Why Don't More People Love Audio?

Home theatre better matches the "zeitgeist" of the times than high end audio. Previous posters have hit on a lot of the factors defining the current situation, let me put it a different way. For a number of years, going back at least to the mid-90's, society has been in a highly experiential phase. It has even been called the "Experience Economy" in business circles.

With this mindset, everything has to be "extreme" to even get noticed. Realtiy isn't good enough, it needs to be pumped up. From sports to movies to recreational activities it has to be more exagerated, more impactful and more staged than ever before just to get to leave an impression. You can't watch TV w/o loud intrusive sound effects inserted for no reason (You Are the Weakest Link or the NFL on Fox for example). Exagerated visual effects in movies have replaced plot lines and artistic cinematography. Even martial arts films (the original extreme genre) has had trouble being extreme enough. Now you have to fly as you beat the crap out of your opponent, or lacking flight capabilities, just add more blood. Best Picture, Gladiator & Titanic, you see where I'm going with this.

In the music world, you can't have a rock band with just four or five musicians anymore- now they need to be fronted by 8 choreographed dancers putting on a stage show that sometimes also claim to be the "singers." These muscial "acts" have replaced bands. In this environment, nobody even notices Jerry Springer anymore. You could call it the WWF'ing of America. Looked at cynically, you could say it's technology playing to the lowest common denominator across a wide range of activities. Another view might be we've been on a bit of a technology bender with lower prices bringing these gooodies into the realm of the average man.

In this period of exageration the home theatre "experience" with it's countless channels and audio processing and manipulation is giving people more of what they want. They don't want reality- the holy grail that has been fueling the audiophile quest for the last 40 years, they want to be dazzled with an enhanced, or pumped up version of reality. And they can be dazzled for a farily small amount of money (for those that aren't too discerning) or they can invest $50K in a home theatre for those that need to brag "mine is bigger than yours."

What is missing from all this is the appreciation ofthe art of music and the purity of it's reproduction that we audiophiles value. While critically listening to music is certainly experiential, it seems an almost quaint activity in a world that wants to be blown away by sensory overload.

No my friends, we are not living in a era that values or even understands subtlety or nuance of the type that makes art and it's reproduction an audiophile's passion. And until the pendulum starts swinging back the other way, don't be surprised if the totally awesome, extreme and radical audio video experience keeps the purist relegated to second class status.

Dude, did you hear that someone's comin' out with a 20 foot big screen with 10 channel make you puke and your ears bleed fully surround sound gut rumbling digisynthesizerprocessor? Awesome......

Wow Wehamilton, excellent! I wished, I would have been able to write that post. We are a bit behind here in continental Europe, but its coming fast and some high end stores are beginning to fold, others begin to diversify into HT. So your sociological analysis holds true also for us. We are not quite so far yet and analog\vinyl still thrives amongst the cognoscienti and in my generation, specialist stores, with above average vinyl setup service can still make a fairly good living. Unfortunatedly we are not so far as yet, where excellent high end stuff is thrown on the used market, because people want the raucus of HT. But it will come and be a feast for us, the old guard, like it was in those days, when digital started off in the market and people were getting rid of their LP's. Gosh what a feast that was!
So there are two sides to everything!

Wehamilton, your reference to people not wanting reality and Detlof's reference to Europe reminded me of a worrying issue IMHO: young people NOT even KNOWING what reality looks, sounds, or tastes like. In my six year-old daughter's class (in Europe) the kids were asked to draw the "little animal" they had for lunch (lunch was fish- sticks). Many drew fish-sticks with paws, some drew vegs, some a chicken... ofcourse some also drew a fish. Rest assured, this is just a piece of trivia, not the announcement of impending doom. But, as natural "reality" becomes more & more "bland", requiring more & more artificial enhancement, strange things can happen! Nevertheless, as Detlof intimates, there must be two sides to everything!

Wehamilton, interesting post and your analysis of our popular culture is spot-on. But to varying degrees, hasn't the popular culture of any era been mired in the banal? Is ours at the extreme in this regard, and if so, by what margin?

I can agree with the persepective that if tastes in our culture were more refined and discerning, then there would logically be a greater number of people interested in "audio as art." Remember, however, that the demand side is only part of the equation, and many would argue that it has a lesser influence than supply side effects. So in fairness, let's consider the supply side of this situation.

I have argued here, and in other threads, that the rate of significant innovation in high-end audio/music reproduction has been so glacially slow that relative to other consumer goods, high-end audio now offers extremely poor value for the consumer dollar. Relatively speaking, there has been significantly more innovation in the A/V, home-theater oriented segment of the market and this is where consumers have flocked with the dollars that they are willing to expend for this type of product. From a value-added perspective, their behavior is only "rational," whatever that means.

Understand that their choice doesn't reflect my values and I'm not arguing this from a HT enthusiast's point of view, I don't even have one and I too think that they're silly. But why is it so easy to demonize individual consumers, yet not look critically at the behavior of the firms that make up the high-end audio industry?

I suspect that there is more innovation in A/V gear because there is more demand thus more competition for the consumer dollar. Hi-End doesn't innovate because there isn't enough wide band interest. It seems many of the large hi-end firms have taken the marketing approach over real innovation. My take is audiophiles are as prone to marketing hoopla as the rest of the populace, I don't see much difference other than our interest is music and the A/V crowd is racous, bonerattling sensory meltdown. Remember that Opera was originally played to the masses 400 years ago. Times change, tastes change and the fringes left behind are always lamenting for the good ole days. Problem today is things are changing soooo fast that it is hard to imagine what the fallout will be. That is the scary part to me. Life in the chaos lane.