Is the idea of audiophile listening a dying concept as boomers die off?

Inexpensive audio? Hate to rankle anyone that finds the offerings ’meh’, but ’Chi-Fi’ is Huge in Asia.....lots of ’entry level’, regardless of how one might dis/downplay/ignore its’ existence....

Not long after the intro to the ’global market’, the overall ’appearance’ of the items got ’gloss-ier’, offered more levels of control, and generally more ’bang/buck$’ for the not-so-well-off-burgeoning ’phile market...

Good-looking ’tiny ’phile with D amps....the speakers are (as usual) the slowest to keep up with the improvements in the front end stuff, but ought to, given some time...

Just the ticket for dorms one can’t afford, the tuition makes a home down payment a fever dream....so the rise in apartment construction breaks the ceiling...🤷‍♂️🙄

Frankly, I’m happy to be in the ’8%ile’ age category in the chart on pg.1.....as I wouldn’t wish the next 2 decades on anyone cogent enough to realize what’s really happening...

Since ’we’ as a species didn’t have it together enough to ’order up’ additional Earths’ to cover the demands for air, water, raw materials, farmland, housing....etc.

And that ’Etc.’ list is huge...

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A local auction house posted a online sale of hi-fi equipment and items. A batch of ’mid-ish’ stuff that looks to be about 3~4 ’pairings’ of units, some speakers, couple of subs....box of cables, cd’s, dvd’s.....and posters!

I’ve no horse in the race, and not interested in bidding...

But, being the nice guy none suspect of me, the stuff has to be picked up by the next day. PM if you’re curious....

Note to our A’gon monitors: Trust me, there’s no mega-buck item(s) in the lot that would appear here, and y’all could look for yourselves.....

....and they wouldn’t list the stuff here anyway....not likely that A’gon exists in their universe.... ;)

Fascinating excellent comments.

Might I add that if you want to know what other people are thinking, then don’t use yourself or your friends as core samples. If those who participate here are largely older males helping one another out basically to sort out equipment, then we’re not the best to self report. Aslo this forum is mostly team USA folks.

Ironically can’t use Reccord sales to help get a snapshot of the state of the audiophile/high end gear world’s survival indicators as ones and zeros have taken over. I’d like to see the price bell curve of the average streamer price. 

If sales are robust that’s the only metric that matters to me. And if we’re a bunch on the backside of life what’s driving this could be the realisation of our fleeting time left?

@wsrrsw 

Might I add that if you want to know what other people are thinking, then don’t use yourself or your friends as core samples.

Point taken. Be warned: 90% of this site runs on (freely, cavierly, recklessly) with anecdotes with a sample of one. ;-) 

The other alternative would be for people to withhold their opinion. LOL.

Also often, like it or not, many of us tend to be like our parents. My Dad was an audiophile. One of my sons is.  Is this proof of anything given my admonition of close orbits when collecting data, Nah? Yah?

@nitrobob

Agree with your comment. I am 57 and have kids in college or just out. None of them have a decent stereo and they have very little interest in one. I have tried to get them interested and even have equipment I could give them. I guess it's just not cool anymore. Headphones and bluetooth speakers seem to be the norm. When I was in college about every dorm room had some kind of stereo and we went from room to room listening. Times have changed for sure.

I upgraded all my equipment once the kids got older and started driving etc. I think that is pretty normal for our generation but not sure if the younger gen will do this when they are our age.  Various streaming devices with wireless speakers seem to be the more likely path for younger generations. The one thing I do see is a fair amount of younger people buying vinyl. There is interest there but hard to tell how much.