Why Don't More People Love Audio?

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.

I tend to agree with Charker.

But there are many choices out there for anyone interested, like always, from the cheapest mass produced garbage to the biggest and most expensive "high end" gear. VEry few who like audio probably pay all that much attention to the "high end" as represented on Audiogon. The Internet is the main source of stuff to buy however these days, not walk in stores.

There is a lot of good stuff to be found on Audiogon but little or no quality control to go with it. If you do not know what you are doing, you can waste a lot of money in the pursuit of "high end" sound. But if you are one who likes to tinker with expensive audio gear and tweaks, more power to ya. But that is a very small % of teh people out there who love music or even audio to any extent.

Mapman, but I know many of them. They tend to not be "technical" in the university sense of the word, but rather military or self trained.

"Mapman, but I know many of them. They tend to not be "technical" in the university sense of the word, but rather military or self trained."

Lots of reasons why people like to tinker. Formal education is not a pre-requisite. I've been doing it with audio gear since I was 8 years old or so. People are curious beasts.