Editor's Eye

Never mentioned in the foregoing was any reference to the astonishing price increases associated with high end audiophile equipment over the time period you discussed. Thirty years ago high end audio pieces could be had for four figures; today there are many audio components that cost more than a car and some that cost more than a house. In my opinion, that reduced the target audience by an order of magnitude and absolutely killed the boutique audio retailer. The interest in relatively inexpensive headphone sets is a logical response to this - they're cheap compared to the cost of setting up an audiophile system today.

Im 38. I use to be into this scene, out of nostolgia (a Stranger Things binge may have contributed, ps this will be relevant later) and I now pity the publisher and its audience.

You seem to have gone from early adopters to living in the past really quick, and its sad to watch. Consumer electronics are consolidated, commoditized mass market junk food now, used by corporations to try to sell us all more junk we just dont want because they enhance our lives far less than they claim to. Technology is following moors law and this magazine has pitched woofers and tweeters as the only solution to the audio quality problem from day one. Where is the real innovation over the last few decades? Electrostatics have been around as long as cones and domes but beyond that nothing. Meanwhile I have what use to be a supercomputer a few years ago in my pocket and have access to virtually all human knowledge and endless entertainment. That device is now so cheap you can even get one free or close to it if you just maintain the internet service which cost less than a tank of gas these days.

Why would someone who grew up watching silicone and software change our world immeasurably ever be satisfied or enthusiastic about what your offering? A big box that is fussy about where you put it, what you connect it to and your proximity to it...those being the same issues my grandpa had with the product...if consistency is quality the industry has solved the problems. You are in the advertisers pockets but you should have been holding them accountable for a lack of innovation long ago. Add an innovation metric to your rating system and there becomes no need to buy a new product a decade later. Atmos is innovations that makes me lmfao.

As for the Vision side of the equation its virtually the same story for the past decade, some variation on the flat panel and? OLED ok thats cool for 1 article the rest is masturbation. And really blueray reviews, really? No mention of genra defining things like Stranger Things and how streaming is eating the industry?

Your editorial director etc should be drawn and quartered immediately if you want to have a future and you should higher people who live in this day and age. "50 years later B&W Reinvents its flagship"... give me a break. The dinosaurs died and so will this king of junk soon.

You are a day 2 company, slow and painful death follow shortly behind. I suspect this is the fate of your readers too as they are likely far past graying at this point 8:::(

The thrill of getting music for "free" even though the sound quality was lacking enthralled people.. They literally forgot how good stereo can sound.. Add in the iPhone in 2005 and it's very poor sound quality and very poor quality white ear buds and the loss of a generation was complete.. Also electronics is not taught in many High Schools anymore..

Fellow enthusiast please read the comments of nick4540.
He epitomizes mass market appeal to fools.
They go after ease of use and convenience over anything resembling quality.
Of course Nick would be categorized by his own generation as a 'Hater'.
We, baby boomers, just "pity the fool".
Rob and the S&V staff earnestly educate 20-30 something, in the hopes of guiding them to the next level enjoyment of quality audio and film.
I myself continue to be hopeful.
My sons (35,32, 30) seek my guidance on A/V selection, and better yet, rejoice in my hand me down 10 year old $5,000 speakers.
Its more a matter of economics more than anything else.
For $500 you get a similitude of quality audio in the latest smart phone with some silly earbuds.
Its a huge leap up to $5,000 for just a pair of quality speakers, never mind Amps, Processor, cables etc.
My sons (Millennials) are not yet able to afford such an investment (praise God they're raising my nine grandchildren).
However, they have the bug.
Instead of $5,000 speakers they have $500 high quality headphones along with a quality DAC.
Rob asks "Where have all the audiophiles gone?".
I answer: some sit on my living room intently watching and listening in rapture to Bocelli live in concert.
I'm referring to my own ten and eight year old grandsons.
The otherworldly sounds envelops them and they are hooked.
There is hope Rob. Expose them to quality and they will buy.
S&V and baby boomers, we maybe considered dinosaurs, but just like dinosaurs (read Petroleum) the world will sorely miss us when we're gone.

I am in way better position to buy audiophile stuff than I was 15 years ago, when I was truly engaged in the hobby. Nowadays, the price for equipment is insane.

Audiophiles have not gone anywhere. They were a tiny minority of music lovers, are a tiny minority of music lovers, and will be a tiny minority of music lovers.

The main ones wondering where all the audiophiles are at are boomers. Let's just be frank, Boomers aren't exactly in touch with what millennials do and much less what Generation Z does. Headphones took off after the beats headphones dropped a few years back. The Headfi industry shot into the stars after that. So to answer the question. The audiophiles have LG V20 phones and walk around with a pair 150-200 ear phones that look like the same thing you get you will cell phone at a distance. 32 years old I do Hi-fi and Head fi but truth be told for younger folks Hifi is completely impractical. If you're 20 something and in college get headphones. You got roommates because housing costs across the country are through the roof? By head phones. Life in an apartment with paper thin walls, and cant even turn you speakers up? Buy headphones.

"When exactly did we, as a nation of music lovers, stop wanting to tweak and tailor our sound to make it just right?"

Never happened, we simply tweak and tailor in different ways, using different tools. More and more playback is file based, file based playback offers many more way to tailor sound than knarly sounding multi-band tone controls.

"When did teenage boys in high school stop wanting the tallest speakers with the biggest woofers, or stop aspiring to a giant receiver with a glowing FM dial and more buttons, knobs, and switches than an Apollo space capsule?"

When we heard better-sounding, more ergonomic and less junky-looking gear that didn't take over the room— satellites & subs, gear that didn't scream "Teen-Dream-Headbanging".

"Was it in the mid-1980s when the CD (with its arguably inferior digital sound quality at the time) came on like a tidal wave and vinyl sales quickly withered?"

You want cheese with that whine? Have you even heard any post 2010 hi-rez digital gear? Can you actually hearing the baked IGD in all LPs? Off-center LPs, still in production, thank you very much,? Are you deaf? Senile?

"Do those trends mean that we are heading back to the good ol’ days, the Golden Age of Hi-Fi?"

I hope not, modern gear sounds better.

A couple of colossal jerks on here. Sad really, because there are better ways to get a point across than to insult literally everyone that follows this website. And you expected intelligent discourse after that?? Did the responses surprise you? You lost everyone, including me when you called readers dinosaurs. Everything else sounded like "blah blah blah".

Innovation in electronics and storage media will continue fairly rapidly, but the actual delivery systems (speakers) are much tougher. The need to move a serious amount of air to reproduce low frequencies is a huge stumbling block when it comes to miniaturization and convenience. I think the major advances will come as a result of research into psychoacoustics, which will improve our understanding of how we perceive sound. A lot of research is also focused on room/speaker interactions that color sound and make reproduced music less realistic. One example is the Dayton line-array speaker (reviewed in S&V) here : ttp://www.daytonaudio.com/index.php/epique-by-dayton-audio/epique-line-array-s...

Thousands of engineers and others are working every day to improve sound reproduction technology because there are huge financial rewards to be found, and when those advances occur S&V will be anxious to report on them. Throwing BS at these professionals and their industry without understanding the practical and scientific limitations they operate under is as useful as the barking of an unattended dog next door.

Agreed with Tommy Lee on the speaker technologies: one set of laws no one can break is the laws of physics. Sound travels as a mechanical compression wave. Creating those requires energy. Speakers are inherently limited by simple physical laws and what we have works well. Cones and domes may not be new anymore (or electrostatic panels, for that matter) but they move air, keep distorion low, and allow for a dedicated vibrating surface that holds up well under continual motion. The military has been doing research on tactile transducers for decades. They're not there yet.

Number two: mp3 files and cheap earbuds aren't the only culprits for what Rob is pointing out. We have to look at the music itself. Popular, radio-friendly music - which targets the mainstream, by definition - became increasingly bland and formulaic during the same period of time that compressed files and cheap earbuds began to dominate. Simple beats, repetitive rhythms, and algorithmic melodies took over top 40 stations. Recording quality suffered too, as there just wasn't as much stuff to record. Subtle details in instrumentation and vocals just weren't there. When the lead singer of a popular rock band can publicly admit that he writes songs to maximize sales...the motivation to spend time and money to connect with music declines.

I am encouraged by the resurgence and growth of quality personal audio, though. And I think more mainstream artists are beginning to layer their songs with more fine and subtle details once again.

And finally, let's also remember that music enriches life. The proliferation of digital music distribution and playback isn't ultimately something to be feared - it allows more opportunity for all that life enrichment.

Can people just ignore the troll so he will go away?
Don't feed the trolls!

One thing is true about dick4540, he likely is a millennial. He whines about everything, blames everyone else for his problems, and offers nothing substantive for solutions. Textbook millennial. Or, alternatively, he's just a troll.

You see dick4550, when you pull back the curtain, all you really are in the end is a troll that needs to compensate for your self perceived weaknesses by calling others names.

You bring LITERALLY NOTHING.

I have however, found what I think is the reason for the cause of the audio malaise that dick4550 is whining about.
It's dick4550! Problem solved.

I eagerly await his next penetrating insight, but I think he would be better served by finding the nearest recovering narcissist chat room.

I devolved this into name calling?? Can I read back the title of your VERY FIRST garbage post on here???

"This publication is a dinosaur and so are it's readers"

You are a lonely narcissist and you are infecting any positive inertia in this discussion. You are the problem, NOT everyone else.

Dick4550....no one, least of all me cares about your point of view. You're an infectious narcissist, and you've ruined what could have been a good thread.

You're going through a lot of trouble to save face. No one cares narcissist.

Dick4550....You are the one equivalent of the drunken opinionated loudmouth uncle that always ruins holiday parties.
You think you know everything, yet really, you understand nothing. You over compensate by calling people names and asserting that you have all the answers, and yet, when you look closely, you've said nothing substantial.
Some people perceive this as knowledge, but really, it isn't. You may not even have a decent audio system. I question if you're really a hobbyist at all.

This is all sport for you, narcissist4550.

Dick7649....it should be profits in the graveyard.
And I'm 45. Healthy as a horse. And I don't wish death on anyone, but I see you're not above doing it. You've scraped the bottom. No surprise. Narcissists will do anything, including the real nasty stuff, to win any perceived slight.

Where to next dick66883, Crochet.com?? Maybe put some of those sweet little old ladies in their place? Talk about how knitting hasn't changed in decades, and call them all dinosaurs?? Maybe throw in a couple of ten dollar words to make you feel superior? Lol.

Bye bye dick21444

"Over the next I will vow to make sv great again from the outside" "thanks for the motivation"
Lol...!!!
Just like a true narcissist!! Goodness, that guy was so painfully transparent. Was he for real???

What a TEXTBOOK narcissist!!