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The 80s, when and why did it all go wrong?

Bigerik said:
And lets keep in mind that tastes just changed in the 80's. Lots of people just wanted to leave the 70's behind. The look of the 70's audio gear was just viewed as being gaudy, tacky and old fashioned. They couldn't have kept selling those big, flashy monster receivers in the 80's if they wanted to. No one would have bought it. Sleek and minimalistic became the style of ..
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The above is very true. Today we can look at silver receivers and think "beautiful" but by 1981 people thought they looked like last decades look and they did. Suddenly black was cool. Especially with lcd displays. I bet most here at the time stored there silver faces for that new black box they saw at crazy eddie! Just like with fashion everything has its run of a few years and then it changes. Bell bottoms were tabu in the 80s but in the last decade or so bell bottoms to an extant were back.
 
Callan1967 said:
For me it all came crashing down on 31st december 1989
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Why, what happened? I remember EXACTLY where i was...in a Minit Mart reading a magazine at the magazine rack (remember those?)

Bigerik said:
Sensational amp. I wouldn't trade it for 10 1970's Sansui amps. Sansui just kept getting better sounding, right until the end.
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Thanks for your input, BigE. I don't hear as much on this forum about the 99X as I think it deserves.

AJD1964 said:
YES - Awesome amp! I have a G99X as well. Probably the overall best sounding amp I have ever heard. A toss-up beween that and my Scott 299-C tube amp.
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What I like about it is the clarity, the strength it has, and never sounds flabby or anemic. Bold without being too forward, and warm without being mushy.

Mattsd has already restored my SX1250, and I'll pick it up with the 99X, but honestly, it is the 99x I wish to hear fully restored first. :yes:
 
In 1979 other factors played a significant role in that "turning point".

Sony's Walkman is an example...

At turn of the decade, more and more people started to listen to the music outside home. Who, from now on, would spend a lot of money in a heavy metal case plus big speakers? Let's take huge numbers. Masses.

Cities became crowded and people were looking for smaller homes/rooms.

Many other factors played roles as well: people suddenly didn't have time to stay home, life became faster and faster, cassette overtook on LPs by mid decade as well as for the CD...
 
But manufacturers kept producing better and better piece of gear...

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http://audio-database.com/SANSUI/amp/au-alpha907lextra-e.html
 
The whole shift of technology in that period was pretty astounding. In the very late 70's components were king, but say five years later the growth was in personal cassette players. Also, I remember being happy that you could get digital display and tuning along with specs that would've cost hundreds for a tad over $100 new. And smaller - all silver -from several people. By the end of the decade DAT and CD made the stuff I grew up wanting seem large and almost as ancient as a console. So, now it seems eh but the real junk to me came in the 90's. In the 2000's it was alien. The last decade I cant even guess. And I think you can find people who will beef about and blame it on politics for each era.
 
I remember when the first black face JVC relievers came out. Holy crap! All that computer controlled LED bling! Played with them at Crazy Eddies and other Hi-Fi stores but, it felt different, not quite the quality of my R-S77 (1980), or my Dad's late 1960's JVC 5003 receiver, which both are still working. My brother bought one of the black face JVC's, lasted 5-6 years and died. I was surprised it didn't last, but I guess it just wasn't made as well as the older gear. All my gear except the speakers and the Scott LK-72 is 1978-80.
 
I am one of the ancients. In my early days, about the time I got my driver's license ,my dad's console had Pilot electronics. Radio stereo was by simulcast with one channel on FM and the other channel on AM. The record player was a Garrard changer. The speakers were Jensen. The good speakers were BIG, like Altec, Electrovoice, JBL.

Then came the wonders of the 60's with acoustic suspension speakers from KLH and AR. Electronics by McIntosh, Marantz, Fisher, Harmon Kardon.

The 70's and 80's saw great stuff by Sony, Kenwood, Pioneer, Sansui and others.

I think it all came to a dip after the huge superpower receiver battle. But today I think we may be back on track. Yamaha started making high quality components again and we found that there was still a market for good sounding gear.

I am hopeful about the future of audio, I'm sorry that I probably will not be around to see what comes down the pike, but it's been a fun trip!
 
NJguy said:
Okay, i know theres good stuff made in the 80s but generally speaking the glam days of solid state were the silver faced 70s. So im curious as to hear your theories as to why it all went down the tubes in the 80s. Was it the digital displays that started the downward trend? Was it the "Not made in usa/japan" that cheapned things? Something else?

What happened!? Your thoughts.
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In my opinion, a combination of both "greed" and "competition".

Greed, the manufacturer's went with the theory of, forget about putting out a quality product, more concerned with sales and profits $$$$. They discovered that it was better to build a cheaper throw away product and produce more products and sell for more to make more of a profit.

Competition, when one high profile manufacturer starts to increase sales by the process of having to pay for cheaper labor to produce their products and still sell their products for a higher price then soon other manufacturers follow to keep up.

But for those manufacturer's, while this may have been ideal with these two practices in the short term, in the long term it was their doom....where are they now?...most have gone out of business, bankrupt, closed, etc.

Now if one wants a true quality product, well built, it is rare and the price for it $$$$ is ridiculous. Even current manufacturers know this, that it would take much more $$$$ to start producing a quality product. This is why I would rather buy and take the time to restore vintage 70's very early 80's products, these are truly the best that you can get IMHO. :yes:
 
Some great gear in the 80s and beyond, but the amount of unobtainium that crept in after that is a real problem. That and some really nasty, busy designs in some receivers and integrateds. However good some of those might sound I'm afraid my eyes couldn't handle looking at them, then or now.
 
eb2jim said:
The whole shift of technology in that period was pretty astounding. In the very late 70's components were king, but say five years later the growth was in personal cassette players. Also, I remember being happy that you could get digital display and tuning along with specs that would've cost hundreds for a tad over $100 new. And smaller - all silver -from several people. By the end of the decade DAT and CD made the stuff I grew up wanting seem large and almost as ancient as a console. So, now it seems eh but the real junk to me came in the 90's. In the 2000's it was alien. The last decade I cant even guess. And I think you can find people who will beef about and blame it on politics for each era.
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Yeah back then people were happy to leave the house with 1 album on the walkman. Now you have to have your entire 500 albums on your ipod/phone before you leave the house. Yet another way that make the "album" less important. Its all about single singles now. Less focus one one artists entore work. Jumping and shuffling from band to band.
 
NJguy said:
Yeah back then people were happy to leave the house with 1 album on the walkman. Now you have to have your entire 500 albums on your ipod/phone before you leave the house. Yet another way that make the "album" less important. Its all about single singles now. Less focus one one artists entore work. Jumping and shuffling from band to band.
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How one stores their music has simply no bearing on how one appreciates their music.

Sent from my ZTE Olympia
 
This is dead right. Nobody wanted the wooden cased analogue looking stuff in the 1980s. It simply couldn't be cleared out of the retailers' showrooms quickly enough. Displays were digital, precise and modern, design was slimline, matching and neat and all the while, the performance of the top gear took massive leaps due to the fantastic semiconductors the Japanese were refining.

And CD put the final (vinyl) nail in the coffin of knobs and dials and analogue- everything had to be digital, digital ready or created for the digital age.

But, retro gear is cool, good fun to play with, rebuild and eminently collectable and I love it for what it is, Old HiFi Gear.

Bigerik said:
And lets keep in mind that tastes just changed in the 80's. Lots of people just wanted to leave the 70's behind. The look of the 70's audio gear was just viewed as being gaudy, tacky and old fashioned. They couldn't have kept selling those big, flashy monster receivers in the 80's if they wanted to. No one would have bought it. Sleek and minimalistic became the style of the day.

Sound quality kept improving though. The engineers in charge didn't turn stupid all of a sudden. And then we had the birth of high end audio, whether it be Conrad Johnson or Sony ES. And then cd hit....
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People always want to pay the same # of dollars they did in previous decades, or even generations, and expect to get the same or better stuff because of some technological magic. This is true in audio, cars or Gore-Tex jackets.

Someone comes along and claims they can make something with similar quality or performance characteristics to the brands that have gone before and people flock to it. The brands that did come before often answer that siren call themselves to try to grab back market share and they dilute their own quality or standards to create a downward spiral.

As for the 80's, that is just an somewhat arbitrary point that maybe was a spot on the graph where the process seemed to accelerate, driven by inflation, fuel costs, Taiwan and China taking over for Japan, and the beginning of a trend towards AV systems that could "do it all".

That's not to say that everything was suddenly crappy. It just was more widespread.
 
I find most speakers that I appreciated were '80s products for the most part. I think that companies like Polk, ADS, Boston Acoustics, hit their stride and their products that were made during that decade still hold up well. Most of them also had a presence in car audio, so that made sense to stay with a sound you liked in both worlds.
 
R-2-R said:
In my opinion, a combination of both "greed" and "competition".

Greed, the manufacturer's went with the theory of, forget about putting out a quality product, more concerned with sales and profits $$$$. They discovered that it was better to build a cheaper throw away product and produce more products and sell for more to make more of a profit.

Competition, when one high profile manufacturer starts to increase sales by the process of having to pay for cheaper labor to produce their products and still sell their products for a higher price then soon other manufacturers follow to keep up.

But for those manufacturer's, while this may have been ideal with these two practices in the short term, in the long term it was their doom....where are they now?...most have gone out of business, bankrupt, closed, etc.

Now if one wants a true quality product, well built, it is rare and the price for it $$$$ is ridiculous. Even current manufacturers know this, that it would take much more $$$$ to start producing a quality product. This is why I would rather buy and take the time to restore vintage 70's very early 80's products, these are truly the best that you can get IMHO. :yes:
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^ +1
One only has to look at/examine mainstream 80's/90's Techincs era of amps,receivers etc... with every passing year/years their new models would feature more and more cheap plastic build on them than ever before...In the end,even the on/off power button turned to plastic! Also,other Japanese companies like Pioneer,Sansui,and Rotel were no better.

Of course,there's hi end exceptions like that limited Japanese Sansui amp above. Also,mustn't forget the Pioneer Elite/Reference,and Sony ES range,but nonetheless mainstream hi-fi went way down hill,took a turn for the worse.
 
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