High End Audio-Gaining Higher Ground?

Agree with jmcgrogan. The 1% conspiracy to extract as much profit from every body while dumbing them down with endless tasks, taxes and rules has succeeded.

well from a 33 white male I don't see audio ever being more then a very esoteric hobby.

Listen its way to expensive for the vast majority of people. I buy used and people still think I am crazy. younger people don't have this kind of money period. I know doctors and lawyers who are so far in debt that I have more disposable income making way less.

Also you can barely hear Hi end audio anymore. Very few stores and the ones that do have Hi-FI carry only a few brands. Sorry its hard to justify buying something when you have no ideal what the market can offer at different prices points.

In addition the Hi-Fi stores I have been to have been very off putting. Very unwilling to show a younger person different systems and what is available. Rude and just not interested because I only bought $2000 dollar speakers. This is crazy. Treating todays customers like crap means you won't have them as older customers when they may have more money.

People are super busy having time to listen to music when there are 100 plus tv channels and the internet full of social media and information is unlikely. People don't put music ahead of these other forms of entertainment.

"High End" is pretty much a marketing term for traditional hifi gear and components that target peoples desires to have the best possible sound in their homes.

The term is a lot of the problem. PEople will always seek high quality sound with their music, just to different degrees and in differnet ways to adapt with modern lifestyles. Just look around you and you will see that modern lifestyles are increasingly mobile. Great mobile sound can be had for a pittance in comparison to "high end audio".

It's merely natural selection at play and guess who is the dinosaur and going to lose? Or at least never grow beyond a boutique industry that largely targets wealthy gullible fools? There is a niche for everything I suppose...

High End Audio needs to cut through all the BS and just deliver the goods in a manner that works better for everyone. THen we will all live happily ever after.

I think of "High End Audio" ambivalently.

It has admirable goals yet often questionable methods.

Its like atomic power, which has a lot to offer, but also spawned Godzilla, just like High End audio has spawned entities like MAchina Dynamica. :^)

Mapman, It's all good, but BS is most profitable and more BS implies to more profits. Profit is addictive! What you need to do to get more profit? Throw more BS and see what happens. It's just reality. If one BS doesn't work, think of another one and so on and so forth.
BS is part of any BuSiness.