I'm not sure there was much distinction. I wasn't around or was very little so I have to guess based on the outward appearance and my personal experience of listening. JBL, Sansui's, Yamaha, B&W, Tannoy, Harbeth, etc. who dominated the pro space back then. I seems like at some point in the 80's and 90's the "High End" of speaker mfg'ing just kind of invented itself and started catering to tastes and aestetics over R&D. And now rather than having a handful of large companies making "high end" speakers we have a few large companies and a very large number of small boutique companies with an owner catering to deep pocketed audiophiles who share thier aestetic, but can't operate a table saw, aren't engineers, or just put eye candy in thier living room. Which is just fine.

It would be nice to get facts from folks old enough to have been there rather than opinion from those of us who weren't. :)

"I seems like at some point in the 80's and 90's the "High End" of speaker mfg'ing just kind of invented itself and started catering to tastes and aestetics over R&D. And now rather than having a handful of large companies making "high end" speakers we have a few large companies and a very large number of small boutique companies with an owner catering to deep pocketed audiophiles who share thier aestetic, but can't operate a table saw, aren't engineers, or just put eye candy in thier living room."

jgossman, this is exactly what took place. Nothing wrong with boutique, but I saw the sound quality go right down the tubes as the popularity eye candy games began. What's worse is the high end audio world made up their own mythical technologies to support it. I brought up these audio myths on "audio circle" and was laughed at and treated rudely, as if I was an outsider instead of someone who grew up in the music business. I'm still amased at the attitudes and defence of this. But now high end audio has hit the wall and this will either change the hobby to get back on track or be the end of high end audio as we know it.

michael green
MGA/RoomTune

"But now high end audio has hit the wall and this will either change the hobby to get back on track or be the end of high end audio as we know it."

I can see the NYT article now. While the Amazing Randi couldn't prove that there is no difference in Cables, the High-End was saved from doctors and lawyers by thier hipster kids who couldn't afford mom and dad's CRAP!

Yep, I think it's a pickle for the industry, and there needs to be some serious evaluating that goes on for all to get on the right (sellable) page, or path, starting with (I feel) getting back to the basics. Simple systems without the fat that drove the prices up.

I think any time you have an industry that starts having an equipment closet full of what didn't work, and the average consumer having bought 5 systems over, it's fair to say that industry has got some problems, or at the best growing pains. This isn't the auto club. Instead of having a high end audio buying fever we should have had a "how to get good sound" movement. A real one, not one based on the myths. How could the music lover look at high end (today) and find it appealing when for years the used equipment door rotated more than the new?

that's one point here's somemore

The other side to this is maybe the high end audio industry is more of a collectors industry than a music playing one. This honestly could be very true and I'm sure is for a lot of folks. Problem with this approach though is when the collectors get old the next generation moves on to what they are interested in instead of the oldman's hobby. In todays world, moving so fast with technology, it's doubtful that the youngsters are going to find battleships sitting in the living room as fun as grandpa.

There's one more side though too. The engineer type, the guy who is more into a spec of something and testing over sitting and listening. This breed in time dies off as well in industries. They reach a level of expert in their own minds and get a few followers but again the new generation has moved on, and instead of the interest growing, newer tech things gain the interest of the young.

Nope this industry will head back to the simple, and I believe become closer related to the musical instrument industry. I believe instrument stores can easily become the new stereo store. When the connection is once again realized that playback is a part of the live and the recording world, this door will open for the listening enthusiast. Internet audio stores are going to do just fine and are. They may not have known it but their move back in the 90's was pretty darn smart. There is a place for the mom and pop but it will need to be about service. Box moving mom and pop's, might not make it, past a few specialty shops.

This is a little futuristic maybe, but we are approaching a time when there will be the consumer product and high end will (might) have an audiophile version of the same music, only this time around they will have options to play with the tracks and shape the music the way they want. Don't laugh too hard folks :) there's no reason why a studio couldn't make copies available to the audiophile/studiophile high ender. I believe this could easily be the next step, and is one that could hold the attention of the young serious listener. It's easier to see this if you had your own in-home studio, but it's really not that much of a stretch. Picture having a lap-pad in front of you and you sitting there making changes till it sounded right? A stretch, I don't think so. This is why I'm doing what I am. I don't think the high end the way it is will make it past this generation. Fixed sound for the audiophile worked for a while, and it had the reviewers and network to back it. Now that technology is here there's no need for the old school of plug and play, with hundreds of thousands of fixed sounds. Everyone saying they are right. Nope, we're close to game over for the old and game begin for the new.

michael green
MGA/RoomTune

This generation of music lovers has been raised on the convenience of digital and sound from their portable devices with earbuds or phones. They quite willingly accept the often times poor quality of sound for the easy and on demand nature of portable, digital audio.

From that group above, there are those who really care about better sound and they tend to aquire better phones and earbuds and begin to appreciate lossless digital and computer audio.

The jump from the groups above tend to come from older music lovers who settle down, buy homes and start filling those homes with the usual consumption items and home theaters. This is the group that the High End will forever be trying to appeal to. And this is where the challenge really starts to become more bleak.

All these young people have been raised consuming audio that is severely flawed in most of the areas that define good sound. If these young people were to want better sound, they aren't likely to find it because their music sucks so bad. The recordings simply aren't capable of producing good sound after having been distributed in such a destructively compressed way. This is the pickle that the High End is going to have to deal with.

The recording industry is doing more damage to the prospects of a vibrant High End than the High End is doing to itself. As the older audiophiles die off, there won't be a need for anything better than the big box junk because all the music that this generation will have grown up listening to will not benefit from anything better than junk playback systems. But, there will always be the small, dedicated listeners who appreaciate good sound...they just won't find much of it in the music they grew up listening to.

I don't think catch has shopped for much music lately, or been reading up on the pro side of things. In the last 20 years the music biz has become in-home studios as well as bigger commercial ones. In number they have grown even bigger than the audiophile community. That's right there are more in-home studios than there are high end audio systems. These studios cover the entire range from not so recordings, to fair, to outstanding. Fact is there are more great recordings coming out today than ever, but it's true that they are mixed in with some that are so so. This has always been the case and is no different from the day stereo started. There are good LP's and poor, there are good CD's and poor, now we are focused in on computers and it will be the same.

If catch or any other old fart wants to sit there and think that a percentage of the young is not going to go after purity as well as the mass accepted he is mistaken. Compession has been used Catch, since the early days of FM and that didn't stop Carver Marantz Magnum and the others from making great tuners. Compression was used in the early days of Vinyl, do your homework. That didn't stop TT designers from squeezing out as much as they could. There has always been a grading scale when it comes to producing. Show me a time in recording history catch when this was not so? Show me a time catch when we had nothing but stellar recordings?

Fact is Catch the music industry will always have purist and the masses, it always has and it always will. As far as pumping out recordings with compression, we should be pushing for purity obviously, but we should be pushing for it in recordings and playback systems alike. And I think the mass world has done a pretty darn good job of this with the newer receivers, speakers and players. I'm pretty tickled with mine and many consider me the top of the listening food chain (sorry for the ego). I know a lot of great listeners who agree, the high end has built a box around themselves. I'm not talking one or two, I'm talking about the thousands of guys who don't even subscribe to the Phile or TAS anymore. These listeners send me great recordings all the time. Our hobby, present and past, is full of fantastic recordings. We have our jazz festival coming up and it will be packed with music lovers and people with great sounding systems who will never, even in the city of the CES, ever go to the show to check out the sound. I have scores of CES and show regulars that say the shows suck! So if your going to blame it on the recordings what about the thousands upon thousands who have stopped coming to the shows cause they haven't heard anything good since "95"? What about those guys catch? Guys who have gone their own way because the systems sound so bad. They were tired after buying 5 to 10 different systems and got no where. What about those guys Catch? Do we sweeps the hundreds of thousands of guys, our brothers in listening, under the rug while a handful of us are left to talk on the Stereophile forum? Look around Catch, you see thousands of guys on here?

Ask Stereophile to share how many people came through the Sahara back in the late 80's through early 90's. Ask Stereophile the numbers after 2000. Your going to blame this on compression? I promise you those designers weren't playing compressed music and scared off the listeners. Those shows got emptied because the of one reason, they got use to a quality of sound and when that level of listening was gone they got bored, period. Read your show reports! The industry replaced music with eye candy and the listeners stopped coming.

You think this will all be reduced to BoomBoxes, well than the high end audio better step up and make some systems that sound better than those boxes. High end audio better get their minds out of the money cloud and back down to listening. Audiophiles better start thinking about why they can't get recordings to sound good as well. This revealing thing has been a scam in the beginning days of high end and it's a scam now.

Do I what compression gone from my favorite recordings? You bet I do. I'm I going to use this for an excuse to not listen to a recording? I didn't back in the beginning and I'm not going to start now. You do what you want to do Catch, but your barking up the wrong tree if you think great music and music production is coming to an end. That's just a few audiophiles with bad sounding systems and a lot of pride.

I think it's good to stand up to "the loudness wars", I do. I prepared a meeting for SUNY just the other day on the topic. I think a lot of engineers are way off base and need to come back to "real sound" and dynamics. But this doesn't mean I'm going to discount the great engineers and music makers and the mass audio production companies who are making great sound. Heck no, I'm going to support the guys who are doing a great job and try to encourage those not doing so. But I'm also not going to pretend that this hobby of ours has not produced a bunch of lazy designers and listeners. Guys who say they are in a hobby about listening and don't know a soundwave from distortion, think that sound travels in a straight line, or don't know that the audio signal is vibration. Guys who blame it on the music without even knowing what music is, or how a system works. Nope that I can't go along with, it's just a bunch of smoke to this doer.

michael green
MGA/RoomTune

Catch22 wrote:

The recording industry is doing more damage to the prospects of a vibrant High End than the High End is doing to itself.

One of the most intelligent statements I have read on the internet in ages.....

Bill - on the Hill
Practicing Curmudgeon & Audio Snob
- just an “ON” switch, Please –

Well, it might feel this way, but as you are now experiencing Bill there are changes that you can do to your equipment, and hopefully you will be heading in a direction that will allow you to hear your music differently. As you study your new sound I'll being looking forward to your reports.

michael green
MGA/RoomTune

I appreciate where you are coming from, Michael.

But from my front porch, the view is slightly different.

I am simply modifying the playback equipment, not the recording itself.

Bill - on the Hill
Practicing Curmudgeon & Audio Snob
- just an “ON” switch, Please –

Thanks, Bill

I appreciate where you are as well.

have fun with the new sound

michael green
MGA/RoomTune

...having a blast with the latest tweaks, too.

Bill - on the Hill
Practicing Curmudgeon & Audio Snob
- just an “ON” switch, Please –