Arny Krueger wrote:



I've been enjoying the new Windows version of iTunes - it's the best MP3
file organizer and player I've seen yet. The price is as they say *right*.

How much is "right?"


I disagree. High end started too early to really be only a
boomer thing.


If anything it started too late to be only a boomer thing. I'm very much an
early boomer, and I was in my late 20s when most say that high end audio as
we know it now was fledged.

Then we will likely disagree when "high end" got its start.



I think it started as a music lover thing,
where, as Stewart's sig line says, art and engineering met.


Love of music did have quite a bit to do with the origins of the predecessor
of high end audio which was component stereo. Now component stereo was
something that prewar babies appreciated and supported, but it wasn't high
end audio. The development of a high end market requires the pre-existence
of a mainstream market. The mainstream market that spawned high end audio
was component audio which played a kind of high end role with respect to
brown goods audio which dated back into the 1930s.

I think high emd audio pretty much began when stereo come
into play - geeks of the decade designing fun new stuff that
stomped the old paradigm - mono. Mono had its devotees who
were unwilling to accept the new standard. Sounds familiar?


High end is a habit, and a fun one. Boomers will keep at it
because they enjoy it.


IME the numbers who actively enjoy it, as in continue to invest, rapidly
decreases around retirement age.

My experience in retail is exactly opposite - lots of
retirees who finally had the leisure time to involve
themselves in the pursuit of high end audio.


Software is still really fare behind, and it is always the
final determinant in the format wars. Besides, so many
consumers have been trained to view CD as the ultimate in
sound quality, with other formats being a close second. To
them, the "super formats" seem like a waste of time and money.


One other factor is that nobody wants to buy the same music a third time,
especially when its been getting given away for free via file sharing.

File sharing comprises a vanishingly small percentage of the
overall music consumption market - despite what the RIAA
whines to the contrary.


I haven't owned a turntable in close to ten years, so I
don't fall under the rubric of "vinyl bigot," whatever the
hell that is, and I still think CD is not, and never has
been, "perfect sound."


The CD medium has been sonically transparent in principle all along, its
even sonic overkill, The players caught up with the potential of the medium
pretty fast. There has always been a problem with the quality of the
production, which has actually been getting worse with the evolution of
"supercompression" of dynamic range. Strangely, supercompressed music is
showing up in SACD and DVD remasterings of legacy performances. You'll see
one of the worst indictments of how the music industry is failing to
properly exploit new media in this report, given to the AES in July, just
past:

Perhaps I am partial to the missing phase information JJ
used to talk about being present in vinyl that gave recorded
music more life. It is absent on CD, which may, or may not
account for the hard edged, "sterile" quality it has, even
when the mastering hasn't been botched.

Nexus 6