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In an article published in The Wall Street Journal on March 1, Ethan Smith suggested that consumer electronics companies need to recapture music lovers who have sacrificed audio quality in search of convenience by embracing portable devices such as the iPod.

Smith wrote: "When it comes to music, consumers are increasingly trading quality for quantity. Many would rather have the ability to store thousands of songs on portable devices—and have a constant soundtrack to their lives—than own stacks of CDs and listen to high-quality sound tethered to an expensive living-room system."

Smith cites several recent developments that, he claims, support his premise. The first is Sony's discontinuation of its Qualia line of expensive electronics; the second, Apple's February 28 introduction of the iPod Hi-Fi, a $349 all-in-one powered speaker/docking station for its iPod music players.

Smith is correct that Sony appears to be a company badly in need of a wake-up call. Twenty years ago, Sony owned the portable music market with its Walkman brand, which was so closely identified with the market for music on the go that "Walkman" was in danger of becoming a generic term. Today, few people are even aware that Sony makes portable digital players. Why? Because the company insisted on burdening its players with a proprietary DRM-encumbered system that it wouldn't even admit was compatible with the popular MP3 format.

Ah, we hear you object, Apple's iPod employs a non-MP3 format that also encompasses DRM, and the iPod controls 50–80% of the portable market. That's true—but from day one, Apple advertised the iPod's compatibility with MP3. (Actually, Apple doesn't make much of the differences between its MPEG-4 auto audio coding (AAC) scheme and conventional MP3 technology because there's no perceptible difference in transparency for most users—it just isn't an issue.) Even better, the iPod offers its users several options that don't require lossy compression or even compression at all, so that picky audiophile users, such as Stereophile's John Atkinson and www.stereophile.com's Jon Iverson don't have to choose quantity over quality at all.

The iPod Hi-Fi points to the real challenge confronting the audio industry, which is that the iPod has changed the way listeners expect to experience their music. The iPod allows listeners to carry their music libraries around with them. Even picky listeners,who choose uncompressed files can slip a few hundred albums into their pockets with the iPod, which means that, increasingly, music lovers do carry their entire record collections around with them—and once they've gotten used to carrying all that music around everywhere they go, the next step is to expect to be able to listen to it.

Audiophiles may well suspect that when music is that accessible, it doesn't encourage "attentive" listening. They're probably correct, but any business plan that requires consumers to act differently than they have already shown they want to is a recipe for failure. The trick is to offer what the consumer wants and then seduce him or her with more. This is a lesson Apple proved it knew well in developing the iPod.

The iPod's real killer app wasn't simply its quality, but its ease of use. The iTunes program offered users maximum levels of control with a very shallow learning curve. That same level of simplicity may be the biggest thing the new iPod Hi-Fi has going for it, since all the consumer has to do is dock the iPod into the Hi-Fi in order to immediately listen to the music it contains. The iPod is the interface, as well as the source. The consumer doesn't have to learn anything new in order to operate the system.

But wait, hard-core audiophiles might say (have said), a single unit with two full-range drivers and a small subwoofer driver won't offer U-R-There quality. Wouldn't a larger system be more faithful to the source? Wouldn't a wireless dock that allowed you to carry the iPod around with you offer more immediate control? These are valid points—but I suspect they are nevertheless beside the point—or that they might be evolutionary developments that will come to pass, now that people are rethinking what they want out of a music delivery system.

Are "big-rig" stereos ready for the scrap heap of history? Heck no, not as long as some of us still hear—and value—the difference. However, if most people expect to carry their music libraries around in their shirt pockets, high-end systems will increasingly seem inconsequential to them unless audio manufacturers begin making it easy to connect and control iPods and their ilk. It's not a question of pandering. The demand for iPods is already there. Do we embrace the majority of listeners who have committed to them or do we choose to continue to marginalize our industry?

Apple has chosen to release the iPod Hi-Fi because so few other companies have welcomed those consumers. If Apple and Bose become the de facto standard bearers for a new generation of music listeners, the high-end audio industry can console itself that it, like Sony, stuck to its guns. You almost have to admire an entire industry that would rather be "right" than successful.