You are all right on. IMHO
I am 53, 35, forever into eternity (God's system rocks!)
My first, full-time job out of high school was in an audio showroom.
I took a "raisin' kids" break for 10 years, due to limited $$$, but have now looked to rebuild a system. It has been bizarre. First instinct was to return to what I had-ish. Old school media, etc.
Due to a major shift in musical taste I booted my entire content at the 10 year ago point.
This means, now I am both old school (in muscle memory) and new school (in building EVERYTHING from scratch).
Options like Class D amps, MQA encoding, $15/mo unlimited content and Roon Labs to play it, etc., is cramping my memory muscle.
I have ended up returning to what I knew, more so, especially as the new is REALLY new and I want no to live on the bleeding edge. Yet, I wonder about just how good the old stuff I have bought still is (not an engineer, DIY type). I look at the bottle of De-Oxit I bought and wonder if I want to learn how to use it at the expense of my $4000 Audiogon system (McCormack, Azur, Inifinity, Transparent -- to give you a sense) or, just wait for the "next-fen" gear to purchase.
Frankly, the real rub seems to be that in no way can I imagine ever buying the content in traditional media to support a "best system" -- even if the system were given to me free in a will!
That media would have to become much less expensive than it is now, especially in it's currently inflated "fad stage". This said, I will admit a great challenge I see in the subscription service (MQA) option is being able to know the source. Honestly, I think therein lies the great opportunity of this age. To make an MQA encoded digital content library worthy of the old school, class A, gear. A library provable as drawn from the purest spring and put in a digital pipe to drink.
Whatever gear elegantly serves both ear and pipe fitting will do just fine in the market place.
Next to all that, but entirely separate, is the great recession we are only now beginning to come out of. Twice a century, a major business cycle event happens, such as we have just had. In the last 100 years, it was the great depression and the great recession.
Following such an event the recovery tail is MUCH longer than the normal 3-4 years of a standard business cycle. It can be 10-15 years before an economy "returns" in all ways. This is a correct statement to the record of the last 700 years!
Where we are now, two things are real (historically and I believe also today) the upper 20% of the population sees around 5% growth in their wealth (mostly from investment) as the markets recover first. The other 20% have a flat wealth experience during the flatter main street recovery tail.
Two results in behavior:
1. Luxury items are ON HOLD!
1. Populous politics rule.
SO.
Audio is experiencing a metamorphosis in content form and delivery.
Wallets owned by the masses are closed for another few years.
Folks with last gen gear/content are in a season where they should enjoy the music and put me in their will.
(Am I joking?)
"Enjoy the music"!
Lan
BTW, I like Hans Beekhuyzen's reviews!
