How rare is an audiophile

30 years from now the young people of today will be in their 50’s and "listening" to perfect music transmitted to their brains telepathically. Then they’ll say to each other: "Ah, remember the good ’ole days when we danced around and enjoyed listening to MP3s wearing those really cool-looking ear buds? I miss those times."

My guess is that its more like 1 in 100,000.  I live near Ft. Lauderdale.  While there are 2 good record stores, all the audio stores have closed or converted to smart home / home theater stores.  There is one in Palm Beach and maybe 2 in Miami.  I have tried finding people on facebook rooms such as Turntable Talk, the McIntosh page, and the VPI page to see if anyone live near Ft. Lauderdale or near Charlotte, NC and have never received a response.  Luckily a good friend of mine is an audiophile.  I just didn't know how rrare we were or how lucky I am to have a buddy who also enjoys the hobby.

Very low. 95% male. That must mean 5% female.

Coincidentally I think only 5% of male are audiophile, so 2.5% of the population. 

Thing is 99% of the people listen to music, but to have a passion like us, yea 2.5%

To be honest, I really can't get too worked up about how many people share our passion for good recorded sound. As long as there are enough of us to keep the industry both in business, and in their pursuit of better sound. It's always been a niche thing, anyway.

@searoll923 

main problem I've seen with my generation: they prioritize convenience over quality.

Unfortunately, as the pace of modern life increases our ability to evolve with it doesn't keep up.
With so many increasing demands upon people today, so many demands upon their attention, it would seem very few of us have the time to indulge in this, what can be a very time consuming passion.

Half a century of feminism has left many women now by necessity trying to do two roles (and paying taxes as they do) in the same time as their predecessors had to only do one.

Some get extra support from their partners, some don't. If they do, then those partners get less spare time. There has been a generational shift, and whether they like it or not, young men today are expected to contribute to household chores and child rearing to a far greater extent than previous generations.

No one, except the wealthy who can afford hired home help get more time today.

Therefore, given these extra demands on time, it's almost inevitable that convenience will always be more attractive to most of us.

@samureyex 

Good point.

Since most of us are male, that rules out half the potential candidates straight away.

The resurgence of vinyl, if it is maintained, might help somewhat I think. Fiddling around with cartridges, tracking weights, alignment, phono stages, isolation etc more or gets into the audiophile club automatically via the equipment route, doesn't it?

To gain access via with an interest in enhanced sound quality is very unlikely considering that digital has already levelled that particular playing field considerably.

If you want better sound quality, you will need to start off with better recordings - and that, given the priorities of the music industry is just not going to happen anytime soon.

I can listen to 3 or 4 versions of Who's Next and even on my system the differences are fairly marginal between the best and the worst.

How on earth could I make the average music listener see the point of doing this?

Especially when they can stream that album from a variety of sources that claim their offering is Super HD, or even Ultra Hd etc etc.

It might help if the streaming services were to state the provenance of the tracks they are offering, plus mastering credits, DR numbers etc but I can't see that happening anytime soon either.

Let's face, only folks like us care about such things, and most of us came from a time when there were such easily detectable differences in sound quality that we could care.