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General Asylum General audio topics that don't fit into specific categories. |
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General Asylum General audio topics that don't fit into specific categories. |
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In Reply to: Since yours is a double posting... posted by tlyyra on September 28, 2007 at 13:21:54:
Feel free to dislike subjective audio journalism.
To posit the rise of subjective audio journalism and the eclipse of technically-based audio journalism as causes of the decline of two-channel audio in the marketplace is just plain silly.
I have studied these phenomena for years. I currently volunteer on the High Performance Audio Advisory Committee to CEA. The reasons for two-channel's market decline are well-established by objective surveys--that is one of CEA's functions. Here is a short list of factors:
Demographics, in concert with changing fads and fashions. From the 1950s through 1980s, mass-market aspirational magazines such as Esquire and Playboy put a premium on hi-fi equipment as part of the lifestyle they reported upon, endorsed, and fostered. Starting in the 1990s, that media attention/Pied Piper-ism shifted over to home theater.
Market saturation. A person who bought a Rowland/Well Tempered/Duntech 2001 system 20 or 25 years ago and held on to it still has a great system. Underpants wear out, stereos last for many years, sometimes more than a decade.
High-end products getting more expensive. An AR/Marantz system in 1963 or so could be purchased for fewer wage-hours than a system of similar eminence today.
Inexpensive products getting better. You can go to a Best Buy and get a Japanese "office" system for under $1000 that sounds pretty good. Forty years ago, it was RCA Mediterranean Console versus separate components, which would be like Petula Clark versus Mohammad Ali. Today, there is some good-sounding cheap stuff, by any yardstick.
Put it all together, and high end audio will continue to be a passion, as will chess, wooden boats, and the Latin Mass. But not something that people will feel they are missing out on if they are not in it, which it what the "tastemakers" put across from the 1950s through the 1980s.
Given the above, the fact that TAS is still printing and Audio is not, just does not strike me as having any relevance.
A related phenomenon is the lack of video as a hobby. Home video equipment is an appliance, people pick one and watch it until it breaks.
Peace,
JM
Pro se only
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Follow Ups
- I find that reasoning unsupportable. - John Marks 09/28/0714:24:06 09/28/07 (10)
- Nero Fiddles as Rome Burns - Dan Banquer 05:27:51 10/1/07 (0)
- RE: I find that reasoning unsupportable. - tlyyra 06:04:47 09/30/07 (0)
- Petula Clark: "Down scale, everyone's going DOWN SCALE..." nt - clarkjohnsen 12:25:21 09/29/07 (0)
- Astute observation- I agree NT - lancelot 07:05:20 09/29/07 (0)
- RE: I find that reasoning unsupportable. - andy19191 16:00:29 09/28/07 (2)
- Petula - John Marks 09:26:18 09/29/07 (1)
- "Audio started out as the publication of the Audio Engineering Society." Not really. - clarkjohnsen 12:23:54 09/29/07 (0)
- I find your support unreasonable - Richard BassNut Greene 15:09:47 09/28/07 (2)
- Some interesting observations, but... - robert young 18:01:39 09/28/07 (1)
- You're saying, essentially, to most people a picture is worth a thousand notes. [Sigh] nt - clarkjohnsen 07:43:34 09/29/07 (0)
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