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Why Our Hobby Won't Grow

audiofred said:
But wait!!!
We may not be large in number, but the folks listening to their iPods and MP3's will "accidently discover" some old analog device and go WOW!
As I did when I bought a couple of older US made cars with decent cassette decks and fairly nice audio systems. It'ssss so good to hear that audio again!

Fred
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I suspect this cohort is not the future of our hobby, unless you were referring specifically to vintage.

IMO, the future is digital, either uncompressed or lossless digital files, or streaming audio/video run through some sort of digital server or interface giving the user access to vast libraries of music, along with artwork, essays or suggestions for further exploration, even tutorials for those who do not get what the artist is trying to do, and most likely, video. Presumably, people will need to pay for the device, possibly the service (I suspect in the future people will actually own no physical media so buy what you can now) and for amplification and speakers, which might be combined and deployed around a room wirelessly.
 
devnull said:
Outlive? Eh, I don't quite see that, or at least not presently. They coexist if anything. In the long run, who knows, but while many discuss the resurgence of vinyl, sales aren't exactly overwhelming. Last year there were 1.88 million new vinyl albums sold, an increase of 89% over what was sold in 2007. In comparison, CD album sales were 428 million. While in decline, CD sales are going to have to fall a long way, for a long time to see vinyl sales surpass them.

The CDs themselves only represent a storage medium, the process to play the music stored on them is effectively the same as something stored in whatever digital format on another storage medium. That process I don't see fading in popularity for a long, long time.

The method you mention regarding controlling a music feed from your phone is intriguing. No iPhone here -- Android/HTC Magic. I'll consider something like that in the future no doubt, but am in no hurry as of now.

John
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Quite right. See my above post for my thoughts about the future. Vinyl will probably hit a wall soon and slowly decline to its early 2000 levels, and eventually fade away as the boomers pass on in the next 25 or 30 years. CDs will also become a legacy format as digital continues to advance, and mp3 will fade away as new higher quality standards emerge, mp3 will be remembered as the am radio of digital.
 
mrt2 said:
Quite right. See my above post for my thoughts about the future. Vinyl will probably hit a wall soon and slowly decline to its early 2000 levels, and eventually fade away as the boomers pass on in the next 25 or 30 years. CDs will also become a legacy format as digital continues to advance, and mp3 will fade away as new higher quality standards emerge, mp3 will be remembered as the am radio of digital.
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Very reasonable post.

I think the LP thing is about nostalgia, trendiness and the enjoyment of machinery. Those nostalgic will die off, trends will (indeed MUST) change leaving LPs (shoot me if I say "vinyl") to those who enjoy the machines and/or think LPs sound better.

Me, I like the machine but I don't think LPs sound better. They can sound very good of course.
 
Tom Brennan said:
Very reasonable post.

I think the LP thing is about nostalgia, trendiness and the enjoyment of machinery. Those nostalgic will die off, trends will (indeed MUST) change leaving LPs (shoot me if I say "vinyl") to those who enjoy the machines and/or think LPs sound better.

Me, I like the machine but I don't think LPs sound better. They can sound very good of course.
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I invite you a couple of blocks west to counter your thoughts about it being just about nostalgia. :D

I admit to liking the feel of vinyl, but in my own system there is absolutely no contest on sound. The LP wipes the floor with digital, and I'm not running a terrible CD player, nor do I have anything against digital as I own thousands of CDs. I just wish it sounded as 'live' and real as vinyl (I said it..I said vinyl). Last night another AKer and I listened to LPs for several hours. We played a few CDs but gravitated right back to LP. It's all just personal preference, of course, but there are a few of us (and a few of us who aren't boomers) who are very passionate about records because of the sound, not just the tactile experience. It's a b**ch getting all that sound off of them, I'll admit that, and not cheap.

But I also think that the cost of getting all that info off of the record is going to keep LPs in a very niche market for as long as they last. Many are playing for nostalgia without ever realizing just how much information is on an LP.
 
but there are a few of us (and a few of us who aren't boomers) who are very passionate about records because of the sound, not just the tactile experience.
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I'm going to second JohnVF here. LPs have nothing to do with nostalgia for me, or for most of the people I know (from the younger generations) who are using turntables. The "vinyl craze" never went anywhere, it just went underground; lps were (and still are) a huge part of the punk/indie community.

It was years later that I truly realized--for me--the vinyl medium offered a sound that was more lifelike and more engaging. With that said, I love CDs too.
 
Echoes Myron said:
I'm going to second JohnVF here. LPs have nothing to do with nostalgia for me, or for most of the people I know (from the younger generations) who are using turntables. The "vinyl craze" never went anywhere, it just went underground; lps were (and still are) a huge part of the punk/indie community.

It was years later that I truly realized--for me--the vinyl medium offered a sound that was more lifelike and more engaging. With that said, I love CDs too.
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I listened to LPs for probably 15 years before I realized that they can actually sound better than digital. Blew my mind...and now, it's blowing through me wallet!
 
It all depends on your definition of 'our hobby'. If you are talking strictly 'vintage stereo', I will agree, with no memories, and no nostalgia, that part of our hobby is and will die off in the younger generation (myself included), many of us will use it as a starting point, but few will see it as the end of the road. Nostalgia seekers of my generation will be more likely to reach for their first generation I-pod, their Discman, or their vintage CD-player and pro-logic era HT receiver.

On the other hand, if you are talking about interest in quality audio and stereo in general (the 'Audiophile' hobby), I would say there will still be a healthy following, though the interest in upscale sound reproduction has always been relatively tiny, and will remain so.
 
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I feel I got sidetracked there. So...back to the topic.

I've been thinking a lot about this topic, and I feel the only real threat to our hobby has nothing to do with the gear. It has to do with whether or not good music remains available, and I think it will. The internet is allowing musicians to distribute their own music. Pretty much anybody can record an album now, and the sound quality is only limited by their own ability to record (I've heard fantastic home recordings and terrible ones.). A lot of this compression-wars stuff will go away because pop radio will probably go away. We'll be left with a million small labels creating music out of basements and small recording studios, from artists who just want to make music and don't care so much about making a billion dollars. They'll do it for the passion of the art, and not the cash. It's already happening.

A lot of people judge the health of the music industry on what is going on in the mainstream, but the mainstream is on life support. It's done. You no longer have to cater your tastes to what is played on the radio. If you like a sound, chances are there is a band out there, or small chamber orchestra, or jazz ensemble, that is recording that sound. You just have to find it.

The reports of today's youth only embracing music on though ringtones are greatly exaggerated by people who don't spend any time with today's youth. Independent music among younger people is exploding. Everybody is in a band. It is so much easier to release an album now than when I was making records in my basement just ten years ago.

With all this music comes people that want to hear it. Right now, they don't have a boatload of money. But you know what? A lot of them know great sound because they have some really nice headphones. A great pair of headphones can rival speakers costing ten or more times their price. Flac is replacing MP3. Who knows what is coming after that.

Our hobby probably won't grow, but it will still be around because people will always love music.
 
I have not read all the responses but a number and I'm not sure what "our hobby" refers to. If, 2-channel audio, then it is limited I think. It only represents a brief period in a long period of communication development and music delivery starting with live acoustic music through what we have today. We went from live to mechanical with a decrease in fidelity that has actually never been capable of coming up to the live instrument. Then electrical apparatus and mono then during which time potentially the highest level of music delivery was interoduced, the high speed reel to reel full-track system but then came along 2-channel and the 1st compromise to reduce quality was converting the reel to reel to a half track and then standardizing on the quarter-track 7 1/2ips or even worse the 3 3/4ips formats. LPs came out and generally were an improvement over the 78. Then SS but, I'll stay away from the tube vs transistor debate, then probably the 1st big use vs fidelity format, the 4-track and not much later the 8-track tape cartridges. The could stay competitve in sound to the reel to reel format but never developed as the next use vs fidelity change hit the market and killed these formats, the cassette. This probably was the steepest degeneration in fidelity but it spawned a whole new ability of the public so it was foregivable. It killed reel to reel in almost no time and started the demise of records as a mass medium. The CD vs analog debate is not of interest but its introduction all but wiped out the record industry and lilled it as a mass media.

The CD being digital opened a whole new technology branch for this communications journey and with the digitization of video, the parellel path of video and audio are converging. This process is in its infancy, the technology is still coming together and I suspect the next generation what we use and see will be materially different from what we have today, the pieces are coming together but, industry and public acceptance prohibit a large leap.

Even as an old guy who loves his 40+ year old 2-channel system can not see why anyone would invest in a 2-channel system today from scratch to listen to music when I can have both visual and audio gratification. I can see in the next generation 2-channel collecting becoming smaller and looking more like the antique radio collecting of today. Yes, there will be users but the population of these persons will continue to decrease probably to a somewhat stable number through multiple generations.

I am happy I lived through the tube mono days and the development of where we are today but there were times I was less happy beginning with the advent of the cassette but I got over it well, recently. A long time to hold a grudge. It is good that your children have become interested but a big factor in whether the hobby is taken up will be the significant other when he/she comes on the scene, life styles, housing and other factors so don't expect interests to be continuing.
 
JohnVF said:
I invite you a couple of blocks west to counter your thoughts about it being just about nostalgia. :D

I admit to liking the feel of vinyl, but in my own system there is absolutely no contest on sound. The LP wipes the floor with digital, and I'm not running a terrible CD player, nor do I have anything against digital as I own thousands of CDs. I just wish it sounded as 'live' and real as vinyl (I said it..I said vinyl). Last night another AKer and I listened to LPs for several hours. We played a few CDs but gravitated right back to LP. It's all just personal preference, of course, but there are a few of us (and a few of us who aren't boomers) who are very passionate about records because of the sound, not just the tactile experience. It's a b**ch getting all that sound off of them, I'll admit that, and not cheap.

But I also think that the cost of getting all that info off of the record is going to keep LPs in a very niche market for as long as they last. Many are playing for nostalgia without ever realizing just how much information is on an LP.
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You are talking about the present and to some extent, the past of our hobby with your analog rig. My view is that vinyl is a dead end not because of any negative judgment about the sound quality or the lack of convenience. Vinyl cannot grow much more because the machines that make the lps are really old, and to my knowledge, no major company has invested to build new ones. In other words, the machines that make brand new lps are the same machines that made lps 30 to 50 years ago. And they are getting older and more fragile by the day.
 
mrt2 said:
You are talking about the present and to some extent, the past of our hobby with your analog rig. My view is that vinyl is a dead end not because of any negative judgment about the sound quality or the lack of convenience. Vinyl cannot grow much more because the machines that make the lps are really old, and to my knowledge, no major company has invested to build new ones. In other words, the machines that make brand new lps are the same machines that made lps 30 to 50 years ago. And they are getting older and more fragile by the day.
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That was basically me drifting off-topic. I don't know that vinyl will grow from where it is now, but if a machine has lasted 50 years, I don't see why it wouldn't last another 50. You don't need to remanufacture an entire machine to keep it running. There's a couple of interesting articles floating around that detail some of these companies that are pressing new vinyl. It seems that it's not the pressing/cutting machines that are holding back quality, it's the know-how of how to actually work them, in clean environments, etc.
 
JohnVF said:
That was basically me drifting off-topic. I don't know that vinyl will grow from where it is now, but if a machine has lasted 50 years, I don't see why it wouldn't last another 50. You don't need to remanufacture an entire machine to keep it running. There's a couple of interesting articles floating around that detail some of these companies that are pressing new vinyl. It seems that it's not the pressing/cutting machines that are holding back quality, it's the know-how of how to actually work them, in clean environments, etc.
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I don't know where, but I read that the problem is both old machines that are more prone to breaking or going out of spec., and lack of knowledge of how to run the aging equipment. As for the idea that it last for 50 years, why not another 50, keep in mind that all machines have a limit and eventually need to be replaced.
 
mrt2 said:
I don't know where, but I read that the problem is both old machines that are more prone to breaking or going out of spec., and lack of knowledge of how to run the aging equipment. As for the idea that it last for 50 years, why not another 50, keep in mind that all machines have a limit and eventually need to be replaced.
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Well, as somebody who's starting to get really fed up with having to deoxit his Fisher 300b's level controls once a week, I can't really argue with the logic of that.

But my feelings of the future of the hobby are in a later post. My view of the hobby isn't limited to whether or not vinyl survives, at least in the form of new pressings. If records stop being pressed and played, people will still be listening to something else. The hobby of HiFI probably peaked in the '70s, but the idea of listening to music at home in a high fidelity format will go on for a long time. Why? Because people like to one-up each other. It seems endemic to our nature. Saying 'my songs sound better than yours' is a one-up that seems to have a pretty long life span.
 
College/university life is a great opportunity to expose quality sound and LP's to the youngsters.....my daughter's system has infected others and will continue to do so!
 
It's pretty cool to see all the "niche" reissues coming out on small labels, both LP and CD. At this point all of this music is available in some low resolution form for "free" online, so that to me is an encouraging sign.
 
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