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The death of the home stereo system


lo123

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I would contend that home stereo systems, and recorded music specifically, has has improved live music tremendously. It didn't even take overdubbing to help this along. Tons of musicians or at least musician wannabes listened to records as a way to learn music. Seeing someone live meant you saw how something was played, but listening required you to figure it out.

This means (then and now) that a budding guitarist sittting at home hears a guitar part and busts his chops learning to play it. Little does he know that it was really two guitarists, or now an overdubbed part. And he goes on to stretch the technical bounds of what can be done. It happens over and over.

Bruce

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Gil, you and Erik are off track, at least as some of us see this. My blog link to the article went up before this story came out and I think it really covers this issue in much greater depth than this one.

It isn't just the home listening system, it's the loss of listening (and making) music on a communal basis. The majority of your list are either only marginally or not connected at all to this. My piece is already too long, but I am tempted to go back and add my experience with extended family gatherings. Only a few of us remain who remember this, but we'd gather around my grandmother's pump organ and sing hymns. We weren't religious freaks...faithful church people, yes, but not bible pounders, but this experience was alway exhilirating and full of fun. My grandmother also had an accordian...smaller than a full size but pretty capable...she bring out and sing old songs from the hills. This was not just some holdover from the early 20th century but something that goes back in human social experience for untold millenia, even back to the very beginning according to some researchers.

While it might be argued by some that the replacement of real instruments with recordings is a break with that tradition, I hold that high fidelity playback of music still works in the brain like the "real" thing whereas compressed stuff may look like a duck, and quack like a duck, but it's mostly illusion and fails to stimulate the deep and complex functions that have developed over the millenia.

The "home stereo system" IS a loser in that it is as obsolete as mono systems as a primary source of music. The home HT system is already more pervasive than the music systems of the "golden era" and more capable of providing a satisfying high fidelity experience than those systems did. What we DON'T have is a music industry that understands how to engineer for high fidelity music software for these systems. The era of application-specific physical media is pretty well over. The bandwidth that is available to most people today is more than adequate for even the most high resolution audio files, even with imagery. It is a complex combination of rapid change and failures to understand those changes and adapt to them what has resulted in the decline of apparent interest in music. Dish, Direct, Comcast...if any one of these saw the light and began to produce and distribute first rate 360 degree mixes of popular material with imagery...and I mean even sequenced stills...it could start to turn around.

While every time this comes up I see something I could add to my blog article on this subject, I still think it pretty well covers this complex issue. Perhaps I'll let it sit another year or so and then revise. I am always learning!

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Only a few of us remain who remember this, but we'd gather around my grandmother's pump organ and sing hymns. We weren't religious freaks...faithful church people, yes, but not bible pounders, but this experience was alway exhilirating and full of fun. My grandmother also had an accordian...smaller than a full size but pretty capable...she bring out and sing old songs from the hills. This was not just some holdover from the early 20th century but something that goes back in human social experience for untold millenia, even back to the very beginning according to some researchers.

Very timely, Dave...

The new chaplain at our college was telling students this morning about dish washers. He told how much time they saved and how it freed up folks from the kitchen. However, it also further allowed the family to spend time away from each other. After that it was air conditioners, which let folks stay in their homes on summer evenings, not sitting on the porch, talking with neighbors and socializing. After that he told all the students that he wanted them to left their phones and tablets OFF during chapel time, even though he knew many used them for note taking and had their Bibles on their phone, etc. He told them to go old school and use a pencil/pen and paper. For sure, they will interact better with those around them. They may remember more by writing note by hand. For sure they won't get as distracted and off somewhere else with their web browsers.

Bruce

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When I was young and started into this whole audio thing -- it was really just about getting the best sound you could get with the money you had. Sure, we all got together and listened to each other's systems a couple of times a month, but the majority of listening was always a personal experience or blasting through the house on the weekends while chores were being done.

you should get a "BUTTKICKER!" I had one hooked up to my office chair and with some headphones it was VISCERAL!

You aren't the only person I have heard say that. The low freq. in the chair added to the headphones made for a great listening experience.

Bruce

I couldn't help but laugh but then realized that this might be a pretty cool experience.

I think part of this is related to the fact that I'm 55 years old and I'm just plain done with LOUD.

I think I've seen the word "visceral" pop up about a dozen times in these threads but I think it's the wrong word, maybe. I think you guys are trying to convey the idea that the loudspeakers are lighting up the room and you're getting more of a physical connection with the sound. I get that, but what happens when you get tired of that and you start chasing the ultimate SOUND experience. Some of the best sound I've ever heard was with my Jubilees and the little Sonic Impact Super T-amp. I would run that up to about 75-80dB in quasi-near field and it was really nice.

I had already been going through a period of lower level listening with the Klipschorns before I bought the Jubilees. This was kind of forced on me because of some changes around the house, and almost all my listening was done at night around the time everyone was going to bed. At first it was really frustrating because my normal listening levels were in the neighborhood of 90dB or more. However, once I got used to it I found the experience pretty engaging.

After I sold the Jubilees, I reversed engineered some Radian coaxial stage monitors (with some help from Radian and Al from usspeaker) -- and I ended up with some killer monitors. I told Al I was willing to sacrifice some low end extension for power handling because I had a great sub and these were going to be seeing a lot of HT duty. An odd thing happened when I finished the system. I found the same thing -- though they sounded really good loud (the last real workout was with Zeppelin's Celebration Day in Blu-ray) -- I just preferred pulling everything together into a nice tight triangle and enjoying the detail that comes through when you lower both the distortion and the noise floor. You also take more of the room out of the equation when you do this, and that has some benefits as well.

Okay, so at this point it's really not about "visceral" anymore, it's about something else. It's now about shutting out the world, getting distortion as low as you can get it, and having as little between you and the recording as possible. The only thing left is the occasional distraction from the experience.

I had bought some Etymotic ER-4P in ear monitors for my iPhone to use while building in the workroom. Based on the reviews, I figured they would sound good, but I really wasn't prepared for the level of quality I heard when I put them in. This is how I got hooked on headphones and how I decided to sink more of my disposable income into what I wrap around my ears instead of what's against the wall.

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Dean, speakers that you and I talk about are just that. Live sound is loud and grips you and there is no short supply with Jubilees and Klipschorns.

The home stereo concept, rack of gear, large speakers, is losing ground to "audio everywhere" systems such as Sonos, anything with Airplay or Bluetooth.

Music isn't dead, Loud music isn't dead. Our playback systems aren't dead. Just the concept of a room full of gear is not popular today.

I am glad you like headphone and I enjoy ER-4Ps aswell. You may have moved on from visceral, but that is what music is to me.

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Dave,

In my view, the article was just about hardware. I don't think I got off track as far as the article because the subject matter of the article just talked about what I'll call the dorm system. And this sort of thing was what migrated into homes too -- perhaps people not knowing that something better was out there. It was also about people who use a smartphone and earphones and how this displaced the dorm system.

I do understand your thesis from you blog. First, "I still dream of truly realistic, immersive recordings that place me smack in the best seat in the house in a cathedral, a jazz performance, a thunderstorm, an opera, or a broadway play. " I appreciate that you find you're getting closer with Dynaco and your own multi-channel recordings. Good for you. No argument there.

Second, you also describe your passionate appreciation of music which is engendered by high quality systems. The latter is your main point. You wish that folks would use the technology to achieve the circumstances of true appreciation of music and involvement. Those are good goals and no one could take issue.

But let me step back. I listen to low bit rate rips of what is good music for me using midrange earbuds (Klipsch and Sony) and really enjoy the music. I don't think I need more fidelity to enjoy the music, though good fidelity overall is appreciated. It is not linear. Ramping up technical performance beyond some threshold is not necessary.

There is an innuendo by your blog that Gen-Yers (or whatever label is used for the young masses) don't appreciate music or fail to be immersed to the point you experience because their smartphone with low bit rates and poor earbuds are technically deficient. That is a big jump in logic. An older generation would say, "If they want to listen to this Beatles junk, don't bother telling them about jazz or classical." They might be having as good a time as they can or want to.

Along these lines, I hope you and I can agree that many, if not most, people, of all generations just do not get to the Nirvana listening to "good music" or "good recordings"whatever that may be, even on the best of systems, or live. At least they do not take the best of experiences and then want to recreate it in their home, car, or earbud world. This should not be blamed on Best Buy or quality of recordings, or the technical culture,

Even PWK said he makes speakers for the minority. The K-horn may have changed the 1 percent to the 2 percent -- but that is all, even if a doubling.

I'll steal from the Bard. The trouble is not in the Stars, but in ourselves. Likewise, the trouble is not in the technology, but rather in the listener. Therefore, be realistic about your quest.

As always, I respect your work and observations.

Best,

WMcD

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A while back I gave a modest stereo system to my nephew & his wife for their first apartment, an Onkyo receiver & CDP & a pair of KEF bookshelf speakers. When they had a party & cranked up the tunes people were commenting on how good the music sounded. For some it must have been their first exposure to decent sound. Most grew up on boomboxes or all in ones, & then graduated to computer speakers. Sad but it underscores the basic premise of the article that being, for the most part home stereos are a thing of the past & belong to our generation. I am afraid it is their loss.

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Excellent thoughts, Gil. When you, I or any of us start saying "People do this, or people do that..." we are venturing into a sticky wicket when it comes to making a case. I don't have total faith that each and every point I made is TRVTH, but, like the attorney presenting a circumstantial evidence case made up of many points, none in themselves either conclusive or damning, I believe that even rejecting a number of them leaves adequate to convince a jury where the defense is just saying "Nothing has really happened except technological and societal evolution."

Let's compare to something common, climate change.

Am I convinced of global warming? Only an idiot can't read a thermometer and I've be around the same general geography for most of 63 years. I observed a warming trend long before it became news. Further, as a amateur historian I am acutely aware of the fact that our current culture was forged in large parts by major warmings and coolings over history, clearly recorded and observable especially in the past 25k years. The last cooling that began in the early medieval period and ended in the mid-19th century caused massive changes and greatly accelerated the industrial revolution as wood became scarce and coal became the fuel of choice...just one piece of that puzzle.

Am I convinced that it's mostly due to human activity? The evidence is to the contrary for human activity as a MAJOR factor. If you look at the swings over the past 500 centuries ago this one is neither major so far nor particularly noteworthy. I'd certainly say we have some degree of impact on it, but I think it would be warming if we did not exist.

I didn't bring that up as a "red herring" nor do I really wish to discuss it...especially in a music forum...but as an example of how one can take the same evidence and reach a different, not unreasonable conclusion no more or less provable than another opinion of the same evidence.

I agree you weren't really "off track" vis a vis the article. I stated the article was reasonably accurate as to its specific topic, but that it could be extrapolated too easily to more general areas of habit changes where it fails, IMHO.

I listen to low bit rate rips of what is good music for me using midrange earbuds (Klipsch and Sony) and really enjoy the music. I don't think I need more fidelity to enjoy the music, though good fidelity overall is appreciated. It is not linear. Ramping up technical performance beyond some threshold is not necessary.


Agreed here as well. But I would maintain it is because you KNOW what it actually sounds like such that you are able to "fill in the gaps" with that awesome processing system, the human brain. A well worn 78 rpm record arguably has similar issues in fidelity to compressed music, but I love them as there is no alternative and I can extrapolate what is missing. However, given the same recording in quiet, masterfully engineered digital I'd leave the 78 on the shelf. I believe that eventually portable players will not require this gutting to fit stuff on them, and distributors will quit doing the dirty work not because they care about fidelity, but it's an extra step and unnecessary in a world of huge, compact, cheap storage and ubiquitous high bandwidth.

I've told the story of how I left one of my recordings, the Foster "Clair de Lune," in fact, in my car CD player one day many years ago and forgot it was in there, As I listened constantly to WRR classical FM in Dallas at that time, it didn't surprise me to hear the music I heard the moment I turned the key. However, within a couple of seconds, my ears perked and I thought "Wow, what a GREAT recording..." and it was another 30 seconds or so before I realized it was my own. Point is, great material is readily recognized by either the trained, or in my opinion, the untrained ear even only lesser systems. I think there is more than adequate scientific support for my claim that hearing is the most developed of all human senses and what makes a "trained listener" or audiophile isn't better hearing, but being aware of and conversant in what they are experiencing. I love great wine, and I can certainly tell the nuances in fine vs. ordinaire, but I am almost completely lost listening to real oenophiles use their language to describe with precision the specific components of the experience of taking a single sip and analyzing it for appearance, aroma, initial taste, spread, finish, etc. However, I'd certainly not say "I can't tell the difference..." as so many do about music. It is my hypothesis that because hearing perception is more abstract and primeval than taste, vision, and smell those who say that are correct to a point: The effects are far more difficult to quantify and describe than even wine. I still stand in awe of those who can detect one capacitor over the other. I've no doubt I can do this too, but being totally fixated on the music I've developed just as sophisticated discrimination abilities with regards to things like different Stradivari and Amati, or pipe organ builders instead.

What I maintain is this: Joe and Jill Sixpack have these same abilities and the same responses but no ability to verbalize them. It's the reason I use the food analogy for the effect of compressed music: You can create foods that taste just fine but have near zero sustaining value. A person would starve to death eating it without knowing why.

When I listened to the Musica Romana mp3 samples before ordering, I did so on my office computer with excellent near field speakers. At a couple of feet these are comparable to my Klipschorns. I listened at a similar level as I would have in my music room. I did not consciously detect any big issues with the sound, and was, in fact, quite impressed with the apparently minimal effects from the compression.

However, when I sat down in my music room at about the same levels with the CD it was a whole different experience and I knew just how inaccurate and soulless the compressed version was.

I clearly recall you spotting an issue in one channel of my system in Flower Mound years ago I'd not noticed. Once you pointed it out to me it was ALL I heard until I corrected the issue. Previously, I was blissfully unaware. That is my point: There is no more sophisticated filter or processor in existence than the human brain. That's why I prefer the simple, passive QD-1 over the most sophisticated steering and logic systems of the present and why I feel that people are impacted by audio quality regardless of their conscious impressions.

Current engineering is already much devolved, IMHO, from that which was the rule from the earliest days until the past 20 or 30 years. For me, it is symptomatic and another impact of the overall case I've built for multiple assaults on music as a primary pastime over the past few decades.

There is an innuendo by your blog that Gen-Yers (or whatever label is used for the young masses) don't appreciate music or fail to be immersed to the point you experience because their smartphone with low bit rates and poor earbuds are technically deficient. That is a big jump in logic.

I agree completely, and to the extent I left you with that single cause as a reason is testimony to my failure to write up my thoughts accurately. In fact, rather than a cause, I could argue it's more of an effect and part of the self-sustaining reaction caused by all the various technologies and societal changes combined. Yep, the adult attitude towards the Beatles and "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah..." was as you said. I am lucky to have a 7.5 ips commercial tape of "Meet the Beatles" and the engineering quality is dreadful, though better than the LP release. However, when they vastly improved their engineering and compostions as in "Sgt. Peppers" I remember these same adults after hearing these works on their generally better than most have now stereo systems at least approving if not really developing an appreciation. My mother did, and she was pretty much an afficionado of honky tonk and hillbilly stuff.

Along these lines, I hope you and I can agree that many, if not most, people, of all generations just do not get to the Nirvana listening to "good music" or "good recordings"whatever that may be, even on the best of systems, or live. At least they do not take the best of experiences and then want to recreate it in their home, car, or earbud world. This should not be blamed on Best Buy or quality of recordings, or the technical culture,

Can't agree, Gil, except for the last line quoted. It is not anywhere near that simple, but a very complex simultaneous and stealth assault from a variety of sources. Not a conspiracy, just "the perfect storm." But I believe it will pass. Seems most always say "Well, it will always be this way..." yet history clearly shows it never is, and that, in fact, change is becoming more and more frequent all the time. Over all, I'd quote the Beatles in saying "I have to admit it's getting better, it's getting better all the time" OVERALL, though perhaps not as fast as I'd like in certain areas. But it will come. Relieve the commercial pressures, provide higher quality and lower costs, learn to profit and exploit those big, expensive, and potentially high quality HT systems that are spreading everywhere and the quality of our source material will improve, not because it's higher fidelity but due to the same pressures that brought us hifi, color movies, Cinemascope, and such in the first place: competitive advantage.

Even PWK said he makes speakers for the minority. The K-horn may have changed the 1 percent to the 2 percent -- but that is all, even if a doubling.

He was correct. But it was a double minority: People with high standards, and people who were rich. For the first half of my life I never dreamed I'd ever own Klipschorns. No more realistic to me than having a Rolls. Seriously. Do you really believe that if the Klipsch R&D department were to make some incredible breakthrough that provided the sound quality of a K'horn from a speaker they could box as an HT system for a couple of hundred bucks and sell at Best Buy or Walmart people wouldn't choose them in droves over the crap available now? They are NOT deaf, just separated from what their brains have the ability to appreciate by a massive combination of issues.

There's a book in this, but I've neither the credility nor the time to write it unless I win the lottery.

Actually, Gil, I think we are at the same concert and both enjoying the performance...but we just differ a bit on the best seat in the house!

Dave

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Enjoying music and enjoying stereos are are different ideas which sometimes overlap. HiFi nuts have a tendancy to forget that. If I want to be stimulated by the romantic ideas of the wandering minstrel, ala John Stewart let's say, that can happen with an ipod, or headphones, or gargantuan monster stereos. It's the musical intellectual content itself which is stimulating, not something under my chair hitting my balls. The desire for super loud, ball-tickling, chest thumping beats, is a desire to dance, which is a different human desire. Sometimes the two overlap, but they don't have to.

"The desire for super loud, ball-tickling, chest thumping beats, is a desire to dance, which is a different human desire"- going to stop you right there.. W.T.F.??

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"The desire for super loud, ball-tickling, chest thumping beats, is a desire to dance, which is a different human desire"- going to stop you right there.. W.T.F.??

I'm with Bill on that. Please enlighten as to what appears to be a line between music and dance.

Dave

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>The desire for super loud, ball-tickling, chest thumping beats, is a desire to dance, which is a different human desire. Sometimes the two overlap, but they don't have to.

Perhaps I am confused. While I am aware there are a number of drum-only recordings, I did not consider that. I thought you were talking about music here, specifically music with a heavy percussion component being played loud. Assuming it is not dangerously loud, and clean, such inevitably leads to dance. That doesn't seem like a different human desire at all, no more so than picking up a flute and beginning to play along with a drumbeat.

I've seen no references to music in the earliest human cultures where dance and music are not dealt with as one and the same...even theories that start with really primeval stuff like motherese or Darwin's thoughts on music and dancing as energy costly show activities to demonstrate one's fitness to mate.

Dave

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Duh. Drool... Here's what I get:

Enjoying music and enjoying stereos are are different ideas which sometimes overlap. HiFi nuts have a tendancy to forget that.

If you mean those who listen to music and those who listen to equipment, I get you. However, the next sentence doesn't follow as I am primarily a music listener, but also a "HiFi nut" in that the further you get from that, the further from music you are.

It's the musical intellectual content itself which is stimulating, not something under my chair hitting my balls.

Can't really parse that meaningfully. I don't know anything about John Stewart, or whether he is a musician or a poet. Nor do I really know much about the Ipod, except I believe it to be used with lofi music mainly, which is by my definition anything non-losslessly compressed.

It's the musical intellectual content itself which is stimulating, not something under my chair hitting my balls.

At a complete loss here. Follow and agree with the sentence down to the comma, but after that I've never had such an experience so not sure what type of music it might apply to or how it might apply to high fidelity listening.

The desire for super loud, ball-tickling, chest thumping beats, is a desire to dance, which is a different human desire. Sometimes the two overlap, but they don't have to.

Then you wind up with the above. A different human desire for what? And what are the two things that sometimes overlap and sometimes don't?

Feel free to ignore this if you don't want to go to the trouble. If you've looked at anything I've written about this I think you might understand why I am not following the relevance. The only "ball tickling, chest thumping" beats I've heard are from those cars you can feel coming from a block away. Certainly not "hifi" anything. Just sound effects that never happened in nature.

Dave

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Dave: What? Did I get off track!? Very likely...it's been something of an M.O for me since childhood. If I may ask a question: In what manner do you use the terms "Duh" and "drool"? To what does "drool" refer? What you say about listening to live music and hi-fi rings true for me. It in fact is related to what I was saying about how people by necessity once listened ONLY to "LIVE" music, and hence, in some ways and depending on the skill and or talent of the performer and quality of instrument/s being played, a higher quality of music (think of early civilizations in Mesopotamia, the far east, Africa, and elsewhere) than even the most costly yet nevertheless artificial music machinery used in both studios and homes today. The two DON'T compare. They are different, as you say, and can be enjoyed equally, perhaps, but on their own differing merits. Wish I had time to write more in contribution to this interesting thread!

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In what manner do you use the terms "Duh" and "drool"? To what does "drool" refer?

Out of date, self effacing language, Erik. I was suggesting that I was rather dense, bit of a...well, can't think of a PC term. I think you are on track, and I prefer less than expertly played live instruments to the finest recordings of the very best musicians. The recordings are at my command...the actual event is a HAPPENING.

Dave

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