Concern for the future of affordable high-end audio, or whats left of it...

Discussion in 'General Audio Discussion' started by Ruined, Aug 1, 2020.

  1. atomicbob

    atomicbob dScope Yoda

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    And did we tell you the name of the game, boy?
    We call it "Riding the Gravy Train." - Pink Floyd
     
  2. Metro

    Metro Friend

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    Don't you mean much earlier than that? A couple of decades ago (i.e., around 2000), people were not seeking out high end audio, whether affordable or not. They were busy converting their systems to home theater. By the mid 1990's, my local audio shops were doing more business in home theater than audio. You're being nostalgic about a long gone era.

    Home entertainment is a zero sum game. Time and money spent in one area takes away from something else. Many competing entertainment options have opened up in the last few decades. Today, hours spent in home theater, music videos, Netflix, YouTube, gaming, social media, the internet, and mobile devices means less time and money for traditional home audio. The market is not what it used to be.
     
  3. Psalmanazar

    Psalmanazar Most improved member; A+

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    If my company made one revolutionary easy mode product, I would do the same thing and markup overbuilt good but not great gear!

    If a few crazy talents made one product popular, and its bang for buck? Make a new version and charge triple! Bingo!
     
  4. nishan99

    nishan99 Friend

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    Aside from inflation, active music listening become very niche thing. Lower production scale -> Higher costs.

    Music used to be a main entertainment activity to some people. Today it's a very rare thing to actively do, to actively listen to music, not background listening.

    Some of it because of the rising of different forms of entertainment in the 90's. Just listening to music nowadays is not as compelling as watching TV shows or HT stuff or playing video games...etc.
    Hell, I even bet half the headphone audiophiles rarely listen to music actively (which actually explains the existence of a lot of insecure deafs online).
     
  5. Deep Funk

    Deep Funk Deep thoughts - Friend

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    No.

    I am not worried because if you know what gets the job done the best and you have the budget to build that system you get it done and do not look back.

    It is not a matter of "I know better, listen to my revelations and prophecies."

    It is a matter of "This works for me, I am happy with this."

    There are many ways to Rome, find your way and let the marketeers and audio gurus blow hot air in your general direction. then pick up that Koss PortaPro or HD600 or HD650 or Stax and connect it to you system and play your favourite song.



    P.S. The old "Lion King" will always be my favourite.
     
  6. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    I have no concerns. For one, this "back-in-day" stuff, like all member berries, is through rose-tinted glasses. We tend to remember all the good, but forget the awful or the bad. There was plenty of garbage. Heck, I thought my early 90s NAD was awesome until I got something better and realized it was a piece of crap. The Linn LP12 was legendary, but even by TT standards back then it was crap. The affordable Audio Alchemy DACs were a joke. The California Audio Labs DAC was intentionally voiced to sound like a badly set up Rega Planar 1. Infinity already turned lame by the time their Kappa series came out.

    As far as affordable, us older farts need to take into account inflation and not reminiscence like our grandparents when a loaf of bread cost five cents. The $800 Theta Cobalt DAC I got for my Sony ES CD Player in 1993 cost $800. That's $1425 today, and that's using the US government CPI which seriously downplays inflation because they have to keep Ponzi scheme known as social security going. So for the same price today, we can get something mid to high-fi instead of entry level.

    As far as known names dying out, only making crap now, or moving up to service the Gwenyth Paltrow's Eyes Wide Shut club in Manhattan, that only allows for opportunity. Lots of gems from small, even middle sized boutique vendors if you know where to find them (not Head-Fi). And if you can't find them in the age of Internet 2.0 going on to 3.0, you suck.

    Really good hi-fi was never cheap and the high performance to price items were always rare. And as far as headphones and personal audio, 15 years ago there was only Sennheiser, Grado, Beyer, and ugh, Ultrasone (high priced, but not serious). And the only amps available were DIY.
     
    Last edited: Aug 2, 2020
  7. DEATHxMACHINE

    DEATHxMACHINE Friend

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    Damn, I was hoping for a plot twist.

    But I will also point out the obvious and add the availability of cheap good quality sources of music (itunes and streaming services) has also dramatically affected the market. This lead to the big boom in mobile market and (like has already been mentioned) the variety of headphones and amps is nothing like was it was 15 years ago. Then the price of good quality playback is also simply cheaper because engineers have had 40 years to work on Redbook. At least for speakers, not much has changed in 30 years so obviously it should be cheaper.
     
  8. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Well, the twist is that Jason Stoddard designed the Cobalt. Mike designed Theta's TOTL stuff.
     
  9. Thad E Ginathom

    Thad E Ginathom Friend

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    <<Deleted: a whole heap of stuff about affordable audio in the last century, concluding... >>

    Affordable good audio has been there for fifty years, and I'm guessing it always will be. HiEnd has never been affordable and never will be. It seems to me that the OP wants affordable boutique audio, which is an even bigger contradiction in terms. Boutique audio is always going to be even more expensive, unless it's schiit. Oh, wait...
     
  10. Ruined

    Ruined HD700 ruined my ear holes

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    Maybe boutique audio is a better way to put it

    I guess part of the draw for me is audio gear that sounds good *and* looks good. You know, like functional pieces of art

    If the best amp in the world was housed in a cardboard box with sharpied front panel I wouldn't be interested

    It seems those pieces of gear that are both visual and aural works of art are far outpacing inflation in price increases and outpacing mainstream high-end pricing, with a few exceptions
     
  11. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Rechassis the Schiit gear, install blue VU meters, CNC a hammer with lightning bolts logo on the faceplate.
     
    Last edited: Aug 7, 2020
  12. zerodeefex

    zerodeefex SBAF's Imelda Marcos

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    I generally agree with you but it's pretty amazing that, 30 years later, these are still quite good

    HP1000.jpg

    Edit: I meant the headphones. I am significantly worse than I was 30 years ago unless your quality metrics are the aerodynamics of my head.
     
    Last edited: Aug 7, 2020
  13. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Oh yes, of course.

    I was referring to the member-berries that there was so much wonderful entry to mid-level gear with high performance-to-price and beautifully designed from the likes of Parasound, Rega, and Rotel "back in the day".

    There wasn't. We just remember the good stuff like the Rega Planet and Theta Cobalt and forget the all bad stuff of which there was plenty. Also, the Rotel chassis for their entry level stuff no more fancy than Schiit today. And the Rega Planet would have cost $1500 today after taking into account inflation.
     
    Last edited: Aug 7, 2020
  14. pure5152

    pure5152 Friend

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    Yeah, that reminded me that one of my friend's dad has a grado sr80 that he's had for over 20 years and still cherishes. The grado stuff gets chastised for comfort issues, but boy do they last forever (except for pads, which tend to need replacing every few years).
     
  15. Lyander

    Lyander Official SBAF Equitable Empathizer

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    High-end stuff will never be affordable. That goes for audio gear, cameras, mobile phones, fountain pens, watches, or any other thing you could be bothered to put a name to; that's the nature of people and their toys. Boutique is a good way to describe it because the smaller scales these often operate at only serve to increase price to ridiculous degrees, not to mention the "I want to be able to pay more so I can feel better about my ultimately purposeless decades on this wet rock hurtling through the infinite void of space" type of retail therapy enabling manufacturers to charge mind-numbing prices.

    While I don't think the bleeding edge of audio will ever be within reach of mere mortals such as I, I'm just absolutely ecstatic at how amazing cheap crap is nowadays ;)

    P.S.
    I remember you almost sold those Grados (they're the Donmodded ones?) some time ago and I very nearly went full-moron overextending myself to afford em because hype. Glad you ultimately kept em, much as I am damned envious :p
     
  16. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    It's all too easy to forget the good today, especially if we just read HF. EC, DNA, ECP are boutique players for super-high-end at mid-level pricing. I don't think people appreciate or have full grasped this. Also, if one doesn't mind waiting and owning gear that looks like it belongs inside a military base or Russian rocket-ship (which the USA still relies on), we have @Zampotech's stuff. Throw in Yggdrasil when it first came out. People may disagree, but Schiit was a huge factor to putting R2R back on the map. Let's not forget the obvious right in front of our faces: Aitch Dee 600 (or 650). I was around "back in the day" and owned Sennheisers, but there weren't no Aitch Dee 600s.
     
    Last edited: Aug 7, 2020
  17. Ruined

    Ruined HD700 ruined my ear holes

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    I think Schitt has the right look, actually, and that's probably one of the main reasons they are so popular. They have that part of the equation down.

    But in terms of big amps, Schitt doesn't have those at all. Their biggest amp is what, 100wpc @ 4ohms? Hardly something that can replace some of the "old" brands. In terms of functionality & sound quality I've read mixed reviews about their products as well.
     
  18. atomicbob

    atomicbob dScope Yoda

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    "back in the day" I was very aware of HD580 and used them for years in both production editing and attempts at recreational listening. However I was stuck with Benchmark DAC1 for DAC and Amp. My recreational listening was not enjoyable. But boy did the DAC1 measure well. It wasn't until Schiit DACs and Bottlehead Crack that I really rediscovered recreational listening, though the journey was begun with a Woo WA3 and Violectric V800.

    Now with exception of DNA, my lab has representation from the boutique players, @Zampotech and Sennheiser mentioned above and very happy about it.
     
  19. YMO

    YMO Chief Fun Officer

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    I feel sorry for you. Very first year of Axpona was in Jacksonville. Some dealer was showing off the Benchmark and people were blabbing about it from Stereophile, calling it the bees knees. So I heard it through the headphone output, but I forgot what headphone it was. Very very cold, like super cold. Was turned off from Benchmark ever since.
     
  20. Ruined

    Ruined HD700 ruined my ear holes

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    I heard a lot of people rave about the Oppo HA-1 in a similar way back when that was in the production and had the same exact reaction when I tried it. A lot of power that sounded really sterile; probably a lot of people testing these were using the HD650 / HD6XX which would mask any sterility.

    Right now I'm using musical fidelity mx-hpa / mx-dac which i discovered back in 2017 and had to sell for cash reasons (but recently re-bought on clearance as its out of production). Definitely not something I'd describe as warm, but not cold either. Pretty much as close to "musically neutral" as I've heard. Don't have much faith in the brand anymore tho with the new ownership and my experience with their TT ikea-style build quality.
     
    Last edited: Aug 7, 2020

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