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Younger generation audio quality ?

AudioAl

AudioAl

pfm Member
I was thinking today about the younger generation ,
Will they ever get to hear decent quality audio ?

Most youngsters now days only use mobile phones for everything

My daughter looks forward to our weekly listening on a Friday night she is amazed at the superior quality on all formats

8 track R2R and vinyl :cool:
 
For my son and daughter, it's more about the music than the sound quality. They always look bemused when I talk about sound quality.
 
I can't remember ever being bothered by the quality of playback when I was a kid. It's only really as I got older and continued to listen to music that it became more important and I'm I'm sure it will be the same for this generation as well. Music is a far more emotive thing when you are young, it's all part of your scene. I was part of the rave generation so it was all aboutaboud music in the car on the way to a field/warehouse then a cobbled together system that was as loud as possible when we got there. We tried as hard as we could to make it as good as we could within those confines though.
 
Music first, sound quality second. However my 9 year old often asks to listen to any of his new albums on my system, he can hear the difference.
 
AudioAl said:
I was thinking today about the younger generation ,
Will they ever get to hear decent quality audio ?
Click to expand...

A decent pair of headphones (say £100 or more) plugged into an iPhone playing 320kbs AAC or better is *very* decent audio quality IMO. It takes a heck of a lot of cash to equal that sound in-room with a conventional audio system. I suspect many young folk care a lot about audio quality, hence the buoyant state of the headphone market.
 
+1.

Personally I don't think there has ever been a time when more people have had access to really high fidelity sound than now - nor indeed the access to music to enjoy.

Sometimes we are all guilty of having rose tinted glasses.
 
I was a teenager during the second half of the 70's and rarely had access to anything approaching the quality I now know is possible. Even in the 80's clear and bright didn't necessarily mean accurate but I and most of my peers enjoyed it at the time. Awareness came later with experience and I am pretty sure that some of the youth of today will enjoy rediscovering tunes of old when they are older. And for some that will include discovering what they missed via MP3.
 
Men (and we are talking about men) of our generation don't buy hi-fi to listen to music anyhow any more than they buy BMWs to go to Tesco in. Music reproduction kit is a pretty low status thing these days. Young men will buy designer clothes, watches and cars instead.
 
Tony L said:
A decent pair of headphones (say £100 or more) plugged into an iPhone playing 320kbs AAC or better is *very* decent audio quality IMO. It takes a heck of a lot of cash to equal that sound in-room with a conventional audio system. I suspect many young folk care a lot about audio quality, hence the buoyant state of the headphone market.
Click to expand...

merlin said:
Personally I don't think there has ever been a time when more people have had access to really high fidelity sound than now - nor indeed the access to music to enjoy.

Sometimes we are all guilty of having rose tinted glasses.
Click to expand...
I broadly agree though I think lossless audio is a bit better.
 
Tony L said:
A decent pair of headphones (say £100 or more) plugged into an iPhone playing 320kbs AAC or better is *very* decent audio quality IMO. It takes a heck of a lot of cash to equal that sound in-room with a conventional audio system. I suspect many young folk care a lot about audio quality, hence the buoyant state of the headphone market.
Click to expand...

Spot on!!!!
 
merlin said:
+1.

Personally I don't think there has ever been a time when more people have had access to really high fidelity sound than now - nor indeed the access to music to enjoy.

Sometimes we are all guilty of having rose tinted glasses.
Click to expand...

Quite. Besides, we are talking about two different interests. Music is essential to the enjoyment of Hi Fi but no way is Hi Fi essential to the enjoyment of music. Both can be yours for not much money and have never been more available.
 
Tony L said:
A decent pair of headphones (say £100 or more) plugged into an iPhone playing 320kbs AAC or better is *very* decent audio quality IMO. It takes a heck of a lot of cash to equal that sound in-room with a conventional audio system. I suspect many young folk care a lot about audio quality, hence the buoyant state of the headphone market.
Click to expand...

I have some reasonable headphones, but they don't make real audio at all. They make a hi-fi sound. My version of audio of course. I just don't enjoy the sound you get from headphones.
 
Del monaco said:
For my son and daughter, it's more about the music than the sound quality. They always look bemused when I talk about sound quality.
Click to expand...

I think you should count yourself lucky if they do actually care about the music. I get the impression with most young people it's just a kind of background noise they want (OK so I'm an old fart)
 
Mudlark, try to hear a pair of Stax SR-009. Silly price but still they demonstrate the potential of headphones to sound great and it might motivate you to try out some others.
 
chrisletts said:
I think you should count yourself lucky if they do actually care about the music. I get the impression with most young people it's just a kind of background noise they want (OK so I'm an old fart)
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They both have a love of music. My son's sung in a rock band and is quickly teaching himself how to play the guitar. My daughter loves musicals and has sung for others on several occasions. They're both from an extended family that loves music. That's where it stems from. They go to live bands together etc and my son loves Nick Cave and Elvis Costello, just like me. I can hire them out for a reasonable sum.
 
I was playing my Nitin Sawhney One Zero, which is a direct to 45rpm vinyl recording. My 16yr old step-daughter came into the room and said...

"it sounds like people actually playing in the lounge - I don't like it!"
and flounced off upstairs to listen to her iPhone on the headphones we got from the pound shop.
 
Surely there's a male/female binary divide as well as an old/young divide*. Most girls/women just want to switch something on and hear music. Some boys/men are a) interested in how things work, and whether they can tweak a better sound out of whatever they're listening to and b) are interested in gadgetry per se, which most women aren't.

(*By and large, on the whole, gross generalisation, etc etc)
 
darrenyeats said:
Mudlark, try to hear a pair of Stax SR-009. Silly price but still they demonstrate the potential of headphones to sound great and it might motivate you to try out some others.
Click to expand...

+1 on Stax headphones. They look a bit twattish to wear, but are comfortable over longer periods than most headphones.
 
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