The Golden Age of Audio...is Now

The article was about a golden age for people who care about sound quality so I don't think market share is the right metric. If it were a golden age for Porschephiles, sales of Chevys would not matter.

 

So whether you're listening on a subway in a trashed pair of Vans with earpods,
or a smoking jacket in your mahogany wainscot paneled drawing room by direct heated triode,
or something in between...
it truly is a golden age of music listening.

 

How many portable digital players are purely MP3 players only? Of those that are in existence, how many do you think also play WAV or FLAC files?

In any case there is nothing wrong with MP3. I used 192bps when I had an 8Gb nano back in 2008. Sounded great. I use WAV files on a 32Gb 3rd gen Touch now. Sounds terrific. The players in most cases aren't the problem.

The problems are to be found in two places: recording quality and the attitudes of some audiophiles that haven't moved on. Other than that, digital portable music replay is in rude health and delivering high quality audio on a whim.

 

You're looking at this wrong. When you broach the subject of audiophilia, then by default it is not a mass consumer market. Once we truly accept that, then we can move forward. That said, this does not mean we aren't in a golden age of audio. People are capable of walking around with ALAC files on their iPhones. This wasn't even possible a mere decade ago. What is more mass consumer than an iPhone?

 

The portable audio market and the excitement around it is quite special. I am excited to visit CanJam on Friday. The energy there is compelling.

 

Audiophilia, like beauty, is in the ears of the beholder... and one humans adequate sample rate to enjoy music, may well be another's unlistenable crap. That does not change the fact that we are sonically embarrassingly wealthy!

 

Yes...it's just that some humans bash sample rates when they can't tell a difference between the highest available and CD/WAV...passing off golden ears as fact has watered this otherwise great hobby in some quarters down to laughing stock status.

 

As far as access to content goes this absolutely is a Golden Age. There are so many choices, portability, analog, and so on. For an audiophile though there are thinks that make it not. As long as high end audio equipment remains obnoxiously high we aren't living in an audiophile Golden Age. It's still a rich man's world, sadly. You would have thought that would have changed over the years but it has gotten worse. But who knows, maybe that's something that will be fixed in the Silver Age.

Very well written article. I enjoyed reading it.

 

There will always be high price in hifi as there is in any other sector. Watches are my other example. Does that £10,000 Breitling appreciably tell the time any better than a £50 Sekonda for general day to day purposes? No, but there are other reasons for buying that high price timepiece than just telling the time and it works the same way in audio.

 

But there are no other reasons people buy high end audio equipment than to listen to music on it. High end audio equipment aren't status pieces. High End audio equipment exists to listen to superior sound quality. When you shut people out of that with equipment that costs as much as a car or house, I don't know what to say about that. As long as the prices for that equipment is that high, this isn't the audiophile Golden Age. How could it be with equipment higher than ever. When you go in threads and the general believe they there exists no great turntable under $1000 with a $100+ cartridge included, there's something very wrong and there's nothing Golden Age about that.

 

First, the "golden age" thing. I disagree. I think this is one of the best times simply because access to portable gear that replicates file formats on the move, whether that be DSD, WAV, FLAC, etc, is with us and readily. We have headphones that can give us great quality from the get-go and for little outlay. That gig's done and signed off.

For gear in the home, you don't need to spend big money to get big performance. I can get DSD playback on my amp, natively between it and my Marantz UD7007. I have no issues with the fact it's all mass market gear, it's good stuff, made well, well designed and gives great sound quality. I have no need for anything that costs £10,000 other than for additional reasons outwith audio quality (interest, design, cosmetic appeal, etc...). From a quality perspective, never mind one of just pleasure. I could maybe get better, but how much would I need to spend in order to do that and that gain would be minimal. My system's as new price is over £4,000. I didn't spend that, but bought at the right time or secondhand. Nevertheless, for the "new" price, it should sound good!

You're kidding yourself if you think the reason why people buy high end anything is for one reason only in most cases. There's a whole set of decisions and rationale that goes into a purchase - appeal, impulse, perceived value, perceived quality, perceived performance, you got a deal, brand loyalty, salesman's chat, status (oh come on, did you really think it wasn't in it for some people?) and the whole "buy-in" of the manufacturer's concept - whatever it might be.

You might not buy for anything but music replay, but bet your good money after bad, that doesn't cut across the board for everyone else.

 

Unfortunately this simply is not the case.

An analogy: Among Porschephiles, one does not buy a RSR Carrera because it is fast, but because it is rare and highly desirable as a collectible. It's not as fast as a regular old vanilla 80s 911 that has been substantially modified (but still all Porsche). But it is worth ten times as much and at a PCA concours it gives the owner enormous prestige. High end audio equipment doesn't impress the general public but it sure does impress other audiophiles. A serious Porschephile doesn't care if Joe Blow thinks a four cam 356 looks like a Karmann Ghia, in fact it reinforces his superiority to those so far below him that they can't comprehend his superiority.

Part of the problem in audio is that there are few people with modest means who really care about sound anymore, so little competitive pressure exists to build good cheap hi-fi. And among the wealthy, there is a substantial segment who will buy anything so long it is expensive, and expensive looking, enough.

There still are a few who think otherwise, but it appears to be under critical mass.

 

It can be the Golden age of Audio with all the diversity and choices. Ive never seen so much old and new audio technologies. Its NOT the Golden age of music however.
This might of been said already, came late to this board. I hope one can exist without the other. I still feel music has a chance to be important and diverse like it was in its golden years over the centuries. John M.

 

Uh, this is simply not true. There is a vast amount of affordable audio these days and it is targeting a big market and selling like crazy. Check the great success of iFi and Geek who are hiring more people for instance.

And there is lots of competitive pressure as the low end is a much bigger market so profits can be made.

On the upper end, there is definitely some status buying but most people dropping $200K are listening and wanting the best sound possible. At RMAF I met two wealthy business people who were going to several pricey rooms trying to decide what to buy. Also, I've had several conversations where it is clear that people who bought expensive speakers and components simply have "the bug" and saved up for them for a long time.

 

There are some to be sure but they are not market drivers.

 

So, for less than £200, you can buy a Fiio X3, stick in a 64Gb micro SD card, load up some tunes, then read Andrew Everard's blog review and congratulate yourself on having the smarts to get a great player, an introduction to hi-resolution audio (as it handles DSD...) and off you go!

http://andreweverard.com/2014/05/29...ew-firmware-adds-dsd-and-a-slicker-interface/

Yeah, pretty ace time to be getting into audio...

 

I'm not sure what you mean here. One thing is for sure, wealthy people (who aren't avid music lovers) no longer display audio equipment; the status symbols today in this area are either miniature theaters or hidden audio equipment. As Lee says, there is no status today in displaying expensive audio equipment.

 

Then why are the prices for high end audio equipment higher than ever before? This goes beyond inflation. What is it about the equipment that gives it its higher than its sound quality advantage price point?

 

Who knows? There are more very wealthy people today than at any time in history, and it stands to reason that at least the same percentage are music lovers as in times past. All I know is that outside of a dedicated home theater, you rarely see audio equipment other than a table radio or iPod dock in wealthy homes.

 

There is a new ultra-luxury customer segment now. Some older buyers who became even more wealthy and some new ones from other areas and geographies.

 

I agree too. The good thing is, a lot of people took care of their LP's, and they are available. All of my friends carefully used Discwashers, and that was a lot better than nothing. I have a lot of my 60's to 80's albums, and they sound great on modern turntables with really good cartridges. There are a lot of sealed albums from the 60's-80's. They cost a lot, but You don't have to be rich to find a mint, sealed copy of something that You really want. That is unless it's a really rare album. Bob Dylan Freewheelin' for instance. Modern copies are all I'll ever hear of that one, but most of the bands that I love have high quality vinyl available. I've bought several sealed copies, and one that I really wanted I got sealed for $20. That was really lucky, but zit is one of my top 5.

 

Well, I'm talking about the recording and mixing and mastering, not playback, of new music. I kind of agree with Lee's assertion that we're in a golden age of playback gear, certainly in terms of what's accessible to the masses. Today a lossless file, played back from an iPod on a B&W Zeppelin sounds way better than the similar system I grew up with -- an aluminum drop-down suitcase style turntable/record changer with swing out speakers: lower distortion, wider dynamic, wider and flatter frequency response. And the SOTA playback gear is better too. Plus we're in an age of great, continual innovation in playback gear.

But when it comes to actual recording quality, the '50s and '60s were much better. Things on average were recorded with more attention to capturing natural timbre, space and scale. There was more focus on capturing a great performance -- not the fix-it-in -the-mix attitude -- and more live-in-the-studio recording of pop music which gave the recordings better feel, there was less post-production manipulation, there was also more recording of pop music being done in great-sounding live rooms, and when things were mastered they weren't compressed down to 3 dB of dynamic range or mixed with distortion added by exciters and distressors, sometimes all just using plugin presets that make everything sound the same.

Plus I think in some ways, despite access to better cheaper playback gear, we're in a dark age of listening. If lossy compressed files streaming over the Net played back on crappy Bluetooth speakers are good enough for most listeners, who, thanks to the decline of music education in schools at least in the US and the use of recorded backing tracks in live performance may have little experience of live instruments played in a space designed for music, who is going to even know what music sounds like? Where will the demand come from for high fidelity? Fidelity to what?

 

If we are looking at wealthy people, then one should track their earnings over time and not inflation. The wealthiest people have been getting wealthier much faster than inflation. This is a tangent, but it would be interesting to normalize high end gear prices over time by high end incomes.

 

Lee, I just saw your article for the first time. Man it is really well written, and I couldn't agree more. Thanks for posting it.

 

I don't know that this is much different than in the past. Is streaming lossy files really worse sounding than AM radio? Even FM radio has a hard time matching 256k or 320k streams for sound quality, and there has been "elevator" Muzak for decades.

Although music education is becoming rare in schools, paradoxically in many areas music playing in school bands is increasing.

What is unfortunate is the trend to play all live music through a PA, even classical orchestral music or small club jazz (which usually doesn't need it).