High End is Dead?

I don’t think HEA will disappear, but I do think less people care about it than a generation ago.  When I was in school in the seventies there were a lot of people preoccupied with having a good system.  Check in with most of those people fifteen years later and and they had moved on from their starter systems but with the preoccupation with work and family, rarely listen to their floor standing speakers.  Check in with them 10 years later and the floorstanders have either been replaced by “Lifestyle Products” or nothing at all.  The younger Generation uses earbuds.  All of them are appalled when they find out that my system may have cost me 30 K to assemble, and around this site that sum is what people spend on power cords.
  So the HEA will persist, but probably by trying to extract ever more revenue from the True Believers and ignoring the rest, leading to a further bifurcation between audiophiles and the rest of the world

I forget the actual product, but there's a recent commercial for an app where this Gen Z actor is simply hitting buttons on the tablet screen to create a tune. Said buttons are marked "Bass", "Strings", Vocals", etc. and they all correlate to an existing backbeat, again chosen from a menu of backbeats.

The whole thing (on the commercial at least) sounds engaging and catchy, even as it's just a mouse in a musical maze bragging about which direction she's choosing.

With music becoming more and more codified and ephemeral, it's no surprise HEA is starting to age out.

'If this statement hits too close to home then you might consider getting up out of your specially crafted chair that is both comfortable and yet not so absorptive as to damage the soundstage of that 1958 recording bootlegged out of that acoustically challenged lower Manhattan basement club of a heroin addicted clarinetist playing the 100th version of some show tune.'


Ouch!

High End Audio as we know it is dead because it was primarily a Baby Boomer and Gen X phenomenon. Millenials and Gen Z have no interest in it.

So going forward, the only market segments that are doing well are DAC's, headphones and earbuds - for the younger generations - and the ultra high end, for the boomers cashing in their retirements funds. Everything in-between these two extremes is being decimated, and its not going to get any better, or return to how it was.

People have been saying that for 50 years. Take a look at the major audio review sites and audio shows, make note of all the high-end manufacturers from around the world. It is clear that high-end is not dead. Look at the revival of records, reel to reel tape and I am seeing a new surge in cassette interest. All are peeking the interest of the younger crowd, planting the seeds for upgrades in the future.