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No

But I wasn't aware it needed saving. There are more choices of better sounding gear (much of it tubed) now than there ever was. In fact it's often hard to make a choice there's so much to choose from.

In any event, you seem to think it went away because of price. That has nothing to do with it. I wasn't alive in 1962 but there must have been some outrageously priced gear then as well.

The answer is, and you pretty much said it, "It has to become cool to listen to stereos again." That's why the stereo "fad" existed back then in the first place. It wasn't because people loved music, or the gear was cheap, it was because the popular culture was fixated on the sex lounge pad popularized by the swanky spy genre and the imagery presented by Playboy and other magazines. Plus jazz, the most appropriate accessory to this scheme, was in it's heyday.

Men want to get laid (excuse me for being so blunt) and they were bombarded by imagery of cool men with pads that had bars that lifted out of the floor, mood lighting, a bed, and a sexy stereo. Women swooned... men got what they wanted. Who wouldn't want a stereo?

It's never going to happen again, so just accept it.

I do have to say that your comment - "we need to bring back the culture of classical music and other acoustic styles but especially classical, because that really needs a good system" is not only incorrect IMHO but I personally find it to represent the smug, elitist crapola I have always had to deal with. Every time I took a record to audition gear in the 80's at a "salon" the salesmen looked down on me and made snide comments because it wasn't classical or jazz.

But isn't that the achilles heel of man? In one sweeping motion you deride someone elses elitism (where do they get off selling $100,000 sculptures) and a second later try to instil your own by wanting to impose classical music on me. It would do everyone good to buy and read a copy of Turgenevs "Fathers and Children." (make sure it's a good translation)

My daughter plays both the sax and cello (among a few others) and is in her schools jazz band and orchestra. I enjoy all of it, but I enjoy the orchestra most. However if classical music were all I could listen to on a stereo at home, my audiophile days would end instantly. I can't listen to it, for reasons I won't get into here. However my passion for what I like is as strong as anyone here for what they like. Inserting genres and claiming some are better only divides us, and what you want is unity, no?

Excuse me, I digressed... the point is, what bothers many people here is the perceived lessening of our hobby in the public eye. I don't think it's lessening, it was just lucky enough to have an artificial high once and it has since gone back to it's appropriate place - a specialized nich hobby.

There are people who do all kinds of bizarre things - build and fly kites, model railroading, spoon carving, collecting antique medical equipment etc... do you know anyone who does any of that? But that doesn't mean they are dead or dying. People have been claiming audio is on the slab for 30 years now, and it hasn't died yet. It would be more correct to say it isn't what some of us want it to be rather than it's dying.


It's all about the music...

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