Why Don't More People Love Audio?

Good question. Maybe, they think high-end systems are too complicated to put together for an occasional listening experience. As I commented in a my own thread similar to this one, I often hear from guests that why do I play it (so) loud. I listen to lot of classic rock, but am not a headbanger. My explanation is/was: to properly pressurize the room to give the sound the appropriate dynamics intended by the musicians and sound engineer. I can state from experience that Scott Joplin's Piano Rags sound better loud than at medium or low level. Also, louder music conveys more emotion and has more evocative power. Well....by that time, I have lost my guests in what they surmise as some kind of elists hobby. Yet, many will not disarage their department store system, or surround sound set-up. Therefore, to avoid the discomfort and embarrassment, I listen alone-- no guests anymore. Possibly sad, but it satisfies me. Today, I listened straight threw Bell and Sebastian's "Dear Catastrophe Waitress". I enjoyed the session, though I was listening to evaluate new room placement of my speakers. At the same time, I was never distracted from the musical brilliance of these young musicians. I did not want or have to explain what I believe makes them musical innovators of the pop tune. And this is another reason why many people do not love audio. They either want to groove to the beat---no problem, or "just like the music" or its presentation, but that is the extent of many people's musical "experience". The evolution of lets say "pop music" is not a consideration for most listeners. The Bell and Sebastian disc, I mentioned, evokes pieces and genres of pop music which I can't put my finger on exactly; there is a bit of early Fleetwood Mack, the Birds, Donovan, Hollies, Beatles in several of their albums, and even a few reworked bars from the Grateful Dead's "Sugar Magnolia" and "Jack Straw from Wichita" Their abilty to synthesize various musical styles and lines is miraculous. Lastly, I think the way audiophiles venerate good sound as the product of good design that is, "science in the service of art", is a highly personal and intellectual pursuit that turns many people off as elist. I know that is a gross misjudgement on their part.

I've asked myself this question a lot and I ask myself because I've lamented the decline of high end shops who
have been faced with selling primarily projectors, screens
and receivers or they die a quick death. I live in a city big enough to support an NBA team, but has been reduced from 6 to 2 true audio stores since the 90s and this theme is being repeated elsewhere. I talked to a dealer the other day about my dream of one day having a shop and he basically told me I'd go broke regardless what I did unless I had a commitment to home theatre.

So to the central question:

I call it the hamburger A effect.

There is a restaurant 100 miles from my home that serves buffalo burgers that are some of the best tasting I've ever had in my life. When I've taken out of towners there, they also echo that it was a transcendent experience, yet the place is in the woods, quite literally.

The fact that not everyone has experienced the place has skewed their view on burger reality in that their reference for a great burger might range from fast food
to a local place of theirs, but unless they've read about, heard about or tasted my reference burger then they are doomed to burger mediocrity.

I bring this bad comparison in because in the 1980s at the age of 16, I was already into audio but my reference was Klipsch, Yamaha etc. A friend of mine bought and sold used gear and we went to a high end shop to pick up a pair of Acoustat 2x2's with the Acoustat servo amps behind them from a Model X being driven by an ARC SP-6 preamp and a very well done up Linn turntable with the moving coil of that day. The freshly traded in dirty Acoustats had a Sheffield labs LP was playing through them and I sat there just taken, mesmerized by how I could close my eyes and almost crawl inside the instruments. It was the first time I heard "texture" in music versus just notes.

Most audiophiles have begun with an experience like that, where subsequent to that, they "chase" that memory or that experience, or another unseen one because they know what is possible after that.

The fundamental difference between an audiophile and what we would refer to as a non audiophile is simply that experience, that moment.

Rich guy with the Pioneer receiver and Cerwin Vegas never had the benefit of that experience. His reference has always been mid-fi.

There are others that simply have a passing interest in
music period and therefore have no use for high end audio
even though they might be aware of it's existence, but
there are a whole other group that WOULD be passionate
about the equipment side if they had ever been exposed
to anything outside a big box store.

Again, it's confused and disappointed me as to why
this is a small community, when music at large is not
but I am encouraged by what I see happening with Analog
today and I am hopeful that as time goes by, the mediocrity
of I-Tunes will bring people full circle by which
they just want something "better" whether they've
experienced it or not....

You will find 1 in a million that cares about AUDIO ENOUGH to CARE about the SOUND of what they have and or are buying. Select audiophiles and or some people actually listen to what they are buying. MOST ALL buy because someone else says its good. Should clean out their ears, oh well.

10 year old thread, wow.
Part of the blame goes to the poor marketing within the retail sector.
Most high end audio shops, (before the internet did a Sherman's March to the sea) treat it as if it's brain surgery and talk down to customers. I know, I owned a shop for 15 years, then traveled the US to stores from NY to Tustin, CA, to Washington State, to Coral Gables, Florida.
Rarely did anyone within these stores exhibit the kind (note I said rarely) of professionalism that would pull a casual hobbyiest into the mainstream.
With the prices of high end gear, the sales staff needs to be very, very professional and excellent communicators, not a haughty, afectatious, superior acting twerps--the description of many I met in my travels.
Ask one hundred people to name a loudspeaker and 99+ will of course say, Bose. The only company founded by a man with two degrees--IN MARKETING.

Good listening,
Larry

Most everyone involved came on board when the ground was fertile and the crops couldn't fail. Now that there is a shrinking market and an inexplicably expanding manufacturing base, times are getting very tight.

If audio had been more welcoming and less elitist, perhaps the customer base might have expanded laterally. Now the only hope of survival seems to require reselling, rebadging, renaming, regurgitating the same stuff to the same people over and over ad infinitum. But the rancidity is becoming difficult to ignore. The excitement is gone. The superlatives have all been overused. The ultra dream stuff is no longer a carrot dangling just out of reach. It now requires a powerful lens to be seen because it is so far out of reach. Big disincentive.

My own theory on the astronomical pricing is this: sales are scarce at every level but if you can sell just a couple of items at twenty times their cost (and there are enough zeroes involved) you can stay in biz and continue to dream about the return of those halcyon days of Levinson and Krell. Heck, when you're not busy you may as well dream.

I'm retired.