This ended up being a long post, and I probably ramble a bit.
I find it really interesting that so many buyers today are so price oriented that they dont really seem to care what the products sound like. I always wanted to purchase the item/items that produced magic rather than WOW i bought it used for 30 cents on the dollar.
This is a real phenomenon and I see and hear it all the time. I dont want product X because I have to buy it retail but I cant get something "similar" used on Audiogon or Ebay.
This is hardly a new phenomenon. "I can get something better for cheaper" has been uttered since the day currency was invented.
Its all good enough and the fact that everything gets a great review ( a whole other subject since there seems to be as many reviewers as products these day) has made Audio just a commodity!!!!!
SAD SAD SAD but true.
I'd venture that the same people saying "I can get something better for less" generally don't pay the audiophile press much attention. I do agree that there are too many bloggers/reviewers, but that's the reality of the internet, and has had effects on every industry, not just audio.
Most of the major brands of the past are mostly irrelevant or gone and the process of Audio companies combining is in full swing.
Boutique brands (and audiophile brands are almost be definition boutique) rarely survive in their original state after the original founder retires/dies/gets bored and sells. There are always new startups to replace them.
The future seems to be a bunch of traveling shows, like the arts and crafts things we have here in Florida,
Is this a bad thing? I love attending RMAF, seeing a vast amount of gear, and picking and choosing which items I want to know more about. For anyone living outside of NY, LA, SF, and a few other very large cities, it's the only way to be exposed to a large amount of gear. And, given the short time between exposure to different systems that are all in identical rooms, I find the shows to be very useful.
and websites where the opinions flow like beer in the bleachers on a Saturday afternoon in July. All the readers making comments on what they have not heard or heard through a audio drive buy.
As opposed to commissioned salepeople who bad mouth gear they've never heard because they don't carry it? Opinions are like holes, and the internet generation has been raised to be cynical about unsolicited opinions online.
I see so many Audiophiles have these combination style systems that should be called " I got a deal Systems"
One from here , one from there, but I got a great deal.
These people have existed since forever, and are certainly not limited to audio. They also buy mismatched furniture, poor-quality knifes and cookware, and any other item that other people might be passionate about.
I guess the fast food Audio generation has finally taken control.
This is a needlessly inflammatory condemnation of my generation.
Beats and Bose has won due to the lack of the Audio Industry not having the balls to tell the truth, to inform and educate the consumers and specifiers.
Beats and Bose won by having superior funding and marketing. But you contradict yourself, because the same people who say "I could get better for less" would actually be correct in this case, and would likely buy superior products for less money.
The golden era of quality audio may be wasted on the old and I fear the young will look at music in the future as little more than what they get from the local drive in window.
For $10 a month, you can have access to the full spotify library of over 12 million songs. If that's what getting music from the local drive in window looks like, you can count me in.
Now, I'm a part of the small portion of the population that cares about sound quality, so I'll end up buying that music in a lossless format (redbook for me).
A number of older audiophiles, both here and on every other internet forum, will bemoan the supposedly shrinking number of audiophiles. I don't buy it. I think that, as a percentage of the population as a whole, the number that are actually concerned about quality hasn't changed. Now, the societal pressure to have a stereo in the home has dwindled considerably, but the people who bought consoles in the '50s and '60s because that was what you did were not audiophiles then [in the sense that this forum uses the term audiophile], and they aren't now. Yes, flat screens and smart phones have replaced consoles and floor-standing speakers as conspicuous consumption, but again, these weren't people who were chasing high-end sound. These were people who wanted to show off when the neighbors came over for dinner.
"Kids" these days are buying high-quality audio, but they're not buying component systems. They're building computer-based systems using DACs and headphones, because it fits their needs and lifestyles, and because it fits their budgets. Head-fi shows that they have almost 350,000 registered members, which I believe makes it the largest audio-related forum (I could be wrong on this). This is not a small market. Judging by the number of new headphones being released by the established brands, they clearly recognize this.
And if you haven't noticed, from an economic perspective it is a terrible time to be young. Wages are stagnant, unemployment for new graduates is extremely high, and those lucky enough to find work are constantly reminded how close they are to being on the street. At the same time, the price of the "audiophile" brands continue to skyrocket. It's no wonder that young audiophiles don't consider buying these brands.
So what does get considered? Brands that are easily available online, with good return policies (think Schiit). Lots of used equipment. Portable equipment, since having space for a full system is becoming more rare.
Now, there are some things that the younger generation doesn't get right. Generally, they've moved way too far into the objective camp. As an example, when I initially set up my current computer-based system, my audio had to be routed via HDMI through my TV and then from the TV's analog out to my amp. For reasons that would be obvious to anyone here, it sounded terrible. But when I asked for suggestions for an inexpensive DAC on another forum (not audio-specific), I got pushback over the idea that using an external DAC would sound any different, because "the digital to analog conversion has basically been perfected and they all use the same chips anyway." I've also been told that preamplifiers can make no difference in sound quality because their S/N ratios are all beyond the limits of human hearing. Let's not even bother talking about amps or cabling.
The supremely objective "measurements only" voices tend to be very loud. I would venture that they get listened to more than they should because money is so tight for the younger generation as a whole, and because the younger generation wants to believe that they base their decisions on science, rather than emotion.
So, you have a cash-strapped individual who wants good sound, and buys in to what he reads because it means he can save money. He buys a hodgepodge system of potentially-clashing components. Maybe he gets lucky and there's good synergy, so he stops. Maybe he's unlucky and there isn't. If he can't hear it or doesn't care, then I'm not concerned. If he can hear it and does care, he'll most likely move on towards being more of what you would think of as a "traditional" audiophile. But posts like this do nothing to welcome him in, and do a lot more to drive him away.
If you do want to see more young "traditional" audiophiles, stop badmouthing the way they do things. I fully committed to audiophilia when I was 23 (first real stereo). Over the last 11 years I've gotten really tired of listening to people talk down at my generation simply because we do things differently.
