Can anyone explain why high end audio seems to be forever stuck as a cottage industry? Why do my rich friends who absolutely have to have the BEST of everything and wouldn't be caught dead without expensive clothes, watch, car, home, furniture etc. settle for cheap mass produced components stuck away in a closet somewhere? I can hardly afford to go out to dinner, but I wouldn't dream of spending any less on audio or music.
How about "audio galleries" where companies loan their equipment? People pay $10-20 and can listen to the "B&W" room or the YG Acoustics room. There would be no pressure to buy, the entrance fees covers operating expenses, and no overhead like a dealer who has to buy the stuff as it would be on loan.
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.
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.
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.
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....
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 think a lot of it has to do with the degradation of our society. I've been pondering the differences in my own family lately. What I've come up with is, that it is a fact that every preceding generation becomes increasingly unaware or has no clue as to what good sound means to humanity. It "is" in fact a most basic part of who we are. In no other medium, can we expect to get so much pleasure or enjoyment.
There are alot of great points on this subject. I just spent 30 minutes reading them. Now let me give you my opinion. I grew up with a father that was a musician and I was exposed to all kinds of music as a child. I had my first audio system when I was 15 years old. When I was 18 my father took me to a store that carried high-end audio. From the moment I heard that gear I was hooked. That was 32 years ago and I'm still just as hooked as when I was 18 years old. I think the reason people don't love audio is because they have never been exposed to it. If my father had not exposed me to it 32 years ago I would not be on Audiogon today. I'm not saying everyone that get's exposed to it will get hooked. But there will always be a small percentage that will be and they could possibly keep this hobby going.
And to continue the guitar analogy: if he changes his mind, goes back and orders the custom made instrument it will sound very impressive only when he plays a certain style of music, and only selected pieces within the repetoire of that. The sort of music he enjoyed picking out on his first, cheap guitar will sound very ordinary, even mediocre ...
They also don't see the reason to buy 7 monobloc amplifiers for $7,000 when an Onkyo receiver has 7 channels in a small box.
When you say it like that, what is the reason?
The "average Joe" walks into a Guitar Center and buys an American Fender Strat for around $1,200. The audiophile spin on this would be to tell the guy that his Strat is just okay and that he really should buy a hand made instrument from some luthier in Oregon for $20,000 and upwards (14 months wait list). You explain that it's a much better guitar and will sound better. Joe Average walks away laughing and he's laughing at you.
There are several reasons why high end audio is a niche market. One of the main reasons is that the average person simply doesn't know this equipment exists. I have had to educate several of my co-workers on the fact that there really does exist sound quality which is MUCH MUCH MUCH better than mass-market. They are used to hearing the receivers from Wal Mart, Best Buy, and department stores. They don't even know that there exists stores which set all their gear up like how it would be in a house. They don't know anything about Vandersteen, Krell, or Magnepan because they don't see them at the "big box" retailers.
The other problem is the price. People get turned off when they hear about a $3,000 CD player. They would rather spend that money on something else because they read that "bit for bit all CD players sound the same because they are digital" and don't see the reason to spend big money. They also don't see the reason to buy 7 monobloc amplifiers for $7,000 when an Onkyo receiver has 7 channels in a small box. Blame defunct magazines like Stereo Review for emphasizing cheap gear while at the same time mocking the expensive equipment.
The root of this is education and advertising. I'm sure that if high end audio was marketed like diamonds, expensive cars, and wedding dresses were then we'd see Arcam and Jolida as often as we now see Sony and Pioneer. People need to know this stuff exists and they need to know that it is worth the money. Until then high end audio will remain a cottage industry.
Okay guys, I'm still feeling Christmasy so I won't let you rattle me for the moment ... :-) I'll have another go at explaining my (to me, perfectly valid) examples, down the track ...
I was picking nits. I just thought his examples were really bad. Put five luxury cars in a lineup and unless you're a valet at a boutique hotel you won't be able to start them three of them without being shown how. Setting the heat control on the vibrating rear head rest also is as intuitive as it could be in some models.
Onhwy61 - You are not being argumentative but rather setting the record straight. If this, or any discussion, is to be productive and rewarding it needs to be restricted to factual arguments, reliable data, and responsible assertions. When someone veers off course in any of those areas, it is incumbent upon the likes of you to introduce corrections. Thanks for keeping things honest. And Merry Christmas.
To be totally argumentative, Ikea is RTA which is at the other end of the sofa from plug in and play. Also modern luxury cars require fairly detailed instruction before you can safely operate them and you cannot maintain them without dealer assistance.
Frank - Very few people ever get to the point of finding audio complicated because they lack the motivation to find audio.
I don't know if I can type slowly enough for all of you obstinate audio freaks to get it but the harsh reality is this:
We are oddballs - eccentrics - what we find irresistible is of no interest whatsoever to the vast majority of our fellow citizens. Just accept that. There is no magic solution to this non-problem.
Sorry, Onhwy61, what you talk of is NOT plug and play. Yes, manufacturers make all the main bits, which harmonise visually and hopefully sound wise, but they do NOT come as a complete package.
I am talking here of the Ikea experience: you walk in, say, "I want one of those please", have one, two, three, etc cartons to take home or be delivered. Open the boxes, everything is there, and I mean EVERYTHING, all the appropriate quality cables, stands, the funny bits that get it to work WELL, with simple, exceedingly clear instructions on how to hook it together, and especially all the little tips and techniques for getting the best out of it. If the dealer has to do it, then people will say, "how much of the price of my system is the paying of this fellow to do this?"
Buy a luxury car, you go to the showroom, dealer points out a few things, hands you the keys and you drive off. Buy a top notch HDTV, you put it on a stand or table, plug in power cord and aerial, kick off a totally automated setup and it shows pretty pictures. Both items just WORK with no fuss at all and that's what counts.
Remember, the question is "Why Don't MORE(!!) People Love Audio?". Why, because it is all too complicated! People have mental breakdowns getting a cheap and nasty home theatre box working, after all ... :-)
I don't know that it's so much a case of not many people liking high quality audio as how many people actually like music to any degree. I am now 50+ and since leaving my teens have met very few people who really like music as we know it. You can forget the charts and the people who used to populate them, most of them (in my experience) only bought the odd single - the charts were simply made up by millions of occasional purchases. You could go to any of my friends houses, once they had reached adulthood and all it's inherent trappings and other distractions and the best you'd ever find there would be one of those little stacking systems. Their collection would perhaps be up to 30 CDs, often "Best ofs" and hits albums.
I would posit then that it's real music enthusiasts that are in the minority - the audio factor is then a small proportion of that minuscule figure.
When I grew up getting a "stereo" was part and parcel of the journey and considered the norm. Now kids have far too many distractions - gaming being the most obvious and prevalent. Having music is now considered a small element of life, taking its place alongside games, mobile technology PCs etc etc. For most people who know no other ethos, the quality of music is immaterial - it seems enough to have music wherever and whenever. Now I like music in the car but have no desire to have it elsewhere. My listening at home is split between via the PC, when I am working, or "proper" listening on the main system. The latter is the most important to me, as is it's high quality but that's not to say that other listening is devalued. I just need my hi-def fix.
there are many things competing for our attention and interest. we are bombarded every day by all kinds of stimuli.
the priority of listening to music characterized by "sonic excellence" , probably is not cogent for most people, who prefer to listen to music in the background mode.
mpst people have no interest in listening to music as an exclusive activity.
For most people music is what matters, not electronics. Playing with expensive electronics just to listen to music is unecessary to the majority of people, hence the lack of interest in it.
Well then, it's settled - the reason why more people don't love audio is simply due to their not having found their flavor.
It couldn't have anything to do with their immunity to this particular obsession or their inability to spend this sort of money (or any at all) on audio toys. It isn't because they spend all of their disposable income on hunting, fishing, skiing, flying, sailing, racing, stamp collecting, college, bicycles, dog shows, rodeos, computer gaming, travel, each other or their church. It isn't because they are fighting foreclosure or have already fallen under that axe. And above all, with god as my witness, under no circumstances could it conceivably be because everything sounds the same to them and they could care less.
Oh, one more thing, 20,000,000 Americans are hard of hearing. That figure includes stone deaf, deaf in one ear, and needing a hearing aid to converse. Even if some of these people can hear music, they cannot appreciate qualitative differences in playback.
If you enjoy high end audio, lay back and bask in it. If you are concerned that other people don't value it as much as you do, then it would seem that you are seeking reinforcement and should re-evaluate your own commitment.
Music is nice but so are many other things. My wife likes to grow things in her garden and knit sweaters. She has a phenomenal sound system at her disposal and doesn't seem to mind that fact, but it can't replace those other things she values and enjoys. I think she is more "normal" than we are.
Better systems do come in a plug in and play formats. Single brand systems from Decware, Krell, Quad, Meridian, McIntosh, MBL and others are readily available. Or you could even let dealer select and setup a system for you. It's not that difficult to get high quality sound. I think many people on Audiogon make it complicated. They don't want to pay too much money and they want it personalized. It's more fun that way.
As has already been mentioned once (and probably more, I didn't check) better systems don't come as a straightforward plug and play; instead there are myriads of if's and but's that (the salesman claims) are necessary to make it work just right. The luxury car market, for example, got this sort of thing sorted out a long time ago.
And, if a system works really, really well, it will take over the house in an auditory sense; I mean, if you really had the Stones live cranking it up in the end room would you really be able to push it into the background, and get on with the mundane things of life. At least, that's what the better half says (and I mean that in a positive, not negative sense) ... :-)
No doubt there are most likely way more music lovers in the world than audiophile/techno-obsessive types.
I believe most of these tendencies are well established as youths and have perhaps some but minimal chance of changing significantly as we get older.
When I was a kid, I spent almost as time taking my electronic gear apart to see how it worked (and getting shocked in the process) as I did listening to music. I also work with technology for a living and started out by selling stereo/hi-fi and other electronic gear.
People that love audio love it because the sounds stimulate a specific part of the brain and we find it pleasurable. Non audiophiles just dont get the same amount of stimulation. It is known that some people with bipolar disorder can derive more pleasure from audio. Actress Margo Kidder (Lois Lane from 76 Superman)in an interview on 20/20 talked about her bipolar disorder. She says a regular person hears Beethoven's 5th and likes it. A bipolar could experience rapture. Interesting from her perspective. Not all audiophiles are bipolar. It does point to our brains and how they are hardwired. Each and everyone of us is unique. That was the biological factor. Now for the environmetal factor. Take someone that grew up in a musical family. Maybe the exposure to all that music made them take an interest in music or maybe the childs brain is hardwired like their parents. There's your answers. Again im not saying that all audiophiles are crazy. Maybe the ones that make 50k a year and have aqcuired a 100k system over the years. That would be kinda extreme but to them maybe not. They just love music! Audiophiles just experience more pleasure from sounds than another person would because of the way their (our) brains are made or developed.
Well, I gotta' admit the song matters to me much more than the sound. I can listen to a good song and a crappy system. Remember AM radio? But to listen to crappy music on ANY system, I'd rather not.
Throwing money at high end audio (or most things for that matter) does not gaurantee anything. I've heard plenty of uber-expensive stereos that sound horrible. The rich, being that they are rich, aren't not buying because of a lack of money.
How many are willing to spend double that amount for 36" of cable?
Especially when the differences are virtually inaudible as no one can tell in double blind listening tests. Again, "most people" are not going to be willing to spend hours listening for differences between cables. Using measurements would simplify things, but "measurements can't be trusted". People will spend money on something like an I-pod because it is tailored to their lifestyle. Going by stereo systems I see photographed on Audiogon, even many audiophiles are NOT going to put speakers out into the room even when it givers markedly better sound. And these are people who care about sound.
i use to spend my time describing good equipment to people and they would always ask "what about bose?". and when i told them about bose the never asked "what about kef, b and w, celestion, dahlquist?. what about magneplanar?" and to go from a pioneer reciever to a yamaha was a real leap. people love music but they hate to look like they don,t know what they are talking about so they stick with name brands they recognize. by the way,, just where does a person find a high end storefront in most of america? presently you could drive all day around st louis and find 5 or 6 of the brands people on audiogon are fans of. and to listen to any combinations is impossible. vexing for a knowledgeable person much less a newcomer. no wonder great audio gear is a very small part of the home electronics industry. and how many salesman are capable of selling it??
I think the vast majority of people don't enjoy music. Before retirement, I worked for Northern California's utility company servicing gas appliances. In 30 plus years of going into homes, I noticed that very few people have any type of audio equipment. If they did, it was an old record player, in a corner, collecting dust. It is as they they got older, their interest in music waned. I've seen many records packed away, the owners seemingly not caring to play them. More people have modest HT systems than 2 channel equipment. In my visits to approximate. 30 to 40 thousand homes, I've seen probably 10-12 high end systems. So here in San Francisco, the number of people with any type of music system is extremly low. Younger people enjoy music but they seem to get by with iPods and those little earbud things. Also, the few music lovers that are out there do not realize that a good system can be put together with relatively few $'s.
I object to the notion that it's too time consuming/requires too much work, particularly when it comes to the wealthy. To me, that's when it becomes easy. Walk into a well-known hi-fi shop, listen to their top setups, pick the one you like best, have them deliver and set it up. Working within a budget is the hard part.
I also disagree with the idea that most people's ears are "untrained", and find it a little arrogant to be frank. From the moment I first walked into a hi-fi shop and listened to that first note, I was floored. Why else would anyone of us have gotten into this hobby in the first place?
Personally, I think it's just lack of knowledge of its existence and financial priorities for most people. An iPod is a luxury audio purchase for many. How many are willing to spend double that amount for 36" of cable?
It's not worth the effort. Make it simpler, with good sound, and they will come. For example, are there any good one-box systems that can compete with separates, AND at reasonable cost? No. Instead your stuck with a cajillion wires, power cords, boxes. Is it worth the bother? For most people, the answer will be no.
The problem may be that the Title of this thread, and its Description do not agree. . . . .
Lots of times friends will come over and bring (usually) a CD because "I wanted to hear this on your system", so they are maybe more discriminating than we assume. They just don't "Love Audio" enough of the time to "Love Owning an Audio System" ;--)) .
In my experience, the majority of buyers in big box stores could be described as not particularly discriminating. They buy brand name or price, not performance.
You guys have to get beyond your narrow-minded insistence that sound matters to anybody but you. It does not. The general public has a quantitative mindset that does not take matters of quality by assessment into consideration. In seeking quality they are guided by brand names and ad campaigns. They buy what they hope will send the message that they are cool. This may sound very familiar to some of you.
Why can't we all just get along ? Perhaps more would love audio if it were more affordable ? Who is going to take this seriously if they find out that a set of speakers or a component can cost more than a house ? Get NAD and Cambridge and B&W and KEF into the big box stores, and there will be more audiophiles. If they hear it , -----.
Good sound? Can you understand that you are referencing an opinion? Good sound is a matter of opinion. Most people are quite happy with what they have. I drive a Prius. I love it. To car people, it is a hideous, pretentious waste of plastic. They think cars have to provide an erotic experience. To me, they are just transportation and, as such, should cost me very little money, or none at all. If you could get outside of your cripplingly narrow perspective, you would realize how nerdy and obsessive you sound. There is no good sound. If you like it, if it sounds good to you, that's all that matters. Reviews don't count, peers don't exist and prices, specifications and model numbers are not important unless misfortune dictates that you shop for a replacement.
Surely, you are aware that speaker placement for most people is dictated by decorating preferences or available space. Sonics are usually not a consideration.
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