What's being marketed today is NOT hi fi. It's gadgets and a race to the bottom. No company is going to manufacture products without a market.
Without a market, hi fi is relegated to people like us that fiddle with old units. Unless you go to the snobby hi fi store, all you'll see is junk. The younger generation, for the most part, have no idea what hi fi is.
I was at the computer store buying a bunch of DIY stuff - they have solder, discrete components, a lot of stuff. The salesman (around 30 years old) was very interested in what I was doing. When I told him he became very enthusiastic. He told me that they sold THE BEST SPEAKER EVER MADE IN THE WORLD right there in that store! He insisted that I audition it. It was a small bluetooth speaker, about the size of a box of saltines. The sound was very clear, but hi fi? No highs, no lows, totally tin can sound. I asked him if he was kidding and without a hint of irony or sarcasm he insisted that he wasn't. He was incredulous that there ever existed a speaker better than that. To this day, I don't know if he was pulling my leg.
The thing is though, that vinyl never really went away. It was 'overtaken', for sure, but revenues from CDs themselves peaked in 2004 and have been falling ever since.
https://futureofmusic.org/blog/2015/12/10/when-are-people-going-stop-proclaiming-death-cd
And truthfully I don't see CDs going away any time soon. I think they too, like vinyl, will always have a consumer niche that wants a more serious listening experience than streaming, without the inconvenience of vinyl. Likewise, I also see a solid position for streaming. Streaming is certainly the bulk of listening done today, but it is by and large casual listening, listened to as background music or through earphones as appropriate - but this isn't about the 'golden age of music convenience', it's about the golden age of high fidelity.
So your point is it doesn't matter? I think any time a product leads revenues, it indicates both industry and consumer attention.
When I buy vinyl new, I look for an included CD or download card or, as Amazon often supplies, a free MP3 rip. If I buy a used record and like it, I will buy the MP3s from Amazon, or spend the few dollars for the used CD and rip my own. I do that because there are times I want to listen seriously, and times I want to listen casually.
USB decks are exactly the kind of marriage between classic and new technologies I hope to see more of. While not my personal choice, the wide interest in such devices encourages me to think that vinyl is still appreciated by the younger set, and will possibly be around for a long time after I'm gone. I know that's how my children and grandchildren introduced vinyl in their own homes, and I see nothing wrong with that.
Good point. I certainly did misspeak there. I was referring to Jean-Paul's points about the downside of electronic formats, and having to make sure the hardware stays compatible with the formats.
But as USB decks show, you don't have to 'tweak'. If one wants, one can take it out of the box and go. If one is of a more discerning taste however, there are also many options for optimizing - far more than with CDs, or streaming.
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Yes, in some ways. My experience is that the golden age ended in the 1970s with the oil crisis. That's when LPs turned to junk. And by that time a lot of the enthusiasm of the 50-60s was dying out.
Yes, equipment stayed as good or better, but the general public became more interested in what used to be simple consumer audio - because it had gotten good enough to squeeze into the High Fidelity name. It kept getting smaller, cheaper and more powerful. Is that when the high end Hi-Fi market started to grow?
My grandfather's generation (he fought in WWI) did not show a lot of interest in Hi-Fi. It was the young guys, vets of WWII and Korea who where the boom of Hi-Fi. They were the golden age. It continued on to the baby boomers, but started to fizzle in the 70s, dying off in the 1980.
When Mid-Fi becomes good enough and cheap enough to satisfy, why bother with tweaky, expensive Hi-Fi?
Yes, we have better equipment now than we ever did, but it's not a golden age. And recordings could be better than they ever have been, if the style of mixing and mastering allowed it.
Ha! One truly wonders what such a person would make of a Klipsch cornerhorn, or a B&W 800, or a Linkwitz Orion, etc.
Most people are in awe of my system, especially young people. It's not even that big or special. It's just old stuff (I rotate equipment every few months) with refurbished (upgraded) speakers and a line level black box (hard wired equalizer) to equalize the speakers. Tweaky, but not esoteric. Every receiver and amplifier has been fiddled with and modified. It's what I do.
I agree with you on the Klipschorns. They offer superb dynamics but they are a little fiddly too. I like them.
from those picture, i saw twitter speaker looks like an air horn, have air compressor and electrical motor
am i right or not???
horn, yes - but "air compressor driven and electric motor " not; more likely something like this
audio pag speakers
although, if you wanted to stretch the definition of electric motor to include a Rice Kellog, linear stroke moving coil...maybe?
nah, probably not
audio pag speakers
although, if you wanted to stretch the definition of electric motor to include a Rice Kellog, linear stroke moving coil...maybe?
nah, probably not
The decks made in the seventies were the pioneers and had belt drives (flywheels !) and mechanical operation. These were prone to wearing out and failure and seventies decks were the weakest brother in the then standard "audio rack". Electric motors were the same as in toys. True. Still the marketing machine worked at its best and market acceptance was huge. Everyone wanted a cassette deck. Many were recording songs from the radio. Curses when the moderator talked through the song (deliberately!). A real to reel machine was already outdated then as being large and impractical to use. Tapes were also expensive and reel to reel machines then already were in the domain of peculiar people
So...I would not call seventies decks "golden age" material. Amps of that time maybe...There were many very expensive well designed cassette decks in the eighties/early nineties that were HiFi and master pieces of design. Direct drive, 3 head, electric operation, sendust heads, ultra low wow & flutter, solenoids, auto bias, metal tapes, Dolby C, DBX, DC coupled amplifiers etc etc. I think cassette decks were the most complex audio devices then and the first to have kind of computerised electronics. They were developed by teams and knowledge was mature at a certain point. The fact they they still are working today at least says something. Even if you look at specifications and think they were not HiFi for a reason please think that there was no alternative. Of course there was a period that they had many faults, then they matured and then the cost cutting/budget stuff came. I repaired decks in those days and was astonished to learn that the decks of the brand I worked for were not even aligned anymore in factory. Cassettes were so common and profits were going down. Here CD was killing to cassettes but recording was impossible and consumers thought recording was not really necessary anymore supported by the marketing machine. Then DCC did an attempt, just like DAT and later Mini Disk....until CD recordables were invented. When I think of it those radio recording days made kids develop skills and they wanted good quality and became interested in electronics. Way more than the current smart phone kids. Those are so complex that most are simply users.
Recently sold my alignment, torque and wow & flutter measuring cassettes to a guy that searches maniacally for the best 3 head decks. Cassettes and decks are quite hot. Without much thinking I had thrown away a box with sealed new metal tapes a few months earlier....
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I think of the Sand Filled Baffle (Briggs), the Quad ELS (Walker), the Domestic Corner Horn (Voigt), the Klipshorn (Klips), the Karlson Speaker. These are all the result of one person's inspiration, drive, and personality.
Look at today's omnipresent 2 way ported designs, which model so well on sims. A bit like formula one cars; they all look the same, because of computer modelling. No obvious designer personality.
No, F1 cars look the same because of the regulations. However look closer and you will see significant differences. A good example is the extreme rake that Adrian Newey likes in cars. It messes with straight line top speed but gains time in medium and low speed corners.
You wont get 6-wheelers and fan cars any more, but that is because they are banned not because of computers.
You wont get 6-wheelers and fan cars any more, but that is because they are banned not because of computers.
The decks made in the seventies were the pioneers and had belt drives (flywheels !) and mechanical operation. These were prone to wearing out and failure and seventies decks were the weakest brother in the then standard "audio rack". Electric motors were the same as in toys. True. Still the marketing machine worked at its best and market acceptance was huge. Everyone wanted a cassette deck. Many were recording songs from the radio. Curses when the moderator talked through the song (deliberately!). A real to reel machine was already outdated then as being large and impractical to use. Tapes were also expensive and reel to reel machines then already were in the domain of peculiar people
I once has a Pioneer CT-F1000, built like the proverbial brick shuthouse and crammed full of electronics, but the skinny belts, as in all decks, were a problem.
As you mentioned, back then there was not much to record. I can now transfer hundreds, perhaps thousands, of mp3 files to a sliver of plastic the size of my thumbnail. Now to me, that is golden.
+1
Sold all phono, CD and cassette stuff very early. Solid State in its recent appearance is what suits me best. I found out that lingering about what once was makes me run in circles. Still can't find courage to sell the near-empty "audio rack" (Target).
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The evolution of the humble Cassette tape fascinates me. From a format that was meant to be used for simple voice recording, to a phenomenon that took over the world, the changes were huge, while still being backward compatible.
There were so many millions, maybe billions of cassette tapes sold and some of that money went into making the format ever better. It's a good example of what market forces, money and engineering can do. The tape decks got better and better, the tape itself improved vastly, and helped drive improvements for all magnetic storage. The cassette shell also evolved into something so much better than it had originally been, while remaining compatible and inside the original format.
Ultimate Hi-Fi? No. But from it's humble beginnings, the Compact Cassette went a long way. Has any other audio format evolved has much?
There were so many millions, maybe billions of cassette tapes sold and some of that money went into making the format ever better. It's a good example of what market forces, money and engineering can do. The tape decks got better and better, the tape itself improved vastly, and helped drive improvements for all magnetic storage. The cassette shell also evolved into something so much better than it had originally been, while remaining compatible and inside the original format.
Ultimate Hi-Fi? No. But from it's humble beginnings, the Compact Cassette went a long way. Has any other audio format evolved has much?
Here are some nostalgic pages from the 70's and 80's. I just love the look and extreme quality of the machines of the day>
Pioneer Vintage Hifi Klassiker
Pioneer Vintage Hifi Klassiker
I recorded every album I bought onto cassette and after that played vinyl only to make mix tapes, hundreds of mix tapes...
These days I record only a tiny fraction of what I used to i the '80s.
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