Senior Audiophiles - Audiophile since the 60-70's?

Me too Brianmgrarcom. The only audiophiles I knew in those days were locals who I ran into at dealers and later one dealer who I became good friends with. I can remember his going to CES and anxiously awaiting to hear what he heard. I also remember discovering Stereophile and growing old awaiting new issues.

I also remember somewhat later when I got strongly into racing Hobies. Saleboat racing is very time consuming and meant that my speakers would often go weeks without being on. Often my young children would request that I turn them on at bedtime and play them loud.

I think really Senior Audiophiles got started in the 50s, as I did. Heathkits, Knight kits, Eico kits and DIY projects from electronics magazines got the hobby started for my generation. With the advent of transistors, the kit building hobby took a dive, and the high end products of the early 60s were McIntosh and Marantz, not really affordable gear for the rest of us! There is so much cool stuff today for audiophiles of every persuasion and budget that I think this is really the golden age of audio, although much of the stuff from the 50s still sounds great! (But tubes expiring and hum were no fun then.) The big question to me is did the CD help or hurt the hobby; and what about MP3?

I think audio is a lot like cars. I used to tune cars by listening to them or driving them. Now the chip needs to be read by the computer. Not as much fun but clearly better.

It is still a fun hobby and now you meet interesting people even across the world thanks to the internet.

hi my favorite decade was the 60's. there were many great panel speakers available at that time. the tube amps and preamps were wonderful.

there were no audiophile accessories as we think of them today.

the sound of a good system was much better than what passes for so-called high quality audio systems.

a lot of todays expensive systems are headache generators.

Jnhapp, you raise an interesting question regarding CD (and MP3, though I don't feel that MP3 and "high fidelity" belong in the same sentence). Anyone who has been in this game since the 60's or before would surely recognize that every medium since the reel to reel tape has been a lower fidelity medium. Today, the LP still hangs on as our highest fidelity commercially available medium, though I know many would argue against me on that point. Truth is, I can't listen to CDs once I've been listening to LPs in the same session.

The point I wish to make is this: CDs hurt the hobby in the sense that the marketers discovered that convenience was far more marketable than fidelity, and that fidelity could be created with ad copy. I feel this has dramatically delayed the evolution towards higher fidelity mediums. LPs are fraught with problems, and yet they still have more music in their noisy grooves than the best that CD has to offer to this day.

On the other hand, CD really expanded the market by generating a lot of interest in sound reproduction at a time when the entire industry was in need of a shot in the arm. People started to actually listen to this new technology and started demanding higher quality, and the quality has been improving for the past 20 years, though to me it has felt as though progress has been very slow coming. Today, however, we are able to purchase some really fine CDs. Tremendous progress has been made in the medium since its inception, and hopefully SACD and DVD-A will lead to the evolution of new higher resolution formats that will finally surpass the LP entirely.

In conclusion, I feel CDs inception was a deterrent to the quest for higher fideltiy in the short to intermediate term, but long term I think it has the potential to take high fidelity to new highs as well as grow the market at all levels. Of course, that's just one man's opinion.