The demise of HiFi ??

What is even worse and contributes to the problem is the ever increasing decrease in the quality of music in favour or convienence. The plethora of IPODs, MP3 players etc. and the constant decrease in quality is deplorable. All this is for a very consumer quantity not quality driven market that has/is prepared to accept without proof that every new piece of technology developed must be better in sound than the technology that it has replaced.

The vast majority have always 'listened' to their music via a practical, low quality format. I guess it was cassettes and nasty record players a generation ago.

Us audiophiles have always been a pretty small minority of the music buying public, and I am heartened by the fact that some (not all, sadly) new CD's I buy are very well recorded.

It is remarkable to me, that my local Naim dealer (Basically Sound) is situated in the middle of nowhere, in a small village and continues to flourish.

Furthermore; its business is solely in two channel audio. Graham, who runs the place, receives little or no interest in 'Home Cinema', so while other local Hi-Fi shops try to be all things to all men, he picks up the customers who say things like "I didn't realise that a Hi Fi system could sound this good" etc:

Yes; there are now many more leisure pursuits available in the home, which maybe takes some business away from Hi Fi sales; but there will always be people who are prepared to do what it takes to hear their music properly.

Whether that is enough to keep specialist manufacturers and dealers in business, remains to be seen.

Naim (along with others) have had to adapt by making their products prettier and more versatile, but still perform where it matters most.

Fascinating times.

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Originally posted by J.N.:
Us audiophiles have always been a pretty small minority ... but there will always be people who are prepared to do what it takes to hear their music properly...

Whether that is enough to keep specialist manufacturers and dealers in business, remains to be seen...

Fascinating times.

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All is not lost. I entered the arena of specialist hifi back in 1990. I can happily report that one of my younger members of staff (only 20) has dipped his toe into the world of specialist hifi. Mind you it's not Naim for him yet but give him time...

Mike (optimistic in relation to the well being of the industry in the future)

In my choice of music, usually Jazz occasionally 70s reissues but with forays into new releases, I'm consistently impressed with the sound qulaity level of most of the CDs that I buy. I think it's easily better, on an overall level, than 10 years ago.

Peter

Perhaps this thread is also about the demise of the Music Room, which is absorbing more and more Hifi topics.

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Perhaps this thread is also about the demise of the Music Room, which is absorbing more and more Hifi topics.

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Herm
I did consider and almost stuck it into "The HiFi Corner ". Alas I felt since it discussed the music side more than the equipment it should be here.

Of course we can always duplicate it.

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Originally posted by Geoff P:
A comment on the HiFi Corner thread "5i -Naim have got it right" thread gave a view from the HiFi retail front describing how the general public were loosing interest in genuine HiFi and just buying HT as a fashion accessory for their fast paced modern style of living which has no time for just sitting and listening.

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AFAICT the general public have never had any interest in serious hi fi in any case. It's a bit like bicycles: to the average punter £500 is an insane amount of money to spend on either. I cannot recall a time when this has not been so, it's just the packaging changes. Music Centres in the 70s, rack systems in the 80s, midis in the 90s, minis in the 00s.

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It is an even sadder thing if this is filtering through to the music producing end of the business.
Are they giving much attention to the recording quality?

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It really depends who it is. And again the case that AFAICT nothing has changed. You've always been able to get records that sound as if they were recorded through a wall of foam and two paper cups with a bit of string between them. If anything there's more of a problem with a requirement to be *too* perfect with pop releases (pop has always spent a lot of money on packaging, and that includes the recording).

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Is the attitude that a new CD purchase has transitory value to the average buyer who will listen a few times then move onto the next "new" CD?
Does this mean that the content of more CD's has perhaps 1 or 2 "headline" tracks to attract and is then filled up with garbage?

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And again I ask, how is this different to the albums of pop acts from, say, 30 years ago?

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It would seem very demotivating for even the most critical and skillfull record producers and recording artists to feel the "general public" does not really LISTEN to the music.

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On the whole, they don't, and never have. It is the general case that music reproduction is dominated by background play. In the home, and out of of it. Not always a bad thing. I've got Radio 2 on in the Lab here, I don't want something to listen to, or I'd never get anything done.

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Us audiophiles are going to loose out more and more if this is correct.

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I usually think of "audiophile" as "someone who is primarily interested in hifi", and I don't think of myself as one. (That isn't a criticism, btw, just what I see: if you like fiddling with tweaks for hours on end or researching your next equipment upgrade that's your perogative, your time and your money and if it floats your boat then you should carry on). Audiophiles have always been in a minority, most people haven't the time or the money.

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I did consider and almost stuck it into "The HiFi Corner ". Alas I felt since it discussed the music side more than the equipment it should be here.

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that rather reinforces my feeling about "audiophiles"... From my point of view, the "music side" is the only point to it.

Pete.

In all respects, surely the introduction of cassettes all those years ago undermined music in general. Cassettes invented music piracy and the quality was abysmal. We seem to have survived that, so why can't we survive something that at least has a chance to promote music to another level of commercial possibilities? It may be that this could encourage more people to become interested in music beyond "tabloid pop" just because it is cool technology.

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Originally posted by Rasher:
In all respects, surely the introduction of cassettes all those years ago undermined music in general. Cassettes invented music piracy and the quality was abysmal.

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I think the opposite is the case. Cassettes, alongside AM radio, have made it possible for pretty much anyone to listen to lots of music. If they get hooked then they start buying it seriously, along with better reproduction equipment.

I spent most of my 1st year at Uni taping large chunks of friends record collections (while they were doing mine). I have a sack (literally) of pirate tapes from then, but I never listen to any of them. All of the albums I really liked I've bought, partly for better quality, partly because I respect the music enough that I want the people responsible for it to be paid. Not everyone is honest about it, but enough to make it a multi-million pound industry with global significance.

Casettes and radio play (and now MP3, recordable CDs, MDs) are "loss leaders". Without them there wouldn't be much piracy, but there wouldn't be nearly as much music either. Cassettes made it possible for anyone to put their work on reproducible media and get heard. I can't see how that is "underming music in general".

Pete.

My thinking is that music was undermined because piracy was easy for the first time, so it would have been rife initially, and that the quality of those knocked out bedroom copies that people swapped was appalling. I bought many bootlegged concert tapes from Camden Market in the 80's, and they didn't do the contents justice, but there was some rare stuff there that I just had to have.
Radio is very much being lucky with what's on at the time, and in the UK...well. Anything decent is on late evenings when most are out having fun. I don't know anyone taping off the radio unless its a concert (?!)

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Originally posted by J. A. Toon:
I think it is worth pointing out that whilst MP3 trading on Napster was in full flow, apparently considerably more (genuine) CDs were being sold, not less.

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The word "apparently" in the above statement strips the entire statement of its worth, I'm afraid.

My feeling is CD (plus SACD) is on its way out. As soon as the major companies have figured out a way to efficiently charge internet customers per song there's only going to be small mom-and-pop labels making CDs. This will make a lot of people very happy, except people like me, who do not listen to songs, but rather symphonies.

However, this is just a feeling, based on the stuff I read in papers and magazines.

Herman

I think that in the short term it will be business as usual with lo-fi (e.g. MP3) and hi-fi solutions (e.g. SACD, DVD-A) co-existing. Long term, with massive advances in bandwidth, solid-state memory density, mobile technology and processing power I suspect that we will get to a point where lo and hi-fi will converge into a "one size fits all" technology that is available to everyone and many times better than our current state of the art.

What I am worried about (touched on by Herm) is that artists publishing standalone songs via services like "iTunes" will herald the death of the album. I love my new iPod but it is clearly geared towards the "playlist" - a type of listening that is foreign to me. A great album has a soul that is far more than a random collection of songs.

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Posted by Minky:
What I am worried about (touched on by Herm) is that artists publishing standalone songs will herald the death of the album. I love my new iPod but it is clearly geared towards the "playlist" - a type of listening that is foreign to me. A great album has a soul that is far more than a random collection of songs.

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It is a bit as though we have come full circle from the time when 78's (sorry I mean 45's) as singles ruled the record roost. Then there was an "A" side which was what you were buying and a "B" side which was usually some ridiculous jingle. People were typically and quite rightly nervous about spending their hard earned cash on an LP which stood a strong chance of being a serious waste of money. The way you sampled music was via a juke box and just like you do for an "honest" download to say an iPOD you paid for each track you wanted. Along with that for the price of a cofee or a beer dependent on age group you got to hear other singles free that were funded by other drinkers, kinda like sharing music downloads.

Now I realise this analogy has loads of holes in it if we get into the fine detail, but the principal of sampling music for a small fee and sharing that sampling to spread the cost is still there. So the music industry has survived this approach for a lot longer than it would have us believe. I agree with John Toon's comments and confirm some informed opinion is that the Music recording business is spiralling into a trap of it's own making. Instead of taking advantage of the ease with which it can advertise it's wares via the internet, born out by the fact that during the zenith of Napster's operation the sale of CD's as reported did not plummet but in fact increased, the industry became more scrooge like and paranoid launching into this whole CD copy protection nightmare which has reportedly been associated with a slump in CD sales.

The idea that some all pervasive solution for compiled music is evolving has it's good side in situations where what we really want is a personal version of "muzac", but I do agree with both Herm & Minky that the CD / LP enables a musical purpose beyond a mere 31/2 - 4 minutes of sound which is to develop varied emotional moods for the listner and in the case of classical beyond that to allow a complete work to be heard in it's proper context. God forbid we ever lose that.

Taking Minky's perdiction to exteremes I have this awfull feeling we could be ultimately talking about musical implants which ostensibly can be connected to central databases of music and by your thought command alone can deliver the track you want inside your head. Of course the most frightening thing will be the subliminal messages buried in that music.

regards
GEOFFP

perdictions, smerdictions

Minky,

as I understand it, it's not artists who market material via iTunes. They are under contract to the label, and the label sells the material to iTunes.

If the labels can get good synergy with these providers (i.e. buy and merge), they don't need to make cd's anymore.

Herman

This debate is becoming this decade's equivalent of the interminable CD vs Vinyl debate from the 80s and 90s.

My thoughts:

-- ISTM music is as healthy as its ever been its audiophilia that is in decline (no bad thing in my book).

-- People should see the internet, digital audio and related technologies as an opportunity not a threat. Its going to be great -- there will be more music and you'll get to listen to it in more often and in more convenient ways. it'll be a lot cheaper as well.

-- There is a basic wood for the trees (or is it baby and bathwater?) issue with the idea that music will end becuase we have to have high fidelity replay rather than very high fidelity reply. Speaking generally (rather than about individuals on this thread) people who fail to make this distinction invariably have no real interest in music AFAICT.

Matthew

Matthew,

I think that if you actually read the posts above you will see that you are preaching to the converted.

Maybe some of the debate here has developed in this direction out of my initial misuse of the term "audiophile".

I was using it to label somebody who appreciates listening to music, whereas it seems officially it is the correct label for somebody who appreciates listening to HiFi. That was not the way I meant it!

I was not talking about the need to preserve music content and quality for the HiFi obssesive or even enthusiast. I was asking if the "musicophiles" (who are often audiophiles, aswell but don't necessarily have to be) had an opinion on this subject.

Sorry for misleading but it has been an interesting debate so far anyway.

GEOFFP

Erm, I did actually read the posts about and was just adding my 2c.

Matthew

Sorry. Thought you were telling us off. My mistake. Will have to increase the dosage of me paranoia medication. Give me your address and I'll send you a cake.

Chaps

My view is that for the forseeable future, most of us will be working longer and harder and will have a higher disposable income.

Audiophiles will always be in a minority but they will always be around. Therefore they will continue to buy in at the top end which will probably get higher as the years roll by. It will always be a minority interest but the big boys toy syndrome will ensure Hifi's survival.

Regards

Mick

Quite possibly Mick, but will the software survive with it?

Paul