You don’t know what you don’t know. Audio kind of mirrors the technical developments in the tennis racket game. What were once brilliant innovations are now forgotten blunders or at least not so brilliant. The whole tennis racquet thing is quite similar in many respects to the game of audio. Is it the strings? Is it the frame? Is it the tension of the strings? Is it the damper? Is it the string-a-lings Federer favors in his racquets? Or a combination of everything? How important is the skill of the player? As far as materials for tennis rackets go they started out with wood, various hardwoods. Then moved up to the harder stuff, aluminum, titanium, tungsten, copper, all with the desirable qualities of stiffness, lightness and strength. There was graphite, and boron and Kevlar too, and carbon. Even liquid metal, in quotes. Now they’ve even got Graphene. Whoa!
Are the latest racquets, the ones with presumably more technically advanced materials and design really better than racquets from 20 years ago? That’s the $64K question. They are definitely better than the racquets from 30 years ago. And guess what, they’re all made in China. Have been for a very long time. A sponsor would most likely withdraw the big bucks if the player demanded to play big tournaments like Wimbledon with a twenty year old racquet rather than the latest model, no?
The audio industry suffers the same problem that the tennis racquet industry and the car industry face: they MUST come up with something that either IS new or appears to be new in the eyes of the customer. And they must do it once every year or two. It’s called planned obsolescence.
Are the latest racquets, the ones with presumably more technically advanced materials and design really better than racquets from 20 years ago? That’s the $64K question. They are definitely better than the racquets from 30 years ago. And guess what, they’re all made in China. Have been for a very long time. A sponsor would most likely withdraw the big bucks if the player demanded to play big tournaments like Wimbledon with a twenty year old racquet rather than the latest model, no?
The audio industry suffers the same problem that the tennis racquet industry and the car industry face: they MUST come up with something that either IS new or appears to be new in the eyes of the customer. And they must do it once every year or two. It’s called planned obsolescence.