Why Don't More People Love Audio?

Wow Wehamilton, excellent! I wished, I would have been able to write that post. We are a bit behind here in continental Europe, but its coming fast and some high end stores are beginning to fold, others begin to diversify into HT. So your sociological analysis holds true also for us. We are not quite so far yet and analog\vinyl still thrives amongst the cognoscienti and in my generation, specialist stores, with above average vinyl setup service can still make a fairly good living. Unfortunatedly we are not so far as yet, where excellent high end stuff is thrown on the used market, because people want the raucus of HT. But it will come and be a feast for us, the old guard, like it was in those days, when digital started off in the market and people were getting rid of their LP's. Gosh what a feast that was!
So there are two sides to everything!

Wehamilton, your reference to people not wanting reality and Detlof's reference to Europe reminded me of a worrying issue IMHO: young people NOT even KNOWING what reality looks, sounds, or tastes like. In my six year-old daughter's class (in Europe) the kids were asked to draw the "little animal" they had for lunch (lunch was fish- sticks). Many drew fish-sticks with paws, some drew vegs, some a chicken... ofcourse some also drew a fish. Rest assured, this is just a piece of trivia, not the announcement of impending doom. But, as natural "reality" becomes more & more "bland", requiring more & more artificial enhancement, strange things can happen! Nevertheless, as Detlof intimates, there must be two sides to everything!

Wehamilton, interesting post and your analysis of our popular culture is spot-on. But to varying degrees, hasn't the popular culture of any era been mired in the banal? Is ours at the extreme in this regard, and if so, by what margin?

I can agree with the persepective that if tastes in our culture were more refined and discerning, then there would logically be a greater number of people interested in "audio as art." Remember, however, that the demand side is only part of the equation, and many would argue that it has a lesser influence than supply side effects. So in fairness, let's consider the supply side of this situation.

I have argued here, and in other threads, that the rate of significant innovation in high-end audio/music reproduction has been so glacially slow that relative to other consumer goods, high-end audio now offers extremely poor value for the consumer dollar. Relatively speaking, there has been significantly more innovation in the A/V, home-theater oriented segment of the market and this is where consumers have flocked with the dollars that they are willing to expend for this type of product. From a value-added perspective, their behavior is only "rational," whatever that means.

Understand that their choice doesn't reflect my values and I'm not arguing this from a HT enthusiast's point of view, I don't even have one and I too think that they're silly. But why is it so easy to demonize individual consumers, yet not look critically at the behavior of the firms that make up the high-end audio industry?

I suspect that there is more innovation in A/V gear because there is more demand thus more competition for the consumer dollar. Hi-End doesn't innovate because there isn't enough wide band interest. It seems many of the large hi-end firms have taken the marketing approach over real innovation. My take is audiophiles are as prone to marketing hoopla as the rest of the populace, I don't see much difference other than our interest is music and the A/V crowd is racous, bonerattling sensory meltdown. Remember that Opera was originally played to the masses 400 years ago. Times change, tastes change and the fringes left behind are always lamenting for the good ole days. Problem today is things are changing soooo fast that it is hard to imagine what the fallout will be. That is the scary part to me. Life in the chaos lane.

Isn't the basic question how the Hi-end defines itself, at least with respect to how wide a band of interest they can shoot for? There seems to be a pretty constant pressure from "the high-end" to define big chunks of stuff out of the picture - popular music, CDs, digital in general, interest in HT - all these things are kept at a distance, at least from high-end and/or audiophiles in the strictest sense which, by definition then, precludes the possibility that there will be a wide band interest.

The supply and demand question regarding A/V gear innovation is probably answered by "both" - people want it because it was created and marketed very effectively. But even here, the audio high-end goes to great lengths to distance themselves from this development. Why is the pursuit of movie replay at a high level of excellence any less worthwhile than the same pursuit of music replay? Sure, there's lots of garbage movies made every year, just like there's lots of garbage music made every year. But good and great movies (of which there are many) are greatly enhanced by playback on a good system, and the better the system, the better the experience, to the point that you can definitely create a better experience at home than you can get at all but the most modern cinemas. Certainly, what you can get for HT has advanced several magnitudes more in the past 15 years than home audio in the same time frame.

If what we mean when we wonder why more people don't love audio is why aren't more people spending money on dedicated equipment for audio reproduction and dedicated listening, I think we're limiting the question the same way the high-end limits how wide its own reach is.