Any Young Audiophiles Out There?

I delivered newspapers and mowed lawns in elementary and junior high school to buy my first Technics receiver and Infinity Qa speakers, which I upgraded to an SME tonearm, Grado Signature cartridge, Hafler amps and Magneplanars by the time I was 15.

30 years later, I still treasure every spare minute I can find to read, study or experiment with the 4 systems and spare components now in my house, and still love to discover some new music or revisit favourite old music.

I may be wrong, but my sense is if I grew up listening mostly to hip hop and/or the Jonas Brothers none of this would have ever happened.

I am 40+ and I own and use Grados, Shures, Sennheisers and Etymotics with both Grado and Headroom external headphone amplifiers.

Most kids I see these days are listening to ear buds, and usually with hip hop or the Jonas Brothers, as noted above which may not encourage the use of high fidelity equipment.

The reason I know this is because I can hear their choice of "music" and the distortion of their earbuds very clearly whenever I take the New York subway, even from a few feet away and over and above the noise of the train.

To be clear, I am talking about the E train to Fifth Avenue in midtown, so the music could be different on the outskirts of town.

But I maintain that the decline of civilization is at least partially to blame.