Why Our Hobby Won't Grow

[mrt2]

People keep saying the kids don't know what good sound is...yet a lot of them are listening to lossless files on high quality headphones that blow away most vintage speakers as far as resolution. Music has become something more private to many people, and maybe they don't feel the need to impress their neighbors with the numbers of knobs their SX-1980 has.

This is where I think I may go in the future, perhaps starting with something simple like lossless files ripped from my cds into my computer or a portable, maybe getting a basic headphone amp, and using my Grado headphones to supplement my office system, as I hate transporting cds between home and office..

 

[JohnVF]

Not a whole lot. There are 3 within close proximity on the east side of Milwaukee, and I always scope out half priced books, which also sells used cds. I noticed this price decline a few years ago and started buying, as I figured that whatever happens with music servers, and whatever improvements happen in file servers in the future, I can always rip the cds to a hard drive, either as uncompressed or lossless files.

As for getting lps for $1 or $2, I hear you on that, but I have, for the most part, stopped doing this as I have no more need or space for loads of lps that I will listen to maybe once, so I only do this once in awhile. Now a cd for $1 or $2 is another story, as it takes up less space, can be ripped to computer/mp3 player (even just one or two songs for the gym), and can be used for the car, so that $1 or $2 cd offers a lot of music entertainment possibilities for very little money and not much space.

The only exception to this is jazz lps, and old first or second pressings of 50 year old jazz lps are usually too expensive for my wallet.

I need to make it back to Milwaukee soon..it's one of my favorite small cities. Several cool little stores to dig through stacks of vinyl. I also need to take a pair of speakers to Audio Ventures up there..I'm having a pair of old Pioneer CS-a700 gutted and made into something special by them. If you've never been there, it's a really interesting place. They will build new speakers in old speaker cabinets, but they're kind of insanely overbuilt..and sound fantastic.

Ok, that was off topic...back to the thread!

 

[mrt2]

I also need to take a pair of speakers to Audio Ventures up there..I'm having a pair of old Pioneer CS-a700 gutted and made into something special by them. If you've never been there, it's a really interesting place. They will build new speakers in old speaker cabinets, but they're kind of insanely overbuilt..and sound fantastic.

Ok, that was off topic...back to the thread!

Have not been to audio ventures, but it sounds like a must visit place, with other places shutting down. Just looked them up. They are in Waukesha, maybe a 30 minute drive for me.

Have you been to Bullseye records? They have a whole bunch of lps in the front of the store for $1.

 

[JohnVF]

Have not been to audio ventures, but it sounds like a must visit place, with other places shutting down. Just looked them up. They are in Waukesha, maybe a 30 minute drive for me.

Have you been to Bullseye records? They have a whole bunch of lps in the front of the store for $1.

They were closed the day I was record shopping up there. I went to a strange place nearby (I think) that had a really nice TOTL Sony biotracer turntable that the owner had managed to break from neglect (keeping it on the floor with, i'm sure, snow from shoes melting on it). It had junk stacked floor to ceiling and he had really bad BO...now that is NOT a way to grow this hobby!

Audio Ventures had a lot of vintage gear, but it was priced according to its VERY nice condition, including the nicest MAC 1900 I'd ever seen, completely rebuilt for a very fair price considering. They aren't cheap but the owner was very nice and loved showing off his speaker creations.

 

[mrt2]

Audio Ventures had a lot of vintage gear, but it was priced according to its VERY nice condition, including the nicest MAC 1900 I'd ever seen, completely rebuilt for a very fair price considering. They aren't cheap but the owner was very nice and loved showing off his speaker creations.

Now I am intrigued. There is a faint possibility that I will need their service if a family connection comes through on a MAC power amp. It also sounds like these guys combine the best of modern and vintage, with the build quality of the best vintage combined with full restoration.

Might also be a place that would consider trade ins, which is something I am considering as I have some vintage gear that is not getting much use these days.

 

[JohnVF]

Now I am intrigued. There is a faint possibility that I will need their service if a family connection comes through on a MAC power amp. It also sounds like these guys combine the best of modern and vintage, with the build quality of the best vintage combined with full restoration.

Might also be a place that would consider trade ins, which is something I am considering as I have some vintage gear that is not getting much use these days.

Everything they had was top notch gear, mostly McIntosh, some of it pretty rare, a lot of it tubes. They may do restoration work, I'm not sure. It was one of the cooler audio places I've been to, the owner talked my ear off.

 

[HandyHamlet]

Audio Ventures up there..

21 pages only to find this little gem. Thanks!

:thmbsp:

As a relative newbie and therefore an outsider my perception is this is no different than any other testosterone driven hobby. Like the car guys for instance.

There are the guys driving new $200,000 sports cars. The guys who can't leave anything stock. The nostalgia trip. There are guys who get a boner for muscle cars and power. And those who race old MGs. And I swear I just met a couple and their ground up restoration of a Citroen. So saying the IPod (generalization) will kill audio enthusiasm is like saying the hybrid will kill car clubs. Pioneers going for a grand anyone? Not to mention the 6 month waiting list for techs around here.


mrt2:

As nice as lps can sound with the right pressing/gear, it is a legacy format that can never return to its former glory. Why? The machines that make lps, the cutting lathes, are antiques (many are over 50 years old, and the newest are 35 years old), and are wearing out. I have not read a story of a single company investing in new lp making machinery.

This thinking seems a bit flawed to me as one who spent much of my youth in manufacturing. Where 100 year old presses, shears, breaks, mills and lathes stood next to state of the art CNC and NC machines. Maybe they don't need to invest because the machines were built to last?

Vinyl sales to hit another high point in 2009
June 11, 2009 | 1:40 pm

The resurgent vinyl market isn't showing any signs of slowing down. In fact, recent figures released by Nielsen SoundScan indicate that overall U.S. vinyl sales will once again set a benchmark in 2009, with sales up 50% through the first five months of the year.

SoundScan predicts vinyl sales will reach 2.8 million units in 2009, up from 1.9 million in 2008, a record since SoundScan began tracking sales data in 1991. Already in 2009, vinyl sales have topped 1 million. At this point last year, vinyl sales stood at 701,000 copies. To be fair, the number is still tiny compared to overall album sales.

Vinyl, SoundScan points out, accounts for less than 1% of overall album sales. In other words, vinyl sales represent about six months in the life of Taylor Swift, whose late 2008 release, "Fearless," has already sold more than 3.3 million copies. To date in 2009, 121.8 million CDs have been sold, versus 33.2 million digital albums, compared to 151.01 million CDs and 27.52 digital albums for the same period last year.

Yet vinyl appears to be a niche market that's here to stay, and one that's showing signs of expansion. Rock albums account for 70% of all vinyl sold, but country vinyl is enjoying a growth spurt. Year-to-date country vinyl sales are already at 15,000 copies, compared with 5,000 for the comparable period in 2008.

Of course, if someone wants to rain on the vinyl good news, there's this stat: Vinyl sales were up 90% in 2008 over 2007, and the rate of growth has certainly slowed.

-- Todd Martens

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/mus...-sales-to-hit-another-high-point-in-2009.html

 

[visiman]

My 2nd son likes to hear his music and grew up in the digital era and is also interested in "close and play" . Strange that non of my three sons are into analog, maybe they see it as something for old farts! This week my 2nd son visited and I was listening to the Advents that I am almost finished with. He just can't understand why his 5.1 reciever and a bakers dozen of speakers don't quite sound as good as the two two-ways. And LP's?? Why? I listen to CD's too but he wanted to know what is so nice about them. All I could think of is that to me putting on an album is sort of like a ritual. not just throw CD in a slot or drawer and push play, Oopps .gotta go, the hubby needs help with the printer. (Yea, I feal the the IT administrator at home too, and if it don't work like it should I'm to blame...

later

 

[dkelley]

Now maybe powered speakers will not happen, maybe they will. Almost all subwoofers are powered, so I kind of see the appeal for future generations that never owned a proper stereo, of just having a single music server/streaming music device feeding audiophile quality powered speakers.

EDIT: note, just read the bolded text to get the gist of my "big post" LoL

Keep in mind... powered speakers are not inferior as a rule. There is a reason why many many recording studios have active monitors. No passive crossovers is a good thing (actives are far better). Designing the amps specifically tailored to the driver they have to power is another good thing. I'm aware that you don't get to pick and choose your power amps this way, or in some cases even your d/a converter (some powered monitors have them built in although most studios still use outboard converters for various good reasons (not always specifications related though)).

But powered speakers can actually perform better than unpowered speakers if things are done right. I know, it's not an uber high end sort of concept. But it's done in many many recording studio monitors for performance reasons, not for econemic reasons.

Don't jump on a technology that can work great. Same with an ipod playing flacs or oggs (both are lossless perfect quality audio encoders). I do that on my ancient black and white-screened ipod mini (using an alternative OS I installed called rockbox) and it sounds, well, perfect. performance is incredible if using the line output from the dock mount while connected to any good hifi system. Better performance in fact than cd can give (although I'm perfectly happy with a well mastered cd... just that finding a well mastered cd isn't always so easy unless I do it myself).

wireless almost-instant downloads that start streaming right away but still give you lossless digital audio are not that far off. it doesn't exist yet, it's still all about compression if you want instant gratification, but you can get flac/ogg files now in a matter of minutes of download time even over wireless.

That's a boon to the music industry if handled properly (so far imho it hasn't been handled properly).

But the media doesn't define the quality of your playback components. People have made do with cassette for decades while their systems were otherwise incredibly high performance (admittedly getting the best out of it and turning it into a hifi medium when it wasn't originally intended to be hifi at all). The same is happening with consumer-creatable file-based digital audio... it's improving by leaps and bounds and can now effectively be the center point of a high end home audio system, if you have the right gear to create/decode and otherwise manage those files with quality matching the rest of your hifi gear.

So don't worry about the future from the technology POV. I think it will be just fine. Humans love great audio.

But what I do worry about is the business decisions being made in the recording industry. We're not (speaking as a member of that industry) taking control, instead we're constantly in a reactionary state to whatever happens each year in the home computer/internet world. As a result of our short sightedness we've lost billions, as have tends of thousands of recording artists and composers. So that is what worries me about the future. There HAS to be an effective way to manage the music business so it stays a business, otherwise the world will change dramatically. Not that I'm against giving away my musical skills, talent, and decades of training for free, I have no problem with that. What I have a problem with is not having the ability to eat, feed and house my family, and provide for my children's education as a result of not earning money in my career.

That's something that is a real problem for the future of "why our hobby won't grow". It CAN'T grow if we all eventually grow tired of listening to the same albums from 40 or, eventually, 100 years ago, while fewer and fewer new albums come out of any consequence as fewer and fewer musicians make the choice to dedicate their lives to creating albums since, in the future that I'm worried about, those decisions see clearly that they have no chance of earning any useful income from it.

We have to be practical as musicians and people in the recording industry, it's about our talents and love of music and our training, but it's also got to be fair to our families and our own ability to live or there is no way we can continue creating music of any consequence for the hifi enthusiasts of the future to enjoy.

end of my rant

sorry that I got on the soap box there. I don't feel it's off topic, but maybe others will.

cheers!

Don

 

[mrt2]

seems a bit flawed to me as one who spent much of my youth in manufacturing. Where 100 year old presses, shears, breaks, mills and lathes stood next to state of the art CNC and NC machines. Maybe they don't need to invest because the machines were built to last?

]

Assuming what you say is true, it still limits lps growth to a certain low ceiling. Without NEW production capacity coming online, it can only grow so much.

 

[iGrant]

EDIT: note, just read the bolded text to get the gist of my "big post" LoL

end of my rant

sorry that I got on the soap box there. I don't feel it's off topic, but maybe others will.

cheers!

Don

I just noticed this thread and just skipped to the end. Don, do remember you are in the Canadian Music Making business, the rest of the world actually makes good money making music

I do a show at least once a month with our gear (and some vinyl) and it is great to see the kids browsing records and knowing more about the classic rock bands than some of my ex-wives ever did.

Then it is a riot to have them hook up their players to a big system and watch the expression on their faces. They do get it, they just need the price a bit lower or their dads to take them shopping for some good vintage gear.

It was fun at RMAF having all the kids and young adults playing their music on our systems, some of the seasoned audiophiles bailed at the wall of sound onslaught, but those that stayed had some fun and it did clear the dust off the speaker cones.

As a recording engineer Don ?, you have to agree, compressors need to be removed or peeled back from modern recordings, which mainly sound awful for anything more (and less) than one song. It might just be we need better producers and engineers to keep the hobby of decent playback alive.

Cheers,
Ian

 

[Spikedart]

mp3 preference

I came across this article in Wired online. It discusses 'good enough' technology and how it's tied to convenience above all. Sad but true.
http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/magazine/17-09/ff_goodenough?currentPage=1
Pages 2 and 3 specifically discuss music reproduction. It's truly frightening to discover many young people prefer the sound of MP3 files to high-resolution versions. Makes me think of Robin Williams old tagline 'reality - what a concept!'

Spot on. The more songs you can stuff onto a 4GB memory stick the better, according to my son.

 

[zeus29106]

I don't think younger people notice the difference because I believe they listen to most of their music either in a car or on the go. When they settle down like we did they'll then get a chance to take notice of quality and fill in were we left off.

 

[Spikedart]

when they get the time

I don't think younger people notice the difference because I believe they listen to most of their music either in a car or on the go. When they settle down like we did they'll then get a chance to take notice of quality and fill in were we left off.

This summer when my boys came to visit me in Maine, we had a small system set up with a Denon receiver and a pair of Ohm walsh 1's. After a while my oldest said to me, this is the best sound I have ever heard. He hadn't yet heard my 3 other, better systems back in Mass. We went through cd's like candy those two weeks.

Of course he now wants me to help him put together something he can enjoy back in California!

 

[Dr. Music]

My 17 year old son lives with me and he loves music, but he's not an audiophile, nor do I expect him to be - I'm of the opinion that him being a music lover is just as admirable as him being an audiophile. He has little interest in dad's vintage stereo equipment. He stores his music on his computer via CD or download and plays his tunes on his iPods. The one difference is the fact that I do try to keep him in every incrementally better sounding headphones, at this point a good mid-line pair of Sennheisers. Many of his friends are in college with their own apartments, and they all seem to be traveling along the same lines. They're busy, they listen to music, but they aren't going out of their way to make music listening an out and out endeavor. I'm not going to argue that his circle is the norm, nor debate about the fact that there are lots of kids his age playing vinyl and getting into what true hi fidelity is... I'm sure they're out there in droves. I'm just making a statement about what I'm seeing from kids that seem to be happy go lucky, average good kids who are still celebrating their youth and their entry into adulthood before the advent of (ugh!) responsibility!

When we were in that age group we had music as a constant backdrop, but we had no options such as digital, nor truly portable with the capability of sounding pretty decent. If we had I think many of us would have opted for those mediums over our vinyl, 8-tracks and cassettes. Also, we had FM radio, and we had LOTS of it - several great stations could be heard in virtually every area you called your hometown. We didn't have the iPod, and we didn't have the audio/video marriage available to us. If I had a small device that was capable of holding 3000 albums which I could access on my car stereo and my home system, with the ability to add entire albums from the collections of my friends, I would have happily jumped on that medium, so it's no shock nor crime that kids do so today. I can remember recording my own 8-Track tapes - if I had the capability to burn my own discs or just transfer files from one place to another when i was 17, I'd have been doing so with a grin on my face.

I watched many of my friends jump on the video bandwagon as soon as cable became into wide availability in the 80's, and when VHS came onto the market I jumped on the bandwagon too. I didn't give up music, but I did embrace the video medium. Some of my friends did far more than that - they put their audio gear in the closet and have since gotten rid of it altogether. Hell, many of us blend current gear and media with gear and media from the past, concoct what we call our sound system, and it can be a hodgepodge of equipment and medium.There are lots of us who still love great gear and good music, and there will be for decades to come.... to me that is close enough to say that our hobby isn't dead. It might even grow, but will never be more than a niche. Our hobby isn't what it used to be because of what is around us. I don't think it's dying but I do think it's fading. The mainstream isn't going to come back around to vinyl, and they're not even going to resume their relationship with the CD. They're going to bite on whatever seems to be the convenient, inexpensive flavor of the day happens to be.

Having said all that, I'm not going to end this on a negative note - I'm still out there happily searching out music new and old for my equipment new and old, as are thousands and thousands of you guys. So what if we aren't the norm? There are great releases coming out every month of the year, and lots of material we may never have had the chance to hear is finding its way to the shelves, such as all of the individual performances from Woodstock recently. Some wonderful recordings are being given some loving care, upon even today, such as the Beatles catalog remasters. I think OUR hobby IS growing, that being the vintage/ hi-fidelity audio enthusiast market.