Where do you think we will be in 50 years with technology with regard AV - Audio ?

Probably not that different to what the average consumer has available today.  

The high end will of course be bigger, better and more shinier.

Your artificial intelligence robot will be in the chair listening, and you will be delegated to washing the car or doing the dishes

Well, I'll be pushing up the daisies!

But...
Audio sources will be increasingly computerised, usually consisting of a portable data store and media server / player / controller.
Switch mode power supplies and high frequency (250kHz - 500kHz) class D amps will be the norm,
These will be in active satellite/ sub speaker systems, coupled wirelessly or wired as preferred.
Room and speaker correction, and integration of the sub will be built into computerised front end players, and these will have different, user selectable, listening modes.

Vinyl via hi-tech turntables and valve systems with massive traditional speakers (using new materials), will go out of fashion and then come back into fashion.

Who knows what the next five years will bring, let alone 50. If you have any insight I'm sure Naim would be interested to hear from you.

I suspect the key things with be :

1. more pervasive digital amps 

2. true hifi full range speakers that hang on wall or otherwise are unobtrusive

3.more prevalent and significantly better room sound processing (well beyond the relatively crude, in my opinion, current DSP affairs)

4.sources will be more media agnostic - i think cloud and local storage will blend with no meaningful sound differences between them

5.systems will a  be far more responsive to automation and learning - and media lookup and selection will be more interactive and specific if required. 

I wonder if Naim will have got the new Uniti range working properly?

I'm pleased to have inspired TC to start this thread. Thinking back to my first Naim system in 1983, when I had a 42/110 and Kans, and listening to what I have now, it's a better system for sure, but amplifier and speaker technology hasn't really changed much in that time. I recall reading an interview with Ivor Teifenbrun (I think it was him anyway) when he said that in the future music would be solid state, which with my music sitting in a nas has come true. But then some of the best systems are still fronted by turntables, just like my Linn from 1979. 

I'm sure that the future will bring more digital processing power, but somehow these improvements don't make things better, just more dumbed down. When I was 18 I owned an LP12, which I bought by saving up my wages working at B&Q. Yet my son who was in the picture, and is 19, is happy listening to YouTube through his computer and headphones. He knows what good sound is, what with being in a band, and having grown up with the Naim, but he's simply not interested. 

So even though technology may well improve quality, will anyone still be listening? 

I've no idea but nothing like it is today.   

Wonder if there will still be cable debates

I'm pretty sure there will be some quantum computing technology involved.  Wether that means sky high resolution and the hifi can think for itself??

You come home and the system has been in conversation with the networks of all those people you have been in the company of. Then will provide the entertainment that it sees fit to provide the right enjoyment, relaxation or agitation to let your body and mind meet maximum level 9.

(If it's a damp Tuesday, you can override to a more sedate level 4)

Hungryhalibut posted:

I wonder if Naim will have got the new Uniti range working properly?

I'm pleased to have inspired TC to start this thread. Thinking back to my first Naim system in 1983, when I had a 42/110 and Kans, and listening to what I have now, it's a better system for sure, but amplifier and speaker technology hasn't really changed much in that time. I recall reading an interview with Ivor Teifenbrun (I think it was him anyway) when he said that in the future music would be solid state, which with my music sitting in a nas has come true. But then some of the best systems are still fronted by turntables, just like my Linn from 1979. 

I'm sure that the future will bring more digital processing power, but somehow these improvements don't make things better, just more dumbed down. When I was 18 I owned an LP12, which I bought by saving up my wages working at B&Q. Yet my son who was in the picture, and is 19, is happy listening to YouTube through his computer and headphones. He knows what good sound is, what with being in a band, and having grown up with the Naim, but he's simply not interested. 

So even though technology may well improve quality, will anyone still be listening? 

Thanks for your kind words HH you brought a smile reading about your 42 -110 and Kans  back in the day.I also had Kans with a Nait then 42 -110 and a LP12 when I was 18.All my mates where buying cars but I was more into getting more connection with my music threw this esoteric audio gear with bonkers prices......nothings changed there..ha ha !

Loved the Naim boxes back then  - with fragile precision equipment  written on the top....it seemed to say before unboxing theres a quility product in here .My rose tinted glasses are on.

Back to the future how about a virtual reality head set with electrostatic headphones that could be tasty.

Thanks everyone who has posted so far

I just slotted in a pair of AR AR-2 from c. 1957-67 in my 500 system.  I am going to leave them in a while, because they are fun to listen to, and give me a different take than I am used to.

"Classics" will always have value, and a following.  Here's hoping wr can keep re-capping Naim pieces into the 22nd century!

Nick

50 years is a long time. Look how far technology has come in the past 50 years and that rate of development is accelerating thanks to all the new tools we are continuously developing and the new discoveries we are making.

In 50 years time I imagine that things like amplifiers, speakers, TVs etc will have been consigned to the history books. Instead we'll wear headsets that are able to create images and music directly in our brains, bypassing eyes and ears and just stimulating the brain directly to create the images and sounds we want.  Systems will be voice controlled. The system will monitor our emotional response to the music and create playlists based on how we want to feel.  Music will often be accompanies by images to flood our senses and reinforce our emotional response.

In the event that direct brain stimulation takes a little longer than 50 years, at least we'll have invented new ways to generate sound waves that do away with cross overs and multiple drivers while room correction algorithms  will allow us to reproduce largely accurate facsimilies of the original event.  Music collections will simply comprise metadata pointing to addresses in Libraries on a pay per use basis.

Tabby cat posted:

I often wonder where we will be in the future with AV  and Audio playback in the home.

 

I suspect that for a fair few of us home in 50 years time will be a coffin, so space constraints dictate that audio would have to be through headphones, at least for me because with the otherwise micro speakers required I couldn't live with the bass missing     ...oh!

As for those still in the land of the living, 50 years is a long time in technology terms, and inventions as yet unknown could come that could change any aspect of the replay system. Maybe audio will be direct plug into the brain, with no speakers required for perfect response (just as well because for the majority the tiny living spaces we will live in then will not have space for speakers (nor indeed racks of boxes).

Video will be personal headsets like today's virtual reality sets, but discrete and lightweigh (holograms will not have achieved their promise because the imahpges won't be solid enough for serious video purposes). 

Innocent Bystander posted:

Tabby cat posted:

I often wonder where we will be in the future with AV  and Audio playback in the home.

 

I suspect that for a fair few of us home in 50 years time will be a coffin, so space constraints dictate that audio would have to be through headphones, at least for me because with the otherwise micro speakers required I couldn't live with the bass missing     ...oh!

I like the idea of being buried with a special pair of headphones.   Even better my brain put into a visco - acoustic transferring  jam jar.

Most hardware will be obsolete due to augmented reality ( per Mark Zuckerberg - Facebook CEO ).

Zuckerberg identified augmented-reality glasses or contact lenses as the logical end goal for this AR technology. Once realised, he said, such gadgets would render televisions, smartphones and other current hardware useless.

"Now we all know where we want this to get eventually," he said. "We want glasses, or eventually contact lenses, that look and feel normal but let us overlay all kinds of information and digital objects on top of the real world."

"You want to watch TV? We could put a digital TV on that wall and instead of being a piece of hardware, it's a $1 app, instead of a $500 piece of equipment," he continued.

"Think about how many of the things we have in our lives actually don't need to be physical – they can be digital – and think about how much more affordable and accessible they're going to be when they are."

Headphones won't be a thing, we'll all have implants that our devices talk to directly. Probably not that far off actually given what Cochlear have done with Apple.

After being declared dead in 2059, vinyl makes another huge comeback!

I've recently been playing on my sons VR system, and if this is first generation technology then I'm frightened by what might be 5th generation technology!

If you've not tried it then I urge you to have a go as it's pretty immersive stuff, especially when you look down at your body in VR and you can see it breathing. Sound is very clever in VR as it is steered when you turn your head so that it actually remains fixed to a particular location just as it would in reality. This, in combination with some extremely good graphics, can have you fully convinced that you are in a different world.

When they can wi-fi this directly into the brain as a set of electrical impulses with 30k HD images then we will truly be caught in the matrix!

Just a thought...what if we are all in a VR game already? We just call it reality!

Knock, knock Neo...follow the white rabbit...

I would imagine that Hifi systems, if they still exist at all, will be very few and far between.  The current trend of web based convenience will continue, systems will grow smaller and more integrated into the home and mobile devices with music available around the house from connected devices.  I doubt anyone apart from a few old Hifi nerds will own music collections.  Those who do listen to music in the home are just as likely to expect a video element to be included as a music element.  Of course we may well get a musical revolution with young people finally realising that free music equals no music and rebelling against the system - perhaps there will be a modern day Sex Pistols, or Nirvana or shake things up - I certainly hope so.

Gazza posted:

Your artificial intelligence robot will be in the chair listening, and you will be delegated to washing the car or doing the dishes

Disturbing prospect but very plausible.

Regards

Roberto

For the masses something wireless streaming but not just sound but 3d display, 

For the audiophiles I reckon still vinyl.

I wonder what music will be created and on what instruments? 

No kit at all... the music will be streamed into your brain as will be you whole existence and obedience to The State.

My olive naim stuff (and later new-style PSUs etc) will all be working except for CDS

My HDX and Core will be under an inch thick of dust. 

Hungryhalibut posted:

Thinking back to my first Naim system in 1983, when I had a 42/110 and Kans,

 

Out of interest, when did you move same on? Only asking as my first Naim was a second-hand 42/110 and Kans purchased in 1986....

Hungryhalibut posted:

I wonder if Naim will have got the new Uniti range working properly?

I'm pleased to have inspired TC to start this thread. Thinking back to my first Naim system in 1983, when I had a 42/110 and Kans, and listening to what I have now, it's a better system for sure, but amplifier and speaker technology hasn't really changed much in that time. I recall reading an interview with Ivor Teifenbrun (I think it was him anyway) when he said that in the future music would be solid state, which with my music sitting in a nas has come true. But then some of the best systems are still fronted by turntables, just like my Linn from 1979. 

I'm sure that the future will bring more digital processing power, but somehow these improvements don't make things better, just more dumbed down. When I was 18 I owned an LP12, which I bought by saving up my wages working at B&Q. Yet my son who was in the picture, and is 19, is happy listening to YouTube through his computer and headphones. He knows what good sound is, what with being in a band, and having grown up with the Naim, but he's simply not interested. 

So even though technology may well improve quality, will anyone still be listening? 

50 years eh? ...  Perhaps the CD ripping feature will be implemented into the Atom ;-)