The Golden Age of Audio...is Now

In my latest article, I argue that we are living in a Golden Age of Audio:

http://thehighfidelityreport.com/the-golden-age-of-audio-is-now/

 

Agreed. We have the information , choice & the descison to go completely old school if we choose.

 

Yes, I think the positives on balance outweigh the negatives. It's never been more affordable to hear good sound in my opinion.

 

The problem is the golden age of recording quality, especially for the most widely listened to music genres, may be long past...even if there's more, better gear available now, and that at lower price points, there's less better sounding source material being recorded it seems. Perhaps an unexplainable irony.

 

I agree! In this day and age when 90% of audio recordings are squashed to hell and 90% of older recordings have been remastered to sound as horrible and squashed as their contempory recordings than we must be living in heaven?!?

 

Excellent point. We definitely need to make some improvements in the recording side although there are "pockets of excellence" there. And counteracting this is that much older music is being released on LP and digital that benefits from better mastering and mastering technology.

From my own personal viewpoint, I spend a lot on music and I am having a hard time keeping up with all the great releases.

 

No shortage of great music being made -- although the business of recorded music is obviously undergoing a total transformation and really a complete collapse of the business model that has sustained it for 100 years, and that too may have something to do with it and I think will inevitably have an impact on how, and how much, recorded music is made in the future. But I can't help but think about audio, and whether or not we're in a golden age, as a relationship between recording quality and playback quality. And the more people are making recording choices for the purposes of punching through against the competition via compressed digital over earbuds streaming or played back locally from a portable, the farther I fear we'll get from a golden age of audio material.

 

I think part of the loss in recording quality is it's too easy these days and too cheap to do it all digital. The biz is about profits and if they can spend less to capture the recordings then can maximize profits. Especially in the .99 cent download world. While there are a ton of great new releases out there, it seems it's in lost genre's so to speak. Not a lot of good rock releases done well, analog. Was Wasted Light the last big album done in analog?

 

The decline and rise (in some quarters) of recording quality is probably worthy of a whole article. But from a portable standpoint we are seeing improvements in things like the ability to playback hirez such as the Geek Out, the various iFi silver boxes, and the Sony hirez players.

 

I know, but it's a strange thing -- and it even goes back to the pre-Internet CD era -- why just as we got to playback formats with previously unimaginged potential for dynamic range, and electronics with vanishingly low distortion levels, pop music started compressing everything to 3 or 6 dB of dynamic range and putting everything through digital "distressors," and similar effects.

 

The one issue I see is the demise of the brick and mortar stereo store. They pretty much don't exist anymore...

I have a system that appeals to younger folks (single driver + SET... simple and not super-expensive) and I'm very young for this hobby, but the fact is... if not for me... most of them would have never heard a decent system. Most of my friends who hear my system are interested and many have asked for guidance in buying audio equipment from me, but when I give recommendations it's never possible to go see the equipment or hear a system that uses it.

The trade-off is the rise of the internet-based direct-marketed audio companies. These companies do EVERYTHING. They design, manufacture, market and sell their own products, cutting out the middle man and offering value for the money a traditionally marketed product can't touch. Audiocircle is a good place to find them but they are all over the place and it seems like I hear about a new one every day. I don't know how it's possible that so many of these companies exist, but with a lot of research you can find GREAT deals on audio gear... the only issue is you need to buy-and-try rather than visiting a store that can demo the products for you. Most offer 30-day trial periods so you only pay shipping if you want to return a purchase, and there is a lot of value to trying gear out in your own system rather than in a store.

The issue the demise of the stereo store is creating is people are not being exposed to high end audio and have no idea it exists. Some make their way from earbuds used with their smartphone to something higher end, but most folks are simply unaware of what the possibilities are. I think for high end audio to flourish, it needs to be more accessible...

 

I think that is also a good point. Bricks & mortars are disappearing...however we are seeing new channels online and direct to consumer so it may be balancing out.

 

"Put your hand on the wheel, let the golden age of audio begin......" I think Beck should re-record that song!

 

Well for me it certainly is.
The fact i own the best stereo i ever imagined. And I have an almost endless time frame to explore music, with not stupid things like a job to interfere. And no money worries.
So yeah, It is a wonderful time for music listening.

 

Most agreed...the only time I ever really say anything beyond a Bose store at a mall recently was at an Airport in Chicago. They had a cell phone accessory store selling all sorts of headphones and IEM's. Portable amps and a couple of USB DACS. I spent my 2 hour layover auditioning all sort of stuff. Seems the only other shops pimping these things are cell phone stores themselves....and most are beats pills or the like. It's a shame because there is so much being missed by youth.....unless they have parents who are into it...it's apple ear buds or pink/purple/orange/yellow junk!

 

If the Beatles aren't making music, the Golden Age has passed.

 

It's certainly the golden age of equipment. I have enough vintage recordings to make the air golden any time I please.

 

Stuff and nonsense. It was 1977 to 1982. For a REASONABLE PRICE consumers could pick from a wide variety of products that sounded amazing. Dahlquist DQ-10's, ADS, CIZEK, the original Polk Audio Monitors (yes, there was a time they were very good) Magnepan Tympani's and MGIIa, Spendor, Great American Sound, NAD (yes, it didn't suck then), original Quads were still in production. And tons more. Tandberg, Luxman, Spica, Sonab - the list goes on and on.

Beautiful turntables from Thorens, Kenwood, Luxman, Denon. And there was so much great music and Philips and DG were at the absolute peak of analog recordings. Listen to a Philips classical recording from 1977 sometime.

Now is a great time for audio if you want to buy a system that costs more than a car and listen to digital sound on it.

 

Another reason I'd argue the golden age has passed, is that high end's place in the public consciousness is just so much lower than it was in the late 50s/early 60s. It's kind of like the automotive world and the golden age of muscle cars. Today's offerings are far faster and better handling than they were in the 1964-1971 heyday, but in the golden age of hybrids, muscle cars are seen as hedonistic anachronisms by all but dedicated gear heads and non urban, adolescent males.

In a day where transportability and instant accessibility of music is valued over all else, and where the young are economically forced into smaller living spaces, high end seems a Mad Men era anachronism, even if the amp and speakers are attached to a fully digital server.

 

It feels like a Golden Age when I find out there is another record store in the area. Why had I not heard of Mojo?

 

...except in this "golden age," I don't think there's a single place in my city to check out legit audio gear.

 

Did Nicholson's close...? What about Emotiva?

 

I'm not going to argue either way; only to say that if I had to replace my current system but had very limited budget I could easily put a system together for a few hundred bucks* that spins CDs I could live with. That, to me, suggests that LeeS is essentially right.


*Onkyo C-7030 deck>Sherwood RX-4109 receiver>Fluance SX6 or Pioneer SP-22-LR speakers

 

In my opinion, yes, it is now. The quality of gear that's available at all price points, and the endless variety of solutions a consumer can choose from, is amazing.

And further, the golden age of music is now too. The amount of music available today is staggering. Yes, a lot of it is bad - just as it has always been. There's more music available overall, so in absolute terms, there's more bad music - but there's also more good music. Never has this much good music been made before, and made well. You just have to open up your ears a bit and go find it.

 

This is by some way the best time to date to get into great quality audio (and has been for at least the last five years). Portable gear has by and large been excellent, my iPod Touch is a 3rd gen model, with a 32Gb hard drive, mini computer capability, web link, runs Spotify (albeit a dated version that's a bit shaky now) and sound terrific. All that's happened that's enabled things to get better today are improved mobile bandwith, better and cheaper data plans (in the UK at least) and modern portable players, like those Lee mentioned earlier, but also higher quality ones like those by Astell and Kern that give you 128Gb space, DSD streaming and have been out for a couple of years or thereabouts.

However, this is true across the audio spectrum almost whatever the hardware you buy. I'm especially encouraged by the advance of active speakers into the market as well as network capable amps and the improvement to AV receivers that see them comfortably compete on audio terms with their stereo integrated counterparts. Brilliant time to be in the game.