Back In the Day

Thanks for the replies -- they gave me plenty to think about.

I don't completely buy the argument about the greater variety of equipment available today. If you only look at the number of manufacturers and products, sure, but at a practical level, it's probably not true. The internet makes it easy to buy products from all over the world, but back in the 1960-70s every moderate sized town had an electronics store that sold hi-fi equipment. Most of these stores were local, but you also had chains such as Lafayette or Allied. You could walk into these stores and see, touch and hear a decent variety of equipment. Effectively I think that matches the virtual variety we have today.

I don't think there is any question that Audiogon, Craigslist and eBay have altered the economics to make buying/selling used equipment vastly easier for the consumer.

I also think magazines/reviewers play a crucial role. Back in the day the magazines only really talked about how components sounded in the most general sense. Terms such as full bodied, lush, rich, tinny or boomy were used. Notice how even a non-audiophile could understand these terms. But with the rise of subjective reviews the vocabulary changed and simply descriptions of sound were replaced with "concepts" about sound. Terms such as soundstage, ying/yang, high resolution, musical, hi-fi sounding, inner detail and finally, my favorite, continuousness came into use. Non-audiophile have no idea what we're talking about anymore.

All the talk about sound gets in the way of enjoying well recorded music reproduced over high quality equipment. Instead of pursuing this relatively simple goal, audiophiles have got caught up in chasing the description of how their systems are supposed to sound. Are you lacking soundstage depth? Missing resolution as notes decay into the noise floor? No imaging beyond the outer edge of your speakers? Is the soundstage space between performers not fully fleshed out? If your system suffers from any of these "problems" then obviously you need to upgrade. Magazines have purposely or not developed a world view and vocabulary about sound that plants dissatisfaction in audiophile minds.

It's actually a testable hypothesis. If you stop reading about sound, will you slow down upgrading.

The main driver is economics. Personal income has exploded in the last 30 years, so have various means of trying to siphon that money from flush individuals. Houses, autos, boats, sporting events, etc, have also enjoyed these flourishing times.
The internet and glossy rags have helped spur the market, but the main driver behind it all was Reaganomics.

Yes, if you stop listening to others telling you how wonderful the next great toy is, you won't be in such a rush to purchase it.

Yes, Reaganomics, the radical redistribution of income to the upper end of the financial spectrum which transformed America from the greatest creditor nation in the world to the greatest debtor nation. While the middle class has barely held even if not declined in the last 30 years that of the upper few percent has exploded. No wonder that there are roughly 100 speakers on the market priced at $100K or more. Instead of aiming at a broad middle class most companies now aim at the upper end of the market as that is where the money is.

hi end audio equipmment is characterized by inelasticity of demand.

it is more profitable to sell a few very expensive products than sell many inexpensive ones.

as an entrepreneur, profit is usually the most cogent motivation.

i suspect that such a strategy would be successful under most conditions.

Good engineering is making a great product where cost is no object. Great engineering is make a great product at a reasonable price. Considering that many of us on this forum have become conditioned to expect more when we pay more, the bulk of these hifi companies are happy to oblige and stop working on the development project once they have a great product. What I'm saying is, that as an engineer, it is relatively easy to meet the design goals of performance, and a little more work to meet durability and reliability targets. But taking out cost in a product is the hardest part of product development. I think our hifi culture or maybe even our more widely common culture of excess has not just encouraged these companies to stop working on the design once they have a great product but we also give them added prestige, or perhaps we will not even consider them unless their portfolio contains a sky is the limit product offering.