a thousand times when people go into Best Buy and drop good coin on speakers and a reciever and never even heard them before.Most people think there system sounds really good till they hear a audiophile system.With home theater as long as it booms it's good.whats funny is when they hear the difference and there face lights up.i always tell them you have to do your reserch and put together the right parts,including interconnects and speaker wire.
ev13wt
Super Member
Agreed. I would go on to replace the sentence: "Most people think there system sounds really good till they hear a audiophile system" with "Most people think there system sounds really good till they hear an actual good system"
Because I've heard many a "high end audiophile" setup that really sounded bad. Mostly because of the rooms, but some are just ... terribly "revealing" and you cannot EQ it out.
Many people these days expect a "fun" sound - lots of bass, lots of highs.
Many people like the newfangled "analytical" sound - it's basically just lots of treble (highs)
Then there are the bass lovers, as long as it's thumpin - everything is a ok!
Depending on who they what to sell to, the OEMs will tune their product to fit.
Basshead / young: young people, lotsa bass (no highs so they don't kill their hearing in 16 hours?
)Analytical: old people with deaf ears - giving them back that feeling of hearing all the high frequencies (so it's very trebly, no mids or bass - sometime just "no bass".)
Consumer: bit more bass, bit more highs
Studio: actual frequency response around +-2/3dB and it says so on the box in combination with the frequencies involved (As a reference to the "flatness of frequency response")
Studio consumer products: (bit more bass, bit more highs) Basically expensive versions of the normal consumer stuff
Putterman
Super Member
I was rather surprised that they didn't deal with loudness compression, i.e. reducing the dynamic range of recorded music. It strikes me that this might have hit too close to home for many of the producers and to a lesser degree musicians.
This is also part of the MP3 legacy in that earbuds are less suited to listening to a full dynamic range. I mean this in the sense that when you're jogging you won't hear that car coming at you or that the ambient noise outside makes quieter passage inaudible.
This is also part of the MP3 legacy in that earbuds are less suited to listening to a full dynamic range. I mean this in the sense that when you're jogging you won't hear that car coming at you or that the ambient noise outside makes quieter passage inaudible.
darkblue94
The Devil made me do it.
There, Their, They're 
It’s the same process that has symphony orchestras scrounging for survival, and “support live music; hire live musicians” bumper stickers now going on 40 years old but still being relevant.
And the hobby we live has been a big contributor to the problem. It made it easy to turn passive music enjoyment into a living room exercise. It’s not a big step from there to (surprisingly passive) music production being a living room (or office desk) exercise. It once was that musical people were active participants at home, being expected to be at least somewhat musical as a matter of being educated. Now, “active” musical involvement means earbuds while working out, or watching movies that happen to have musical soundtracks.
Jazz and classical have remained true to real-life performance as the reference for realistic sound, but most people just can’t be bothered to experience it. 70+ years ago, the high-school prom or the Saturday date to the dance room was accompanied by a 17-piece swing orchestra. 50 years ago, it was a 5-piece rock band. 30 years ago, it was a DJ playing recordings of recorded musicians. The DJ’s then became performers, and the orchestras became digitized. Autotune and digitized sounds have made it possible to create music where the only skilled musician is the back-office production technician. The connection to live musical performance has been broken, or at least severely undermined.
Real orchestral music is still being composed and performed as movie soundtracks, but only high-budget movies actually hire an orchestra versus a MIDI keyboardist.
Without musicians, what’s the point of high fidelity? What are we wanting to be true to?
High fidelity is in part its own enemy. It has made it possible to appreciate world-class performance at home, but at the expense of the incentive to hear it live. Eventually, people forget what it sounds like and their tastes are no longer informed by the live experience.
Anecdotal example: We held a concert with our ensemble splitting the program with the Canadian Brass. In the county with the highest median income in the USA, we could not fill a 1000-seat auditorium with the world’s foremost brass quintet. Reason? Live music is no longer part of the culture.
Rick “appreciation for hi fi depends on the experience of quality live music” Denney
And the hobby we live has been a big contributor to the problem. It made it easy to turn passive music enjoyment into a living room exercise. It’s not a big step from there to (surprisingly passive) music production being a living room (or office desk) exercise. It once was that musical people were active participants at home, being expected to be at least somewhat musical as a matter of being educated. Now, “active” musical involvement means earbuds while working out, or watching movies that happen to have musical soundtracks.
Jazz and classical have remained true to real-life performance as the reference for realistic sound, but most people just can’t be bothered to experience it. 70+ years ago, the high-school prom or the Saturday date to the dance room was accompanied by a 17-piece swing orchestra. 50 years ago, it was a 5-piece rock band. 30 years ago, it was a DJ playing recordings of recorded musicians. The DJ’s then became performers, and the orchestras became digitized. Autotune and digitized sounds have made it possible to create music where the only skilled musician is the back-office production technician. The connection to live musical performance has been broken, or at least severely undermined.
Real orchestral music is still being composed and performed as movie soundtracks, but only high-budget movies actually hire an orchestra versus a MIDI keyboardist.
Without musicians, what’s the point of high fidelity? What are we wanting to be true to?
High fidelity is in part its own enemy. It has made it possible to appreciate world-class performance at home, but at the expense of the incentive to hear it live. Eventually, people forget what it sounds like and their tastes are no longer informed by the live experience.
Anecdotal example: We held a concert with our ensemble splitting the program with the Canadian Brass. In the county with the highest median income in the USA, we could not fill a 1000-seat auditorium with the world’s foremost brass quintet. Reason? Live music is no longer part of the culture.
Rick “appreciation for hi fi depends on the experience of quality live music” Denney
DaveVoorhis
Addicted Member
Or it could be tastes have evolved and nobody likes honky, teeth-on-edge, unmelodious horns.
Every year, for the past sixteen years, I've polled my university students to find out -- in a room of roughly 100 to 150 -- how many play a musical instrument. It's always roughly 25%, give or take, and it was roughly the same percentage among my friends when I was a lad. Live music is still alive. I think it's easy to assume, among us (mainly) middle-aged white males with dad-bods and nerdy old stereos and all the cultural engagement and hipness of the stereotypically ham-faced small-town accountant, that live music is dying or dead. Actually, it's only dead to us, because nobody wants to invite old guys and most of us wouldn't enjoy it anyway. ("THAT doesn't sound like Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd; it's just noise!")
Ask your kids or your neighbour's kids and their friends, and I bet you'll find they're deeply involved -- as consumers or players -- in a local live music scene more vibrant, and arguably more talented, than any from our (let's face it, because it's true) very narrow-minded youth.
^^^ This, we have great live music all the time, different Venues and all genres. Just need to look.
The distinction between real and synthesized instruments is largely a false one. Every instrument is made up. There is no violin or saxophone tree. You could say traditional vs modern or perhaps acoustic vs electronic. But they’re all made up and obey physical laws to make sound.
I see the point, and I do agree that the production and live performance of music has changed how people consume music at home. But it’s not because some music is real and other fake.
I see the point, and I do agree that the production and live performance of music has changed how people consume music at home. But it’s not because some music is real and other fake.
Well, it occurs to me that once people listened to live music because that was the only way to hear it. People want to hear music but what they hear in their head when listening to music evidently has little to do with live music or even high quality reproduction of recorded music. And yet these people certainly love music.
I get the emotional effect of recorded music regardless of the quality of playback.
I get the emotional effect of recorded music regardless of the quality of playback.
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just dave
vintage rules!
While I'll agree that modern speakers have improved over older ones,I don't think someone buying $70,000 speakers does it always for sound quality. I think some with a lot of disposable income do it for bragging rights.Or possibly the stupidity of people has increased, and they have more disposable income.
New is "always" better, as is more megapixels or more cameras in smartphones. More is always better as well.
Or you could say: hifi peaked in the whatevers, but marketing departments figured out that flat tonal response (hifi frequency response) is what nobody wants to listen to. 90% of music consumers really want that fun sound.
Now with the coming of the bluetooth headphones, the OEM has complete control over the DSP and the amp. It sounds like it sounds, you cannot use a different amp. Think about it.
I really feel that in some ways we as humans are evolving forward - but many things evolve backwards. Or get forgotten. Kinda strange, really.
Sure, it’s a joke and I laughed.“Get off my lawn”
I’m quite connected to the local music scene. There is not one single venue in this county for live music that targets teenagers or even 20-somethings. The only live music in this county I see targets older people. Genres run the gamut, but it’s all old stuff.
Down in the cliff dwellings so popular with sub-30 professionals, the clubs mostly use recorded music. Occasionally, one has a live act. But it’s quite limited compared to what I recall from my youth.
Narrow-minded? Certainly not in my crowd. I attended school kid symphony concerts (we were bused in), hard rock concerts, country dance halls with live bands that played country music (where live music is still more meaningful than most genres), church music from traditional to rock, and even jazz concerts, all before I was done with high school. Not everyone did all that, but it was readily available.
Guitars have always been popular, but not many kids these days get piano lessons, or play in the school band, compared to 40 years ago.
Rick “well-connected to the music education scene, too” Denney
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What a sad testament. Wifey and I have season tickets to the symphony.
Have you watched the movie "Score"? Highly recommended.