Back In the Day

Yes; I was in Chicago in the 60s and a bunch of us would read the Chicago Tribune Sunday ads when it came out Sat night for the latest listings. I changed equipment much more then as things were A LOT cheaper. A pair of Quad 57s were under $400 including sea freight from England. A Stax tone arm was $37.50 including air freight from Japan, and so on. One thing hasn't changed; the audiophiles I knew didn't use Mac then either. The ones with money used Marantz 9s or 8b or Citation 2 or 5. The ones with less money [me] used Dynaco Stereo 70 or Mk 3s or 4s. I went to solid state in the mid 60s and never went back. Cartridges were $50 or less when they weren't a penny extra when bought with a turntable.

I was just glad to get something I could afford that would put a smile on my face. All we had we magazines and brick and mortar stores, some who would look at your askance if you weren't their 'type'. Some even required an appointment just to browse and listen and attitudes were prevalent: I'm sure that could trigger another thread. But there were some who were quite the opposite and helped save this hobby.

Without the internet, we would savor our rigs and eagerly await the next issue of reviews. At least that's how it was for me. I had levels of incremental improvement that would seem glacial by todays standards. Come to think of it, I did enjoy the music so much more than I do now, being content with what I had. Now with all the immediate improvements constantly bombarding me, I'm constantly reminded that what I have is so passe, LOL.

Sites like A'gon and others have opened up avenues of pleasure and debt and along with it some pretty intense marketing but its the nature of the game.
Truth be told, advances in PCs, servers and DACs have benefited from all of this, lulling me back onto the merry-go-round.

There's much to be said about the here and now and the youth who will experience and enjoy some of the greatest improvements in sound reproduction and all that lies ahead, but I'd like to think that the learning curve and history we've endured is irreplaceable and alas, soon to be lost in some back issues on someone's server.

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.