Amazement
"Sonnova" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 20 May 2009 08:31:15 -0700, Greg Wormald wrote
(in article ):
In article ,
"Dave" wrote:
What's changed?
IMO, what has changed is that music is now a consumer commodity, and in
the commercial arena profit rules. So quantity rather than quality is
driven by the dollar. Music is sold as a 'soundtrack' for your life,
rather than something you spend time, energy, and money enjoying
separately as something special.
Unfortunately, what you are saying (and you are right), is that commerce
has
replaced culture. Very sad.
I wasn't sure I wanted to go there as it's starting to seem more like
whining, or pining, but I do think it's sad that if you offer the average
North American Joe two choices:
1. a high-quality item which may last for 10 years or longer for $50 and
2. a low-quality Chinese plastic import piece of crap that will be lucky to
last one year for $25.
the VAST majority of average (not you, not me of course) consumers will buy
item #2 for $25, then buy the same item again for $25 later. They
rationalize this choice in their mind as "value" not realizing that the
"value" (that's "value" as in "extra value meal") they're illustrating is
their personally held belief that 'more' is more important than 'good'.
Walmart. Box stores. Fast food. The decline of domestic manufacturing
except for those "high-end, boutique" items to be purchased by the
well-to-do. The fact that Bill & Shirley Smith who work at low-paying
hourly jobs and buy EVERYTHING at Walmart "because it's cheaper" are, by
doing so, driving the higher paying manufacturing jobs out of the country
and perpetuating the cycle. Will we end up a continent of trailer parks and
McMansions surrounded by broken plastic crap manufactured by children in
China before people figure out that "more" does not necessarily mean
"better"?
The home-theatre-in-a-box products are illustrative of this: people want
the HT experience but can't afford it. So a market is built to design,
manufacture and market vast quantities of el-cheapo 5 or 6 or 8-channel
receivers with ultra-low spare parts runs. These units are packed into the
same space (or less... smaller is good, right?) as a two-channel amp a few
years before but generate much more heat. They're designed so close to the
SOA of many components that it's THE NORM to see blackened PCB's beneath
undersized diodes and power resistors, and it's THE NORM to read temps in
excess of 100C under normal conditions. All of this guarantees a short life
for the unit... off to the dump because there are either no spare
replacement boards in existence or it's cheaper to go buy a new one than to
buy a new DSP board or preamp board and anyways, the rest of the boards have
been baking at that same temperature and are doomed as well.
Quality is a key concept here. Quality of life. Quality of food. Quality
of health. Quality of music reproduction (okay, it's way down the chain but
it's still there). It's a touchstone, a lynch-pin, a concept that we seem
to be losing sight of as we go from a bygone era of equipment designed and
built with pride which still works 50 years later to equipment designed to
make it just past the warranty period and is virtually unserviceable.
Culture hasn't disappeared, it's just that the cost of propagating vast
amounts of low-grade psuedo-culture has gotten so cheap the real gems, the
stuff that would make it to the top in earlier days is often buried under a
ton of crap.
|