"Nexus 6" wrote in message
news:c3olb.2176$d87.790@okepread05
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?"

zero.

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.

Please explain. AFAIK the consensus points at a time that coincides with the
charter issue of TAS.

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?

Stereo initiating the high end? Not a chance! Stereo was mostly a brown
goods thing. It did given component stereo a big boost, but no way was
component stereo anything like "the high end". I was there man, selling
components in an audio store.

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.

That must have been long ago, because today it's HT that most pursue.

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'm not talking about the size of the market as expressed in retail sales,
but the size of the market as expressed as what people listen to.

I live in a community where there are no longer any record stores
whatsoever. Two years ago there were two good-sized ones within walking
distance of my house. More than 60% of the homes have PCs with cable modems.
Virtually every one of those PCs has 3-12 or more GB of downloaded MP3s and
CD burners. A very high percentage of those people play burned CDs on mobile
audio systems ranging from portable CD players to portable MP3 players but
the most play them in their cars.
I know these numbers because I sell, repair and upgrade those PCs. People
don't hide what they do - they even brag about it.

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.

Cutting to the chase JJ said that vinyl audibly distorts music in ways that
some people find desirable. After investigating the situation quite closely
on my own, I'm bound to agree. The distortion is clearly there, and some
people seem to be nearly addicted to it.

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.

Depends whether or not you're addicted to it. The vast majority of music
listeners aren't, but there's a noisy minority who are.