sd: in your analysis of the current state of highend audio, i think you attribute too much to perceived changes in our economic value system brought on by the now rapidly disappearing "techno-wealthy." there are a number of other variables that i believe are worthy of consideration to explain how the audio hobby has evolved to its present condition from the advent of "hifi." i'll highlight some of these, in no particular order:
> in the dawn of hifi, there were many fewer competitors in the entertainment market. radio was still a viable medium but was beginning to be eaten up by television. if you wanted to see a movie, you went to the theater or drivein. games were mechanical, big and clunky-- shuffleboard, pinball, pocket billiards.
> solid state electronics begot cheaper and smaller hifi gear and, more importantly, cheaper and smaller computers. as more computing power came to be put on ever smaller chips, ic's found there way into the entertainment market. pong begot pac man and pac man begot the acres of video & vr games drawing crowds at dave and busters. atari, apple and commodore 64k "home" games begot interactive internet and playstation 2 games 100's of times better rendered than those you had to pay a buck to play only a few months ago at your local watering hole.
> if you wanna watch a movie now, you have a plethora of means to do so. hell, if you fly direct from denver to london on a 777, you get your choice of 17 movies, each direction, viewable on your own private lcd screen. car toys now has a section in its larger stores given over entirely to in-car video systems. say you're not easily distracted? try drivin' your m-3 with its paddle shifters whilst usin' your cell phone, gps screen and built-in dvd player.
> you wanna' listen to all those thousands of redbook cd's floatin around your life pod? slip em' in your clock radio, your in-dash player, your office mini-stack, your top-of-the-line circuit city ht/av all-digital-all-the-time six channel super system.
> for highend 2-channel audio to compete for its tiny piece of the entertainment market, it has to be differentiated from all the other choices available. how is that done? simply put, by creating clearly superior means of reproducing recordings. most of us who serve as the crew on the good ship audiogon like to think we are searching for the holy grail that is the "live performance standard" when we buy our selected gear. as others have attested, tho, that standard is likely unattainable for now, at any cost. so what we really strive for is something that sounds "better" than our perceived subjective norm. if one is self-confident, he can derive what "better" means for himself. those lacking such confidence depend upon others to define the comparative.
> the differentiation of choices in a rapidly increasing universe of alternatives becomes, perhaps axiomatically, a logarithmic function. "value" thus becomes evermore subjective. if something, anything, makes your audio system of choice sound "better" to you, then it has value. how much? that's up to you if your prudent.
> in my experience, only a small fraction of the tiny market for highend audio is driven by "status" in making choices among products. who is there, after all, to impress? the recent article in the washington post that is the subject of another thread is, i think, a reality check. people who are perfectly happy with their circuit city systems think most, if not all, who hang out in this chat room are crazy. the more we spend, the crazier we are. is it good to be crazy? does craziness equate with status? damned if i know. that's why i keep coming back to this place.
as always, these are just my opinions and random thoughts that you may agree with or not. your choice. your turn. -kelly
