When Was The Audio Golden Age?

I agree regarding the 60’s and 70’s. Huge gains in speaker technology, turntables, and then you had the receiver wars. I would compare all the monster receivers of the 70’s to the muscle car era on the 60’s and early 70’s. They can’t outperform modern vehicles but great lookers and still a lot of fun to own and use.  Every town had at least one local stereo shop and a decent size city had multiple.
 

Then you have the dark ages. Started with the near death of vinyl due to the cd and the invention of 5 channel surround. You could hardly find anything that wasn’t black  and the  focus was running 5 and then 7 channel systems that ran double duty for movies and music play back.

We are now in another golden age though. Great speakers, huge gains in digital, tons of options for high end audio whether from the companies that weathered the storm and recovered or new boutique manufacturers. The only thing missing is you have to go to a large metro area to see great audio. We have your Best Buy’s etc but the small local shops are long gone. That’s a metro area of about 1m. Hard to compete with the internet.

"And I'm surfing on a wave of nostalgia for an age yet to come" - Buzzcocks 1978

@tylermunns 

 In the sixties people were happy with AM transistor radios and jukeboxes.  I remember car radios being blasted for all they were worth.  Idiots that can’t appreciate how to reproduce music properly, or are interested in using music to assault others, have always been with us

I think the late 1960's through the early 1980"s are often referred to as the "Golden Age of HiFi". General consumer interest was at it's peak, a multitude of retailers were selling stereo equipment, returning GI's from 'Nam were bringing home huge Japanese systems bought at the PX for a pittance, the receiver wattage wars raged among the major equipment players and such. I concur that modern stereo equipment generally sounds better and is more price effective, especially when adjusted for inflation. What I do miss, is looking inside of a good quality mainstream amplifier and seeing huge transformers with painted metal cases, massive soup can sized output capacitors, a line of MOSFET transistors on beautifully cast aluminum heatsinks and yards of nicely routed point to point hand wiring among discrete components. I'm sure an amp like that is available today for $25,000.

The golden age of music started in 1955 and ended when the calendar turned to January 1st 1980 for the most part with some exceptions. That is different from the question asked about the audiophile golden age. I think technology has continued to improve and progressed where the very best sound has to be today and has to put us into the golden age for the audiophile. Having said that, in the 60s I had a pioneer amp 25wpc and Kenwood speakers (when they were made in Japan). I remember that combination sounded wonderful and when I got rid of them, I spent years chasing that sound that I let get away. Today if you have the money better sounding equipment can be found in many different combinations. Therefore sound and music has disjointed somewhat so you really have to say today has to be the golden age for the audiophile because of the sound you can get from your stereo.