Cdc, that's a lot of questions, but I'll take a stab at them in order:
1) Depends on the someone and on the component; anything that still provides enjoyment to anyone is not obsolete.
2) & 3) Technology moves at different speeds at different times for different aspects of sound reproduction. It is often driven in response to something else, as digital currently is being driven by new source formats and the analog resurgence. Sometimes something old becomes new again, as in the SET phenomemon. But I would say the most significant technological changes over the past 10-15 years have most greatly affected the performance of speakers as a class. This has mostly had to do with the wide and inexpensive availability of powerful computing capabilities to aid in the measuring and modeling of speaker performance. And a lot of alleged tech improvements really just boil down to marketing when looked at from the perspective of hindsight.
4) I too do not believe that any very significant improvements are somehow waiting to be made in areas such as SOTA preamps, for instance. Today's good preamps probably represent one of those components that has really improved dramatically in the past 10-15 years as well, to the point that further gains will likely be small, or not focused on sound quality per se.
5) Maybe so...I wouldn't know! ;^)
6) & 7) There is always a market for boat anchors...
1) Depends on the someone and on the component; anything that still provides enjoyment to anyone is not obsolete.
2) & 3) Technology moves at different speeds at different times for different aspects of sound reproduction. It is often driven in response to something else, as digital currently is being driven by new source formats and the analog resurgence. Sometimes something old becomes new again, as in the SET phenomemon. But I would say the most significant technological changes over the past 10-15 years have most greatly affected the performance of speakers as a class. This has mostly had to do with the wide and inexpensive availability of powerful computing capabilities to aid in the measuring and modeling of speaker performance. And a lot of alleged tech improvements really just boil down to marketing when looked at from the perspective of hindsight.
4) I too do not believe that any very significant improvements are somehow waiting to be made in areas such as SOTA preamps, for instance. Today's good preamps probably represent one of those components that has really improved dramatically in the past 10-15 years as well, to the point that further gains will likely be small, or not focused on sound quality per se.
5) Maybe so...I wouldn't know! ;^)
6) & 7) There is always a market for boat anchors...