In article ,
John Stone wrote:
On 7/25/13 2:32 PM, in article ,
"Audio_Empire" wrote:
Audio, as a hobby, is in decline because young people's tastes have
changed and therefore no new blood is coming into the hobby. Youngsters,
today don't actually care about listening to music any more. Nor do they
care about the quality of reproduction in the music that they DO hear.
Music has become, to a large extent, a commodity among the young. The
idea of sitting down and actually listening to music for the SOUND of
music has become passé.
AND.....
There IS a resurgence in vinyl. One would have to be really out of the
loop to not have noticed it. There are more 'tables, arms and cartridges
on the market today than at any time since the advent of the CD (~1983).
And the people in this business MUST be selling this equipment to
SOMEONE.
Ok, how do you square these two statements of yours? You have to care enough
about listening to music to go through all the trouble of doing it with
vinyl, right? Or are these new turntable buyers just "hipsters" that own
these things because they're "cool", but use them when they want to show off
to their hipster friends? Or maybe a bunch of us old farts are out buying
their last turntables that they can bury with us? Whatever, it doesn't seem
to bode well for the market over the long term.
You're right. The market is dying. If there is little new blood in a
hobby, attrition thins it out over time. But, interestingly, there are a
lot of middle-aged nuvo-riche who want to equip their "macmansions"
with a music room/home theater with the best audio equipment in it that
money can buy. These are not audiophiles by any stretch of the
imagination. They just want the "best" (read that as "most expensive")
and they hire consultants to make those buying decisions for them (for a
fee, of course). I was in such a home locally, here, about a year ago.
The guy had a $50,000 Walker turntable rig, Mark Levinson electronics
and Magico Q5 speakers. The system probably cost at least a
quarter-million dollars. From what I could see, the guy had fewer than
20 CDs and about 4 LPs. When I expressed an interest in his system, he
was happy to show it off to me, but really knew nothing about it (I knew
far more about than he did) and volunteered that he didn't listen to it
much because he didn't care than much about music. He also had a
Steinway concert grand in that room with a DisKlavier system installed
in it. He played that for us too, but again, he "...didn't use it very
much". I had to resist a strong urge to punch his lights out! Yeah, life
just ain't fair when the undeserving can afford things that many of us
would give our eye-teeth for and yet they are totally indifferent to
them.
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