We're a cult, guys. We hold to obsolete ways. We insist that others would follow us if only they would take the time to listen. If they choose to ignore us, we forgive their pitiful ignorance and redouble our efforts to show them the light. We seem to be unaware that we are the ones who are oblivious.
Young people, maybe because we have provided them with no sense of security, are very mobile in their minds and lifestyles. You have thousands of dollars and hundreds of pounds in hardware. They have an I-Pod and ear buds. You have thousands of discs. They have a hard drive. You own a house. They will probably always rent. You had a career, often at one job. They expect to be traveling and hopping from one work opportunity to the next, always remaining somewhat mobile.
Times have changed and high end audio has not. Any adaptation that our hobby makes to the ways of the next generation, will necessitate moving away from what we hope to protect. Current trends are evolutionary, not the result of intelligent design. We are seeing the future and insisting it is a blip, an aberration, to be tolerated until the natural order is restored. Due to our jingoistic insistence that our remembered youth will rise again, we remain blind to the truth that the ship has sailed. What we cherish is the garage tinkerer aspect. Digital crapped on that a bit in the 1980s but we responded with aftermarket upgrades, modifications, and cosmetic redos. When that played out to some extent, we revived analog and began sponsoring garage tinkerer turntable makers. We ignored plainly superior designs from Japan because they came from large corporations which ran contrary to our tinkerer/inventor mythos. We elevated these guys to celebrity status and lionized those who were bold enough to lead the charge toward the Absolute Sound.
Now I hear us talking about large companies and mass marketing techniques as the way to reverse our decline. It won't work because it isn't in the spirit of the dream we continue to grasp tightly in our closed minds.
Naturally, there are those entrepreneurial individuals who want to keep it alive until they've wrung the last nickel out of it, but they are running out of ears. Too many of us are folding our cards and standing pat. What we have, after all, is the stuff of dreams. Let's just live out our last however many years and enjoy the present such as it is, rather than lamenting the consequences of inevitable change.
Young people, maybe because we have provided them with no sense of security, are very mobile in their minds and lifestyles. You have thousands of dollars and hundreds of pounds in hardware. They have an I-Pod and ear buds. You have thousands of discs. They have a hard drive. You own a house. They will probably always rent. You had a career, often at one job. They expect to be traveling and hopping from one work opportunity to the next, always remaining somewhat mobile.
Times have changed and high end audio has not. Any adaptation that our hobby makes to the ways of the next generation, will necessitate moving away from what we hope to protect. Current trends are evolutionary, not the result of intelligent design. We are seeing the future and insisting it is a blip, an aberration, to be tolerated until the natural order is restored. Due to our jingoistic insistence that our remembered youth will rise again, we remain blind to the truth that the ship has sailed. What we cherish is the garage tinkerer aspect. Digital crapped on that a bit in the 1980s but we responded with aftermarket upgrades, modifications, and cosmetic redos. When that played out to some extent, we revived analog and began sponsoring garage tinkerer turntable makers. We ignored plainly superior designs from Japan because they came from large corporations which ran contrary to our tinkerer/inventor mythos. We elevated these guys to celebrity status and lionized those who were bold enough to lead the charge toward the Absolute Sound.
Now I hear us talking about large companies and mass marketing techniques as the way to reverse our decline. It won't work because it isn't in the spirit of the dream we continue to grasp tightly in our closed minds.
Naturally, there are those entrepreneurial individuals who want to keep it alive until they've wrung the last nickel out of it, but they are running out of ears. Too many of us are folding our cards and standing pat. What we have, after all, is the stuff of dreams. Let's just live out our last however many years and enjoy the present such as it is, rather than lamenting the consequences of inevitable change.