Is hi fi dead?

TroyD

Of course the end of the discussion is if you enjoy it, than so much the better.

I also agree that sitting in a chair listening to music is not (edit, sorry) the only way to appreciate music. Hell, I've always got music on pretty much all the time.

However, for me, rather than watching TV (which I do little of) I would rather spend that time parked in front of my stereo. That being the case, while I can deal with mp3 on my iPod jogging, I can't deal with the huge sacrifice in sound quality. I want to extract as much possible information out of the medium and reproduce it as faithfully as I can. To me, that's hifi.

While I would agree that there IS a lot of great material out there, mainstream material continues to get worse and worse and worse. While classical has always been the predominantly the domain of older people, I suppose, many local symphonies are struggling to make ends meet. It's too bad because if younger people were actually exposed (my liberal plug for music education) to decent material, most of them will appreciate and enjoy it.

BDT

steveinaz

Of course another angle on this...if you're that preoccupied with the equipment, are really listening to the music?

TroyD

I'm not going to lie, I DIG the gear angle. It's probably a 70/30 split for me in favor of the music.

BDT

engtaz

steve
That's true but funny.

engtaz

zombie boy 2000

Troy...
I suppose I confused your assertion concerning mainstream music with music in general. In regards to mainstream music, I feel you are 100% right. I give it twenty years before Casey Kasem is counting down the top 20 sounds of grunts and hitting two sticks together. Who knows? Maybe the mainstream outlets are right and they're simply attempting to achieve Enlightenment by concentrating on the sound of one drum machine clapping.

Sona...
if it ain't got that swing and so forth. It's hard to make a case for the average audiophile's love of music with forehead creased, Swamiesque concentration, a barely susceptible cringe at a decrease soundstage.
Can ya feel the love there? Yet my wife and her boombox are always in the right place at the right time.

TroyD

Sona,

I really enjoy your posts, actually. It's cool to hear the opinions of others who don't exactly have the same audio bent that we do.

Glad you like the signature line, although it wasn't directed at you...glad you enjoyed it!

I'm just saying that the Cheeze-whiz factor has always been present in mainstream music. However, lately it seems to have taken it over and relegated real artists to an almost insignifigant level. My wife is an American Idol freak and all I can think is that Jimi Hendrix and SRV are rolling over in thier graves.

BDT

zombie boy 2000

Please, oh please...
Sona don't get me wrong as I should have been more clear -- music snobbery be damned.

Independent labels and their associated bands are alive and well. And nearly everything I listen to is pulled from this well. I find it odd that in a day and age when mass information is so readily available that the underground keeps digging its way to China.

"World of mouth" will always rule the day when it comes to this scene. Irrespective of the British hype machine, the Rolling Stone/Spin tall-tales, etc. etc. There is a nearly endless supply of unbelievable music being spun in the here and now. It's just not gettin' its day in court.

shack

zombie boy 2000 wrote: »

"World of mouth" will always rule the day when it comes to this scene. Irrespective of the British hype machine, the Rolling Stone/Spin tall-tales, etc. etc. There is a nearly endless supply of unbelievable music being spun in the here and now. It's just not gettin' its day in court.

IF it is as good as you think...chances are it would be discovered and become mainstream...it always has...always will. Probably what it comes down to what YOU think is unbelievable music might be crap to me and vise versa.

My contention is there is lots of undiscovered tallent but not a lot of undiscovered music. A performer getting dicovered and making it mainstream is more luck than tallent. The are thousands of tallented performers waiting tables, loading trucks, landscaping, flippin' burgers, etc...waiting to get their break...which will never come.

There is a reason there are so many covers of music though... Great songs, great music, great lyrics are hard to come by. EVERY artist is looking for that great piece of music. Producers, agents music company executives are constantly searching for it as well. Not much gets overlooked.

I don't have a great desire to scour the net for the independent underground venues to find something... cause generally...what I have heard, I don't care for.

I have enough music in my current library to last the rest of my life. If I catch a bit of something that sounds good I might pursue it, see if it has been published and maybe buy a copy. For a while I was buying lots of stuff...then realized that I had a lot of albums that I hadn't listened to in a long time. I was more of a collector than a listener. That has changed. Now I buy something new from an artist I already have an interest in or to fill out a catalog. I have a list of stuff I would like to have...if I can find it.

But this is just me ...YMMV.

steveinaz

I don't think the recent rash of digital availability really means anything. Those who are into the equipment, will always be; and you'll always have a new crop of audiophiles who get into high-end, regardless of how they were introduced to the "music." Audio is a tinkerers hobby---we're wowed by how accurately our equipment can portray music, that's where the real appeal lies, or we'd all have boomboxes.

Just like younger generations of past, some are into cars, some into computers, some into gaming---everybody has their hobby. Audiophiles are the same. Let's face it, "hi-fi" has always been a niche in the first place, how many local friends do you know with hi-fi? Of our group of friends, Bev & I are the only ones with a component stereo.

Just my 2 cents.

zombie boy 2000

Shack...
I think you make some very valid points. Most notably in making the distinction between music and artist/performer. Moreover, I hope I haven't conveyed an alliance between the notions of "independent" and "garage rock".
What I was trying to define were artists who traditionally make music for the sake of making music -- irrespective of financial gain (which is more often than not, nowhere in sight).

That is not to say that a popular artist does not pursue this ideal. It is just a bit easier to rise to the top (and consequently make more money) when a particular model is followed. IMO this model is a simplified one. A catch, hook, and a chorus. And while I agree to an extent that this may very well be the hardest song to write in the end, there are many bands who choose to go the other direction and attempt to create pieces of art -- often complex, sonic tapestries that require almost as much of the listener as of the artist themselves.

In much the same way that many of us think that the average listener is unwilling to critically listen to their rig, I think the average listener is just as unwilling to critically listen to the work of art itself.

Again, please don't think that just because I speak of "lo-fi" that I'm necessarily referring to fuzzy, out of tune guitars, and off-key screeching. I'm speaking of music that doesn't really have the money to back it up in the recording studio, and so is more often than not, low fidelity. Of course, this in no way detracts from the artistic ambition of the artist.

shack

zombie boy 2000 wrote:

What I was trying to define were artists who traditionally make music for the sake of making music -- irrespective of financial gain (which is more often than not, nowhere in sight).

These artists are unemployed musicians who more that likely would "sell out" at the drop of a hat to be a STAR.

That is until they become a multimillionaire and the tell the music label that they have to be loyal to the music and follow their heart...which is code for "I have enough money and drugs right now and I want to sit on my **** and party instead of going to the studio to record".

zombie boy 2000

Well if that's the truth, than why do so many bands start out making music so clearly inaccessible to the masses? Why not just commit the band to a "verse, chorus, verse, chorus, guitar solo, chorus x2" format from the get-go?

However, I do agree that a great many bands that consider themselves outside of the industry would gladly sell out for stardom, money, and more importantly... women:D

bknauss

Very well put, Carl. Here are my thoughts to go along with that:

We, America as a whole, enjoy convenience first and quality second. We want our phones smaller and more portable, our cars packed with more gagdets for less money, and our music mediums to become smaller and smaller. Let's look back a couple years at the boom of Napster. If you had MP3s encoded at 128kbps, the files weren't too big, so you could either transfer a ton of songs if you were on a high speed line or get a couple songs on dialup. People also had (trying to remember my freshman year of college) maybe 50GB on their computer and a crappy set of computer speakers. You weren't overly worried about sound quality and needed a small sized file so you had room for a lot of songs along with your other programs and files. The iPod comes out in small sizes (5/10 GB) during the fall of the online file sharing. Along with it comes iTunes. Hey! Great! Even more convenience! I get the music with a click of a button and can take it everywhere. Oh wait, I'm tied down by a small hard drive... oops! Now let's fast forward to now. Most people who want high speed internet have it. 50GB+ MP3 players are readily available and can decode lossless formats. And hard drives for computers are cheap for a ton of memory, so you've got a central databse if you have too many songs. Personally, I've got my entire CD library ripped in Apple lossless onto an external 500GB hard drive. Its great. I love it. And I've only used about 100GB of the hard drive. Plenty of space for videos or more music when I buy it.

Now what do we have to look forward to? You have the option, in some areas, to get super duper high speed internet. Hard drives are becoming smaller yet have higher capacity. Other A/V mediums are able to store more information into the same area. New audio formats are coming out allowing more bandwidth for info. All of these things point toward bigger and better things for audio in the future. Look at the boom TVs had over the past handful of years. Everyone and their mother is buying an HDTV with much higher picture quality. Now if those dang engineers at the studios weren't told to talk up the gains all the way and compress the hell out of the sound..................

schwarcw wrote: »

Oh George, look at history. Everything is cyclical. As soon as the IPod generation becomes 40 or 50 with some disposable income the world of Hi Fi will open up their ears to all that they have been missing. It will become a whirlwind of demand for high quality electronics. ****, this happended to our own generation. What was your first music source? A transistor radio? It was for me! I battery operated Motorola 7 transistor with an ear plug. I loved that thing. I listened to it in bed, I fell in love with the Righteous Brothers sining you lost that Loving Feeling, Herman's Hermits, the Dave Clark Five, Ronny and the Daytona's the 4 tops, Supremes, Mavelettes, on and on. It was for ten years that i realized to benefits of sterophonic sound from two speakers, a separate amp and turntable. The world of sound opened up for me. I will go on record and venture to say that our IPod kids will experience a similiar hi fi mutation. Different music, different equipment, different formats, but definately high fi sound, better than we know it now!

shack

zombie boy 2000 wrote: »

Well if that's the truth, than why do so many bands start out making music so clearly inaccessible to the masses?

It's not that they want to be inaccessible to the masses....it's because they have no avenue to to masses. The masses don't know....don't want them. The net, my space, facebook, etc...may be their only way to get discovered. Either that or do it the old fashion way playing in places that pay nothing, before small crowds night after night. Or maybe like the commerical where the Krystal lets a band play in front of the resaurant when their gig gets cancelled.

zombie boy 2000

shack wrote: »

It's not that they want to be inaccessible to the masses....it's because they have no avenue to to masses.

Excellent point.

hearingimpared

Anybody read April's Stereophile? The very last page the Aural Robert column by Robert Baird is called, "Ry's Apple Ayes." It is about Ry Cooder's latest offering, "My Name is Buddy." Very very interesting read. In a nutshell he was tired of all the BS involved with creating the master.

"As soon as you do that, you encounter such horrible things as D-to-A converters. I hate these things. Other testures are introduced, and you diaphanous little soundscape is disrutped and you can't get it back."

He then goes on to describe what caused him to start using iTunes for his mastering because, "It's soft. It feels like a 33 record and LP."

See it really is the old timers who find ways to get this technology to sound right and can pass on to the newer generation of artists the necessary ways so music can please the ear. I think Sona made mention of something along these lines except the listeners were who were being talked about.

PS: this article is very interesting. Stereophile April 2007 Page 210, I tried to locate it on the Stereophile website but couldn't, perhaps someone more search savy can find it.

WilliamM2

So when he uses iTunes there are no A/D or D/A converters needed?

NeilGabriel

Thanks for all the interesting and often over my head comments on this post. As to steveinaz, I'll send you my Sony boombox for all that equipment listed under your name (smile)<---I refuse to do smiley faces). I wondered if the forum could use a section on digital music. I have tried to teach myself about lossless formats and have downloaded it and done conversions to mp3. The concept of burning to DVDs is new to me and the best way to wirelessly send my digitized music to the home audio center is still a mystery filled with tradeoffs. I do remember the days of getting the new vinyl home and tearing the plastic cover off which had usually shrunk and warped the record...of putting a penny on the arm of the turntable to stop it from skipping...yup, that was me.

hearingimpared

NeilGabriel wrote: »

I do remember the days of getting the new vinyl home and tearing the plastic cover off which had usually shrunk and warped the record...of putting a penny on the arm of the turntable to stop it from skipping...yup, that was me.

Penny my butt I had to use a nickel!!!!:D I think in this day and age and nickel makes a good anti-skating mechanism.:D