Arkay
Lunatic Member
A very interesting thread, with many perspectives and possibilities expressed. As always, it is difficult to predict the future, but a number of valid points have emerged:
First, the pursuit of "high fidelity" --that is, high quality of sound (as opposed to convenience or portability)-- WAS a niche thing that briefly became more mainstream during the 'heyday' in the seventies, then receded from importance with the rise of the PC/Internet, home theater, iPods, etc... This can easily be seen by looking at the magazine advertisements over the years, if you aren't old enough to actually remember it.
It is nice to think that as digital technology improves and bigger and faster memory becomes ever cheaper, higher-fidelity sound will become cheaper and more convenient, and eventually could be as ubiquitous as lousy MP3s are today.
Working against that, though, are two trends: one, as the Stanford study mentioned in that link showed, young people actually are not responding to the better quality of sound the way we (older people) expect. We feel that it is inbuilt, intuitive, a natural part of being humans with ears, to prefer high-quality sound. But some young people don't. Some of them actually LIKE the compressed, digital MP3 sort of sound BETTER than rich, full, hi-fi sound. It is difficult to fathom; their brains must be fundamentally different from ours, perhaps because the sounds they have grown up hearing since infancy were different, but for at least SOME of them, it seems true.
I met a teenager like that: he insisted that he actually preferred the sound of his iPod through a mediocre dock system to his father's LPs through McIntosh amps and B&O speakers. Even on the same songs. Teenage rebellion, perhaps, but he didn't present it that way; he seemed to be expressing an honest opinion, admitting that he could hear the differences and understand why some people might like the 'hi-fi' sound, but he just didn't care for it as much as the digital stuff he was used to. To me, it was :screwy: and disturbing, but I had to accept his opinion as right for him.
Let's assume, though, that this trend will not be ubiquitous. Let's assume that most youngsters will still have 'normal' ears and brains and when exposed to them, will prefer good sound to crappy sound (and yes, I stand by the use of those value-laden terms!).
Will they ever even get to HEAR good sound? There will, no doubt, be an increasing use of less-compressed sound, as storage memory becomes cheaper and bandwidth and computer speeds increase. But how often will young people hear the results, if their equipment is mostly still tuned-to-iPod-sound crappy mini systems and their idea of "hi fi" is a mid-fi HT-in-a-box system?
I think there will be SOME movement towards a higher quality of sound. But it will never reach the levels of quality --as WE define it (by we I mean the boomers and the vintage audio hi-fi nuts of any age)-- in the mainstream. High quality sound will always remain a niche, unless it becomes every bit as cheap, convenient and disposable as the low-quality stuff is now. But that won't happen unless there is enough demand for it. Perhaps it will come about over decades of development, but the market pressure to create it is not there right now, other than a relative niche market.
The idea of getting back to tinkering, to the DIY roots of earlier audio, was mentioned above. I think that is also true for many of us, but unfortunately it will also never become mainstream. When I was growing up, children used their hands and their imagination when playing. I remember building "castles" out of variously-shaped wooden blocks. I would make passages run through the inside of them, with some sections exposed, where a marble dropped in at the top, would roll, bounce and drop its way through the 3-D maze of the castle until it rolled out some opening at the bottom. My friends and I would fight imaginary wars in the garden using little plastic soldiers, building fortresses out of stones and mud. We built (sometimes with adult assistance) treehouse forts that we would play inside. We put together model kits, and had Mattel toys that would actually vacu-form or injection-mold things. We built things from Erector sets, Lincoln Logs and Legos. I received a chemistry set one year for Christmas, as my older brother had before me, and mine eventually blossomed into a full-blown laboratory table along one wall of my bedroom. We rebuilt bicycles and turned things on lathes in school shop classes. In high school, shop class moved on to classes where the group project was to take an old car and build a hot rod! In short, we DID things as kids.
Today, MOST of the kids I know spend MOST of their free time playing electronic games on their computers, Wii systems hooked to HDTVs, or small game-boy-like devices. Their thumbs are quick to push buttons, but they are all thumbs when it comes to making anything with their hands. Their imaginations are not very well-developed, and their DIY and tinkering skills are worryingly non-existent. These kids will NEVER decide to build DIY speakers, and probably won't even be able to cut and polish a piece of wood to put under their gear!
I'm encouraged by the 'resurgence' of vinyl and the growth of sites like AK on the internet. It is good that we see some younger people joining and participating here. One hopes that there will always be AT LEAST a 'niche' for high-end sound. It will probably be digital sound, but if the quality of digital sound ACTUALLY DOES reach or exceed the best quality we now achieve with analog, then that may be okay: ultimately, this hobby is about the SOUND we hear, more than anything else.
In the meantime, I hope the vinyl resurgence continues and vinyl becomes increasingly mainstream. I would love to see a large vinyl section even in WalMart... although I shudder to think what their "cheaper, cheaper, always the cheapest" approach to business might do to the quality of the vinyl pressings.
Let's face it: we ALL like convenience. Some of us value sound quality in our audio systems more than convenience, because to us, saving a few seconds isn't worth giving up those warm, fuzzy moments when the music flows magically into us and lifts our souls. You can't get those moments with MP3s and earbuds: it just doesn't work that way! Some of us even enjoy the simple ritual of cleaning an LP and cuing it up on a turntable, and watching it spin mesmerizingly as the music comes off of it. Will there always be SOME people --enough to keep the niche alive-- who feel that way? I hope so... but I don't know how many, or for how long.
I believe there will always be people who value GOOD sound, even if they are never in the majority. If there are not enough of them, then the world of hi-fi will be restricted to a small group of diehards keeping a hobby alive through persistent effort and a lot of DIY work, instead of through the efforts of companies in the marketplace.
A good analogy for that might be the crystal radio: there are enthusiasts out there building beautiful, high-quality crystal receivers. You can find their sites and boards online. They are a tiny niche, but I think they will be around as long as there are analog radio broadcasts to be plucked off the air.
The proliferation of flat-screen TVs and the transition from analog TV broadcasts to digital TV broadcasts has been a double 'body blow' to the collectors of analog-based TVs. I don't think many --if ANY-- youngsters will have any interest in collecting old-style TVs. Here is a niche that is doomed to shrink to near-oblivion, with a limited number of diehard collectors essentially preserving private museums.
One difference between analog TV collectors [and radio/receiver collectors, if analog radio is moved to all-digital one day] and vinyl-spinners is that the vinyl-spinner needs no outside broadcaster to make music. A turntable, amplification and speakers is ALL that is needed to get music from an LP. It could be done by a hermit in a cave, with no connection to the outside world (except perhaps an electrical connection, if (s)he isn't using a mechanical gramophone).
LPs ultimately will NOT replace digital sound, as digital sound gets ever better and more convenient. But hopefully enough people will find pleasure in the vinyl experience to at least keep it alive, as a niche market alongside of the digital stuff.
I find some reason for optimism when I visit hi-fi shops. Yes, most of the shoppers in the really nice-gear places are middle aged "boomer" types, like me. They are the ones who remember and appreciate the vintage and hi-end gear, and more importantly, they are the ones who can afford it. But when I walk into an HMV store, I see some young people flipping through the vinyl bins, too. Perhaps they are buying more of the new stuff, more hip-hop deejay stuff, but not ALL are. A FEW are buying "parents music."
I also see more and more tube gear models being made by Chinese companies, and I see the quality of their models improving all the time. Some of them are gimmicky little things with iPod docks, but hey!-- they are introducing younger people to the "coolness" of tube gear. SOME of the kids who buy those things will like the sound, and will want to learn more about these old-fashioned glowing glass things, and SOME of them will probably 'graduate' to Fishers, Scotts, perhaps even McIntosh and Marantz stuff as they get a little older.
And as long as there are a few of those out there, and an internet with places like AK where they can learn about the old stuff, perhaps the love of and preservation of high-quality sound gear will not die out completely... or at least not so soon.
That is something that some of us --myself included-- profoundly wish for.
One last, parting thought. Today I got to see something really special (to me)... a Forsell system including the "Statement" amplifier. A huge (suitcase-sized!) shiny black amplifier with deeply engraved lettering on it, 400 real class A watts per channel. [You read that right!] This particular one was number 37, out of a grand total of 100 that were EVER made. One was kept by the company, so there were 99 of them sold into the market. It is for sale at the greatly-reduced asking price of only $15,000. The sound of that gear is... well, lets just say it was HIGH fidelity, in every sense of the term. I just cannot stretch my budget THAT far, for an amplifier, but I'm sure it will sell.
Mr. Forsell made his fortune making medical equipment, but turned part of his attention to his love, hi-fi audio gear, and created some very special stuff. Rockport gear was and is, similarly, the work of primarily one man, Andy Paynor. How many Sirius series TTs were made? I don't know, but I know it wasn't many. Much of the best gear is made like that, and many of the more well-known brands started out as enthusiast's 'garage' businesses like that.
I believe that as long as there are individuals out there with both the knowledge and the passion to create such things, and just ENOUGH people to buy them --even if their numbers are only on the order of 100, like that Forsell amp-- then there will always be SOME kind of high-end audio 'industry.' If it has to shrink to a tiny niche, then so be it. It may well be that the mid-fi market becomes dominated by similar "boutique" and "niche" products, and the mass-market is full of compressed, digital cr*pola. If so, then ce la vie. Let it Be. I'll wear earplugs and still turn on my good stuff at home...as, I'm sure, SOME other people will, people whom I'll probably be able to find online, right here at AK. Let's hope the same can be said for three or four generations hence.
Alternatively, if the wristwatch-sized audio soundfield projector of the future can give me Forsell-quality sound while I'm traveling on the subway, in a disposable unit that costs just five dollars, well, I'm all for that, too!
First, the pursuit of "high fidelity" --that is, high quality of sound (as opposed to convenience or portability)-- WAS a niche thing that briefly became more mainstream during the 'heyday' in the seventies, then receded from importance with the rise of the PC/Internet, home theater, iPods, etc... This can easily be seen by looking at the magazine advertisements over the years, if you aren't old enough to actually remember it.
It is nice to think that as digital technology improves and bigger and faster memory becomes ever cheaper, higher-fidelity sound will become cheaper and more convenient, and eventually could be as ubiquitous as lousy MP3s are today.
Working against that, though, are two trends: one, as the Stanford study mentioned in that link showed, young people actually are not responding to the better quality of sound the way we (older people) expect. We feel that it is inbuilt, intuitive, a natural part of being humans with ears, to prefer high-quality sound. But some young people don't. Some of them actually LIKE the compressed, digital MP3 sort of sound BETTER than rich, full, hi-fi sound. It is difficult to fathom; their brains must be fundamentally different from ours, perhaps because the sounds they have grown up hearing since infancy were different, but for at least SOME of them, it seems true.
I met a teenager like that: he insisted that he actually preferred the sound of his iPod through a mediocre dock system to his father's LPs through McIntosh amps and B&O speakers. Even on the same songs. Teenage rebellion, perhaps, but he didn't present it that way; he seemed to be expressing an honest opinion, admitting that he could hear the differences and understand why some people might like the 'hi-fi' sound, but he just didn't care for it as much as the digital stuff he was used to. To me, it was :screwy: and disturbing, but I had to accept his opinion as right for him.
Let's assume, though, that this trend will not be ubiquitous. Let's assume that most youngsters will still have 'normal' ears and brains and when exposed to them, will prefer good sound to crappy sound (and yes, I stand by the use of those value-laden terms!).
Will they ever even get to HEAR good sound? There will, no doubt, be an increasing use of less-compressed sound, as storage memory becomes cheaper and bandwidth and computer speeds increase. But how often will young people hear the results, if their equipment is mostly still tuned-to-iPod-sound crappy mini systems and their idea of "hi fi" is a mid-fi HT-in-a-box system?
I think there will be SOME movement towards a higher quality of sound. But it will never reach the levels of quality --as WE define it (by we I mean the boomers and the vintage audio hi-fi nuts of any age)-- in the mainstream. High quality sound will always remain a niche, unless it becomes every bit as cheap, convenient and disposable as the low-quality stuff is now. But that won't happen unless there is enough demand for it. Perhaps it will come about over decades of development, but the market pressure to create it is not there right now, other than a relative niche market.
The idea of getting back to tinkering, to the DIY roots of earlier audio, was mentioned above. I think that is also true for many of us, but unfortunately it will also never become mainstream. When I was growing up, children used their hands and their imagination when playing. I remember building "castles" out of variously-shaped wooden blocks. I would make passages run through the inside of them, with some sections exposed, where a marble dropped in at the top, would roll, bounce and drop its way through the 3-D maze of the castle until it rolled out some opening at the bottom. My friends and I would fight imaginary wars in the garden using little plastic soldiers, building fortresses out of stones and mud. We built (sometimes with adult assistance) treehouse forts that we would play inside. We put together model kits, and had Mattel toys that would actually vacu-form or injection-mold things. We built things from Erector sets, Lincoln Logs and Legos. I received a chemistry set one year for Christmas, as my older brother had before me, and mine eventually blossomed into a full-blown laboratory table along one wall of my bedroom. We rebuilt bicycles and turned things on lathes in school shop classes. In high school, shop class moved on to classes where the group project was to take an old car and build a hot rod! In short, we DID things as kids.
Today, MOST of the kids I know spend MOST of their free time playing electronic games on their computers, Wii systems hooked to HDTVs, or small game-boy-like devices. Their thumbs are quick to push buttons, but they are all thumbs when it comes to making anything with their hands. Their imaginations are not very well-developed, and their DIY and tinkering skills are worryingly non-existent. These kids will NEVER decide to build DIY speakers, and probably won't even be able to cut and polish a piece of wood to put under their gear!
I'm encouraged by the 'resurgence' of vinyl and the growth of sites like AK on the internet. It is good that we see some younger people joining and participating here. One hopes that there will always be AT LEAST a 'niche' for high-end sound. It will probably be digital sound, but if the quality of digital sound ACTUALLY DOES reach or exceed the best quality we now achieve with analog, then that may be okay: ultimately, this hobby is about the SOUND we hear, more than anything else.
In the meantime, I hope the vinyl resurgence continues and vinyl becomes increasingly mainstream. I would love to see a large vinyl section even in WalMart... although I shudder to think what their "cheaper, cheaper, always the cheapest" approach to business might do to the quality of the vinyl pressings.
Let's face it: we ALL like convenience. Some of us value sound quality in our audio systems more than convenience, because to us, saving a few seconds isn't worth giving up those warm, fuzzy moments when the music flows magically into us and lifts our souls. You can't get those moments with MP3s and earbuds: it just doesn't work that way! Some of us even enjoy the simple ritual of cleaning an LP and cuing it up on a turntable, and watching it spin mesmerizingly as the music comes off of it. Will there always be SOME people --enough to keep the niche alive-- who feel that way? I hope so... but I don't know how many, or for how long.
I believe there will always be people who value GOOD sound, even if they are never in the majority. If there are not enough of them, then the world of hi-fi will be restricted to a small group of diehards keeping a hobby alive through persistent effort and a lot of DIY work, instead of through the efforts of companies in the marketplace.
A good analogy for that might be the crystal radio: there are enthusiasts out there building beautiful, high-quality crystal receivers. You can find their sites and boards online. They are a tiny niche, but I think they will be around as long as there are analog radio broadcasts to be plucked off the air.
The proliferation of flat-screen TVs and the transition from analog TV broadcasts to digital TV broadcasts has been a double 'body blow' to the collectors of analog-based TVs. I don't think many --if ANY-- youngsters will have any interest in collecting old-style TVs. Here is a niche that is doomed to shrink to near-oblivion, with a limited number of diehard collectors essentially preserving private museums.
One difference between analog TV collectors [and radio/receiver collectors, if analog radio is moved to all-digital one day] and vinyl-spinners is that the vinyl-spinner needs no outside broadcaster to make music. A turntable, amplification and speakers is ALL that is needed to get music from an LP. It could be done by a hermit in a cave, with no connection to the outside world (except perhaps an electrical connection, if (s)he isn't using a mechanical gramophone).
LPs ultimately will NOT replace digital sound, as digital sound gets ever better and more convenient. But hopefully enough people will find pleasure in the vinyl experience to at least keep it alive, as a niche market alongside of the digital stuff.
I find some reason for optimism when I visit hi-fi shops. Yes, most of the shoppers in the really nice-gear places are middle aged "boomer" types, like me. They are the ones who remember and appreciate the vintage and hi-end gear, and more importantly, they are the ones who can afford it. But when I walk into an HMV store, I see some young people flipping through the vinyl bins, too. Perhaps they are buying more of the new stuff, more hip-hop deejay stuff, but not ALL are. A FEW are buying "parents music."
I also see more and more tube gear models being made by Chinese companies, and I see the quality of their models improving all the time. Some of them are gimmicky little things with iPod docks, but hey!-- they are introducing younger people to the "coolness" of tube gear. SOME of the kids who buy those things will like the sound, and will want to learn more about these old-fashioned glowing glass things, and SOME of them will probably 'graduate' to Fishers, Scotts, perhaps even McIntosh and Marantz stuff as they get a little older.
And as long as there are a few of those out there, and an internet with places like AK where they can learn about the old stuff, perhaps the love of and preservation of high-quality sound gear will not die out completely... or at least not so soon.
That is something that some of us --myself included-- profoundly wish for.
One last, parting thought. Today I got to see something really special (to me)... a Forsell system including the "Statement" amplifier. A huge (suitcase-sized!) shiny black amplifier with deeply engraved lettering on it, 400 real class A watts per channel. [You read that right!] This particular one was number 37, out of a grand total of 100 that were EVER made. One was kept by the company, so there were 99 of them sold into the market. It is for sale at the greatly-reduced asking price of only $15,000. The sound of that gear is... well, lets just say it was HIGH fidelity, in every sense of the term. I just cannot stretch my budget THAT far, for an amplifier, but I'm sure it will sell.
Mr. Forsell made his fortune making medical equipment, but turned part of his attention to his love, hi-fi audio gear, and created some very special stuff. Rockport gear was and is, similarly, the work of primarily one man, Andy Paynor. How many Sirius series TTs were made? I don't know, but I know it wasn't many. Much of the best gear is made like that, and many of the more well-known brands started out as enthusiast's 'garage' businesses like that.
I believe that as long as there are individuals out there with both the knowledge and the passion to create such things, and just ENOUGH people to buy them --even if their numbers are only on the order of 100, like that Forsell amp-- then there will always be SOME kind of high-end audio 'industry.' If it has to shrink to a tiny niche, then so be it. It may well be that the mid-fi market becomes dominated by similar "boutique" and "niche" products, and the mass-market is full of compressed, digital cr*pola. If so, then ce la vie. Let it Be. I'll wear earplugs and still turn on my good stuff at home...as, I'm sure, SOME other people will, people whom I'll probably be able to find online, right here at AK. Let's hope the same can be said for three or four generations hence.
Alternatively, if the wristwatch-sized audio soundfield projector of the future can give me Forsell-quality sound while I'm traveling on the subway, in a disposable unit that costs just five dollars, well, I'm all for that, too!
