Whats the future of hi fi Equipment?

[RamblinE]

Believe what you want to believe, but buying hifi over the internet is like buying a mail-order bride. If you can't hear the piece (or the system) what the **** good is it? Just because people have settled for what is now considered the "norm" doesn't mean that it's a good thing. Back in the old days, there were many brick and mortar stores to choose from, just like as on the internet now. However, it was a lot more fun going to the store, listening to the pieces, rather then looking at a stupid web page as it is now.

So don't tell me it's backwards. New methods do not = better. I many cases, we are going backwards, IMO.

Time to brush up in return and audition policies from distributors like Audio Advisor, Music Direct and Soundstage Direct.

This doesn't represent all retailers of course but if you're not shopping somewhere with a good reputation then it's more if a case of read the small print dumby than buyer beware.

Either way your mail order bride theory doesn't hold up. Even though you did use the 'f' word for emphasis.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

[carcrazy]

The higher end gear that I can now afford (maybe) to buy is what I heard and lusted over when I was younger (and poorer). They have been on my wish list for the past 30 years and I can now buy them online. The internet has opened up a huge marketplace for gear I am already familiar with.

For new gear I research the cr@p out of but in the end, buying is a gamble without first hearing it. Who is willing to spend many thousands of dollars on a piece of gear that they have only seen a picture of on an online review? Not me.

 

[Nikko75]

What's the future of Hi-Fi Equipment?

What's the future of Hi-Fi Equipment?

Young people in their 20's and 30's who love audio, designing and selling direct + through stores. Real science, real art, real service, real performance.

No more big egos, no more $70k amplifiers, no more $200k speakers, no more magic rocks, no more marketing squander, no more old grey men posting non-peer reviewed "white papers" pretending to be the son of God or naming the companies after themselves.

 

[onwardjames]

I like "now".

In the late 1980's, I had a Sharp GF-575 boombox for sound. I lusted after 1250's (got one) Sansui AU-G99X a friend had (ended up buying it, now being restored by Mattsd) and positively wet myself upon seeing JBL L100T's (have a set, modded to T3 spec)

1000 albums, 1200 cds, a music server, piles of amps and speakers....yeah, now is good. If only my hearing was as good, and my tinnitus non-existent.

 

[Tom Brennan]

...no more old grey men posting non-peer reviewed "white papers" pretending to be the son of God or naming the companies after themselves.

Yeah, so now we'll have your heroes in their 20s and 30s doing the same thing. Human nature will not change and bullshit and folly will continue.

 

[Nikko75]

Not sure. I haven't seen any young people taking such a tactic. The names they use are often quite generic and they don't try to reinvent Ohm's, Lenz's or the Quadratic Law. I think people today are way too hung up on brand names and perceived resale value.

 

[onwardjames]

Yeah, so now we'll have your heroes in their 20s and 30s doing the same thing. Human nature will not change and bullshit and folly will continue.

Crusty response, even by your standards, Tom.

But yeah, humans be humans. We don't change much. We have prefrontal lobes that are too small, and adrenal glands that are too large.


As for the "now", there are sure some cheap routes to good sound, and for that, I am happy. Because of the internet, I can find great repairmen like Mattsd, or buy a fully restored SX1010 from Zebulon1.

Like I stated, I love the "now". As for brick and mortar stores, they're all dying, no matter the product. Because of the internet? Lack of increase in wages/no jobs? I don't have the answers, but I'm swimming in great gear.

Happy happy, joy joy.

 

[for_p1]

I do not see what is all that whining about. Niw we have state of the art digital playback possible at very reasonable price - mastering grade DACs are at $1500 or less. High-res downloads are offered in the same quality as studio masters, and digital media players (both for physical disks and files) are very affordae at below $500. Excellent speakers can be got for just few thousand. Amplifiers are affordable too (and if you want tube gear - a lot of excellent offering of China made stuff).

Radio (both AM and FM) id dead and I am Ok with it - on-line streaming is way better in sound quality, and sources from around the world are all at your fingertips.

There was no beter time to build excellent playback system within reasonable (below $10K) budget.

 

[Jeffery]

Not sure. I haven't seen any young people taking such a tactic.

Funny, one of the ads I remember from days gone by was a young man in a lab coat, standing next to a speaker produced by a company named after him :scratch2:

 

[BadassBob]

Believe what you want to believe, but buying hifi over the internet is like buying a mail-order bride. If you can't hear the piece (or the system) what the **** good is it?

Time to brush up in return and audition policies from distributors like Audio Advisor, Music Direct and Soundstage Direct.

This doesn't represent all retailers of course but if you're not shopping somewhere with a good reputation then it's more if a case of read the small print dumby than buyer beware.

Either way your mail order bride theory doesn't hold up. Even though you did use the 'f' word for emphasis.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

Yep! Many reputable online shops will give one a 30 day in home audition period. 30 days is a nice amount of time to decide if you can live with a piece of gear. Enough time to get past the honeymoon period and decide if it's truly an upgrade to your system or not.

 

[Vintagear]

Much of High end is a boutique business with no world class R&D, locking in the 1960's low tech approach as long as some companies can derive high margins selling equipment that has barely advanced in performance for 50 years, and increasingly using vague, non-quantifiable marketing techniques divorced from real science, engineering, and technology.

A high end 1970 color TV compared to my 55" flat screen is a complete joke. A computer from 1970 compared to my iphone is a complete joke. A 1970 Mercedes compared to a 2014 Hyundai is a complete joke. A high end stereo from 1970 is about as good as most systems you can get today.

Be careful, thoughts like those may get you in hot water with some.

I think you're on to something, some of the internals of modern high quality boutique Hi-Fi discrete amps (think Leben) look more like those of the better Japanese vintage mid-fi amps and less like the stuff readily available in mid-fi retailers today.

 

[Tom Brennan]

There was no beter time to build excellent playback system within reasonable (below $10K) budget.

Yeah, I'm also optimistic about the ability to get excellent audio easily and cheaply.

I think big cities will continue to have hi-fi shops, there are many in Chicago and fairly recently I bought quite a bit of gear at Holm, Saturday Audio and Van L. Smaller cities, I'm not sure. Here in St. Augustine I have to go to Jacksonville or Daytona for a hi-fi shop, which is no hardship. But a person can put a pretty decent sounding rig together from Best Buy. Wait a minute, I gotta go to Jacksonville for Best Buy too.

 

[Nikko75]

Much of High end is a boutique business with no world class R&D, locking in the 1960's low tech approach as long as some companies can derive high margins selling equipment that has barely advanced in performance for 50 years, and increasingly using vague, non-quantifiable marketing techniques divorced from real science, engineering, and technology.

A high end 1970 color TV compared to my 55" flat screen is a complete joke. A computer from 1970 compared to my iphone is a complete joke. A 1970 Mercedes compared to a 2014 Hyundai is a complete joke. A high end stereo from 1970 is about as good as most systems you can get today.

Be careful, thoughts like those may get you in hot water with some.

I think you're on to something, some of the internals of modern high quality boutique Hi-Fi discrete amps (think Leben) look more like those of the better Japanese vintage mid-fi amps and less like the stuff readily available in mid-fi retailers today.

I also think there is some truth to it. The TI Burr Brown OPA627 is identical to a Japanese Yamaha discrete opamp. The design was first patented by Yam in the 70's and was found in later higher end models.
A number of the discrete projects over on DIYaudio are based on the same Yamaha design. It's been over 35 years and it keeps reappearing in the high-end sector, too.

 

[WaynerN]

Yes, then if you do not like it, you will pay return shipping, at the least. Unless you have something to compare it to, then what is the point, any old thing will do, right? I'm also betting that the original shipping charges will not be reimbursed, too. That, for a large amp could end up to be (with insurance) over $200. You guys can do it, I'm not going to. The math, again, does not add up.

 

[winters860]

IMO the Chi-Fi you just described is the early 21st century replacement for the cheap compact stereos of the 1970s -- the ones that had a BSR or Garrard record changer with ceramic cartridge and an 8-track or cassette player in the same wood-grained vinyl box as the receiver, with a pair of cheap speakers and a hank of 22-gauge speaker wire. I don't think many of us on AK would consider that vintage gear high-fidelity, and I personally don't consider most sound bars or Chinese mini-components high-fidelity either.

The High End is still with us, though brick and mortar stores are getting harder to find, and the mid-fi or worse budget gear from China is readily available online. What's going missing is mass-market gear that can deliver high-quality sound.

I couldn't disagree more, to the point that I wonder if we have the same products in mind.

I'd put the 10,000w shelf systems at Wal-Mart and many of the sound bars in the same category as the all-in-ones of years yore. Good enough for most folks.

But the Chi-Fi I'm talking about is the array of Class D amps, DACs, and headphone amplifiers available on eBay (and other places) for lunch money. Sure, they aren't all good, but as a market segment, there's a hell of a lot of value there, and surprisingly robust build quality in many cases.

Did you get burned on a bad purchase or something? To me, this IS mass-market gear that can deliver high-quality sound. I don't know if there's ever been a time when good sounding new gear was available as inexpensively as now.

I think we're all jaded from our garage sale scroes...

 

[matteos]

There's great stuff coming out all the time. Modern speakers are very good. It is amazing the kind of sound you can get in the $500-$1000 budget and that is not a lot of money to spend on audio. People say audio is dying, but it isn't look at sites like this one, or head-fi, or audio asylum, or audio-gon... This is a big community, maybe it's niche but what hobby isn't? So many people I know are buying record players and with those comes the necessity of phono stages or at least decent enough integrated amps that have phono connections.

Unfortunately marketing make people buy junky mini cube speakers and that's the real problem, because there are tremendous speakers being made now for not a lot of $$

 

[gotvinyl]

Technology is changing so much that people are confused about all of the equipment options and delivery systems. But, love of music is what drives us (even us gearheads on AK) to get equipment set up to listen. That won't change. And there is a huge variety of good equipment (old and new) to use.

As I type this, I am listening to Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond do amazing things on the piano and sax. My delivery system is computer (Pandora) to HRT Music Streamer DAC (new technology) to a used Yamaha CA-800 (1977 old) in Class A mode, output to some Minimus 7's (old) with crossover upgrades (Zilch PZ2.1 new) and some new drivers as well as a used M&K VX-7 sub (newish). No single component cost me more than $100, except the DAC, which was a little more than that because I bought it new. The sound is awesome and as good as I have ever had in my lifetime, and I grew up on some excellent Yamaha equipment (CR 1040 with NS690II's and vinyl).

The point is that the good gear is there, and even with digital formats, you can get great sound for a lot less money than it used to cost. My Yamaha setup bought in 1979 was around $1,500 in yesterday dollars, and that was a bunch.

These are the new good old days as far as I am concerned.

 

[Tiggerlator]

What about Hi-Wi wireless hi-fi. I think wireless stuff will get better and cheaper. I also think stealth systems will be more prevalent, that is systems that are integrated into the house, with maybe a touch control panel and a slot for a disc using wireless speakers or fitted into the walls.

Personally i love all the class D stuff on ebay, apart from the IC some of it has nice build quality with discrete stuff, it seems it is popular and a growing market.

I would like to see some cool portable hi-fi stuff, i had a Cowon d2 a while ago, and the sound quality with Flac and nice phones was pretty sweet.

 

[telefunken]

With a USB DAC there is almost an infinite availability of audio that can then be played on even the most vintage systems-I do wonder about tuners since I listen to most radio (even sometimes local) on computer.

 

[Dr. Morbius]

There's great stuff coming out all the time. Modern speakers are very good. It is amazing the kind of sound you can get in the $500-$1000 budget and that is not a lot of money to spend on audio.

:yes: So very true, especially if one buys factory closeout models.