The best audio system on earth?

[les24preludes]

No, it's a shift from music being a central/core part of life to a background role. Which is why most kids are happy with a pair of air pods and an iPhone.

I just don't agree. You're defining music as "audiophile music". How do you know that younger people "care less" about the music in their lives? I don't see that at all. Humans love music. It's as simple as that. This will never change. Young people go to raves instead of Carnegie Hall concerts. It's all music.

I'd also suggest that a pair of air pods and an iPhone are hardly less hifi than a Rogers radio in the kitchen which many of us grew up with.

 

[Woodface]

I don't see it that way. The way I see it is that young people don't sit alone in a big chair right between two large speakers. They move a lot more and that's perfectly healthy.

If people want to have music in the background while they cook, socialise or whatever, then that's absolutely fine. It doesn't mean they don't still love music, though they'd probably pass on Bruckner. And if they want music on the move that's fine too.

I absolutely don't think there's anything doomy about the culture of younger generations. They are just as intelligent as we were. They just lead different lives to what we did. The focus is much more on video/visual media and the Internet. It's just different.

Totally agree with this.

 

[Woodface]

No, it's a shift from music being a central/core part of life to a background role. Which is why most kids are happy with a pair of air pods and an iPhone.

An I-Phone & air pods is a significant investment, it can deliver excellent sound quality. Back in the 80s it would have been a Walkman.

This is an upgrade if anything. Imagine how much more music they are discovering?

 

[matt j]

I just don't agree. You're defining music as "audiophile music". How do you know that younger people "care less" about the music in their lives? I don't see that at all. Humans love music. It's as simple as that. This will never change. Young people go to raves instead of Carnegie Hall concerts. It's all music.

I'd also suggest that a pair of air pods and an iPhone are hardly less hifi than a Rogers radio in the kitchen which many of us grew up with.

I'm not defining music as anything, I don't give a shit about audiophile whatever. I'm just saying that music use has shifted massively from a social and entertainment perspective to a secondary/passive role.

An iPhone and air pods may be a massive outlay if you buy them outright, which nobody ever does apart from boomers.

 

[Alex S]

I’m the only one in the family who cares about hifi but we all care about music.

 

[Tony L]

No, it's a shift from music being a central/core part of life to a background role. Which is why most kids are happy with a pair of air pods and an iPhone.

I’m not convinced. I think the delivery mechanism has changed, but the connection is still very strong and there is an explosion of new stuff in every conceivable genre. I think music is in a very good place creatively, though I suspect a lot of older people have lost sight of it as it is no longer in the grips of the corporate major label giants. It is no longer where they expect it to be as artists are now doing everything themselves and communicating directly with their audience.

I’m in no way sneering at anyone with a smartphone and a half decent pair of headphones. That is real hi-fi when assessed on any technical metric of frequency response, dynamic range, noise-floor etc. Young folk are starting from a far higher base these days than my generation did. Both in equipment (most of my school friends had awful Dansettes or Crosley-grade Fidelity record players) and in easy access to the whole world of recorded music. Something we never had. My generation’s knowledge was limited by word of mouth, radio playlists, and the corporate A&R men and record pluggers who fed them. It is immeasurably better now. You can deep-dive any genre with a few mouse clicks, and a lot of folk do which is why so much current music is such an amazing cross-genre mash-up.

PS I know you know this as I know the sort of music you buy, I’m just making a more general point for the thread.

 

[Woodface]

I don’t really see how music played through headphones can be considered as background. Lots of ‘kids’ discover music via gaming etc, lot of musicians get paid well as a result of placing a song in this cony.

It’s progress.

 

[AndyCC72]

I just don't agree. You're defining music as "audiophile music". How do you know that younger people "care less" about the music in their lives? I don't see that at all. Humans love music. It's as simple as that. This will never change. Young people go to raves instead of Carnegie Hall concerts. It's all music.

I'd also suggest that a pair of air pods and an iPhone are hardly less hifi than a Rogers radio in the kitchen which many of us grew up with.

totally agree, they just consume musically differently, they don’t love it less.

 

[sq225917]

Daughter listens to music all the time, iphone and airpods, better quality than even the expensive kenwood Walkman I had at the same age.

 

[les24preludes]

Young folk are starting from a far higher base these days than my generation did. Both in equipment and in easy access to the whole world of recorded music. Something we never had.

Absolutely. My son's playlist includes French rap, Salsa, blues, Serbian Kolo, jazz, reggae, Detroit R&B, young singer-songwriters, flamenco.... etc. Just about no classical but that's OK with me. He could tell the difference between good Chopin pianists and bad ones at the age of 6. He just never got that interested in it.

 

[hockman]

While I think music can still be important for some people, it is also clear that there are a lot more stuff today to entertain or err, distract, younger folk. So I can well believe that listening to music seriously has become less prevalent in their lives.

 

[stecko]

An I-Phone & air pods is a significant investment, it can deliver excellent sound quality. Back in the 80s it would have been a Walkman.

This is an upgrade if anything. Imagine how much more music they are discovering?

Agree

 

[Woodface]

While I think music can still be important for some people, it is also clear that there are a lot more stuff today to entertain or err, distract, younger folk. So I can well believe that listening to music seriously has become less prevalent in their lives.

If you deem ‘seriously’ as sitting in front of a hifi then this is probably true but it’s a trend that started way back in the 80s

Walkmans, MTV is now I-Phones & YouTube.

You probably have to go a long way back to when the hifi had any kind of prevalence, the TV has been around for a while.

We are a very unrepresentative bunch on here.

 

[les24preludes]

We are a very unrepresentative bunch on here.

We certainly are! Most teenagers who saw a guy sitting for hours in an armchair between two speakers putting on old vinyl records would think he was depressed. They'd probably be out going up and down a climbing wall.

 

[Thetiminator]

Daughter listen to music all the time, phone and airport, better quality than even the expensive kenwood Walkman I had at the same age.

I’m currently listening via iPhone and Sony xm’s. The sound quality is incredible from essentially a phone plus some tiny in ear monitors.
You’d need to spend many thousands on a hifi system to better it…
My daughters iPod pro 2’s sound horrific compared to the Sonys btw…

 

[John Phillips]

I’m currently listening via iPhone and Sony xm’s. The sound quality is incredible from essentially a phone plus some tiny in ear monitors.
You’d need to spend many thousands on a hifi system to better it…

Listening, years ago, to music on a dedicated digital audio player via Etymotic ER4 IEMs convinced me I could get less mid-range muddle than came from my then contemporary 'speakers. The seach for equivalent mid-range clarity led me to my curent active ATCs. The Etymotics were not budget IEMs but yes the ATCs did cost a lot more.

 

[stevec67]

It's not just the kit that has changed but the whole attitude/trends of younger people, the same can be said for live music venues or night clubs and pubs dying on their arse, the old ways just aren't a mass participation event any more because young people have a different outlook on entertainment.

Music used to be a central tenet to most people's lives and a main source of not only entertainment but socialising, that has almost completely gone. Little wonder that hi-fi is an old man's game with the odd few outliers.

Social media, youtube, gym/health culture, netflix and other streaming TV services have all surpassed music as a central role in young people's lives. It's all well and good saying we need to make hi-fi attractive and attainable to the kids but it's so far off their radar as to be almost pointless. Even the ones who are interested are usually the quirky ones who would rather buy something vintage and different looking than a boggo Rega P1 etc.

Yes, sometimes life just moved on. YouTube, Netflix, all offer a great deal of entertainment for very little. Records were never cheap.

 

[Darren L]

Times change, I would have thought most (non-audiophile) homes has some form of music centre or stacking system in the 70's and 80's. TOTP was a very popular TV programme and nearly everyone in my class at school listened to the Top 40 on a Sunday evening, 7" singles sold in great numbers, teenagers and younger people identified with particular genres giving us mods, rockers, goths, punks, new romantics, etc
Nowadays there's alot more on offer for entertainment, gaming, streaming as well as more outdoor activities like the climbing wall mentioned above.
We've three kids, aged 28, 26, 24, the eldest is a great drummer but his main interest is most certainly outdoor activities, from skateboarding and BMXing when younger to now mainly climbing and bouldering. The middle one is mainly interested in Art & film, the youngest gaming and working out at the gym.
All of them are interested in music and enjoy a wide variety of music across a gamut of genre's , alot of the time the introduction to the music they listen too will come from film or games, to the best of my knowledge none of them own a hifi , they all have big TVs, phones and headphones.
Having said that apparently a growing number of younger folks are buying LPs to enjoy music and unplug from the Internet, records also deemed to be pretty cool.
I think it's a win win all round, more choice and more availability.

 

[matt j]

I’m currently listening via iPhone and Sony xm’s. The sound quality is incredible from essentially a phone plus some tiny in ear monitors.
You’d need to spend many thousands on a hifi system to better it…
My daughters iPod pro 2’s sound horrific compared to the Sonys btw…

This was my point really, not that kids don't like music or there isn't any good new music coming out, but that commenting on threads here about expensive kit putting off the kids is pointless because they aren't buying the cheap stuff either as it's not how they're listening to music.

One device like a phone covers many bases plus we have the 'rent everything' generation now so media is all on subscription along with the phone, in fact a lot of phone contracts come with bundled media subscriptions so the outlay aspect is moot because they're having the phone anyway which in effect is a free hi-fi.

 

[paulfromcamden]

It only matters to the industry and those making a living from it I suppose.

When I started work around 97/98 most of the older blokes I worked with on the shop floor had a hi-fi, not necessarily high end or expensive but a dedicated separates hi-fi and music collection, their lives pretty much revolved around music in one way or another whether that was whatever jobbing live band was playing at their local (pub goers every night of the week!) proper gigs or the pilgrimage to Monsters of Rock at Donington.

That's just not a thing any more.

They sound like a nice crowd to work with.

My first job a couple years earlier was in an office with maybe 200 people. There were a handful of hi-fi peeps who you would find at each others desks discussing tape decks and speaker stands but that was about it. There were music fans in the office (my boss was an unlikely Lee Perry fan) but for most people it wasn't something their lives revolved around.