Cultural Death of Hi-Fi

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Steorophile published and interview with a New York City dealer startup who is attempting to capture the interest of young New Yorkers by hosting many live events in their showroom spaces:

 

https://www.stereophile.com/content/noho-sound-intends-revolutionize-high-end-audio-retailing

 

The comments in this article are interesting. There is a lot of overt and barely-veiled skepticism about NoHo's chances at making it.

 

Here's the thing: anyone who attends audio shows knows that only middle-aged men and older attend them. If you see women they are the wives of the middle-aged men.

 

AXPONA:

RMAF:

Munich:

 

If you see younger men, it's probably in the headphone section. I said "men" because women appear entirely uninterested in hi-fi.

 

Instead of hi-fi, young people are interested in turntables setups as retro-kitsch decor. These things don't sound good, and their owners will eventually grow out of it as they move, get married, etc and those collections will end up on eBay or in storage.

 

So, guys, what's going on? Is that young people are growing up with very poor spending power so they lose interest in things that they can't attain? Is it because modern pop music is so awful, that interest in hi-fi is never sparked to begin with? How does the industry and media bridge the gap -- can the gap be bridged? Is hi-fi just going to die and there's nothing anyone can do about it? Should we just be happy in our niche while it still shows a pulse?

 

 

 

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Hi-fi is more accessible than its ever been, so we’re not even talking about large sums of money. Around $1k will get you in the door today. That’s the price of a decent TV or laptop. But if you go onto Reddit or Youtube you’ll see people showing off their sub-$300 turntables, not even bothering to put thier cheap speakers in position for stereo listening. It’s very evident that these are just lifestyle accessories and not for actual audio entertainment. 

 

So, is the answer — just don’t worry about it? Should dealers just go straight to Hell and take thier markups with them? At some point in thier lives will they learn about the beauty of a naturally talented and impeccably trained human voice? The sound of real instruments? The grandeur of a symphony orchestra?

 

 

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33 minutes ago, new_media said:

 

Probably the fact that most of their “retro” vinyl collections were cut from digital masters.

 

And picked up from the bottom of the $1 bin going by the physical condition of their sleeves.

 

Or is that the smart thing to do? Am *I* the sucker for buying $50 analog re-masters, brushing them and cleaning the stylus between each play? Are they getting the lifestyle benifits without worrying about quality?

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Was this destruction of music brought on by the cultural dark ages of the late 70s and 80s? Early digital was astoundingly bad, but I believe the art of analog recording / mastering was in decline up until that point anyway. Was it destined to happen.

 

I remember being first exposed to "J-Pop", or Japanese pop, years ago. Completely synthetic, empty TRASH — like house / EDM except without even the veneer of art. Like it was the end-game of cultural destruction in the music sense. That’s more-or-less here.

 

 

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20 minutes ago, Norton said:

Can we cut the gerontophobia?  Just because something doesn't attract young people  doesn't automatically mean it's not flourishing.

 

But then how do square that with stories like this:

http://slippedisc.com/2016/06/worst-ever-us-classical-sales-chart/

 

Where Neilson tracked less than 100 sales for any classical album release in the US, the lowest EVER since they started keeping track?