Why Don't More People Love Audio?

Good point Mapman. I know plenty of music lover's that don't think twice about the sound. They're probably the lucky ones.

I fell into it at a very young age because I was the youngest of 5 music lover's so I was surrounded by music and a stereo in each bedroom. If it weren't for that who knows what would have happened. My parents weren't into music much at all, just my grandmother who would play Perry Como, the piano and would sing to us. (I know is misspelled Perry's name but.....).

I believe MOST people have no idea what high end audio equipment is. Once they've heard it... many people with money will buy it. How do you expose these people to this kind of equipment? The saying ... You know what you know, but you don't know what you don't know, applies. If you don't know it's out there and you stumble across a local store, that may, or may not have high end equipment to demo... You might be intimidated by the sales person. What questions could you possibly ask about something you know nothing about? Many very wealthy people depend on industry experts to choose their gear for them, if it isn't what they want, they depend on them to sell it for them too. Convenience is key!

Who cares??

Nobody knows.

Easy,
Snobbishness, elitism and stuffiness of a lot of audiophiles. Prices go up as economy sours. It almost like a polo club business plan.

Having introduced some non-audiophile people to better audio over the years, I think that the audiophile world would do better by encouraging the building of low cost, high bang for the buck systems. Non audiophiles who have listened to the systems I have had over the years have responded with, "I didn't even know there was piano in this song", "this rocks so much more then it normally sounds like", "how much would it cost to get a system that sounds like this? "

Come on 120,000 speakers, 60,000 amps, 6,000 cables, the average, and I think right in this case, person, says to himself"these people are idiots". Just think for 120,00 you could go to a lot of concerts and hear what music really sounds like.

By staying so non approachable, audiophile stereo has albatrossed itself with an aging and shrinking customer base. I think they need to become more relevant, price, market and culture wise.