What's going on with the audio market?

First the target market is slowly diminishing.  Gen. X and Y and Millenials are using iPhones for their primary music source and show no signs of changing.  Only the Boomers care about this stuff anymore.

Second, the value proposition that many audio company's offered 20-30 years ago has been abandoned.  I am pretty certain, having listened to them side-by-side, that today's turntables, cartridges and tonearms are really not any better than the 1980's versions...in fact in many ways they are inferior.  When you can go on Audiogon and buy a dead man's set-up for 10% of the cost of a new rig, and it sounds as good or better, why see an audio retailer at all ?  

Third, the price of SOTA equipment in 2016 is astronomical......$100K for a pair of loudspeakers is ridiculous.  Just because one can build a speaker cabinet entirely out of CNC high-speed machined aluminum billet doesn't mean that they should, or that they will get better results than Paul Klipsch or Roy Allison or Roger Vandersteen did 30 years ago.

Finally, the audio business is not really offering any technology improvements to materially improve the home music experience to speak of.  It has NOT embraced multichannel when it has shown to be clearly more realistic then 2-channel audio, and every improvement to digital playback since the original CD player in 1982 has been met with lukewarm sales at best.  SACD and DVD-A SHOULD have taken off, but when audiophiles sat on they pocketbooks, the die was cast and the BIG players said "those old SOB's don't care so why should we ?"  

I remain skeptical of digital downloads....the numbers aren't even close to CD sales TODAY, much less at their peak, and the selection is more "austere" than SACD's. Digital streaming (TIDAL, etc.) may have a chance, but...who knows.  Let's see what happens with MQA.....can anyone remember the last great digital "sonic breakthrough ?"  (Hint, it was called "Pono ?"  As is Phono.)  Not even Neil Young could sell needle-dragging, vinyl-loving Boomers on that one.

I stopped watching the news and politics and the world kept on turning!
I am 59 and started serious buying after my wife passed away in 2012.
Nothing calms and puts things in perspective like a quite room with a good system and great music to listen too.
We have the ability to change very little in life, outside of our community, many will argue that but I have been so calm since I learned to let the train wreck continue on without me.
I guess you could say I went over the top and off the cliff buying audio gear, it was the  perfect storm , depression, insurance money and a rediscovery of great music and systems again.
One day I was looking at ebay, I have never payed much attention to the computers, and I discovered vintage audio gear:):):)!
6 Macintosh amps, numerous tube amps and 22 sets of speakers later, I am calm.
I am raising two grand kids, since birth 14 and 15 now, they know what heavy amps mean ,what  large effecent altec  and klipsch speakers are  and why size matters ,differences between tube amps and ss.
They are home schooled by me , we are learning electronics as one of our studies, if your going to have it you need to be able to fix it.
They like what we like, they will continue on and all I did was expose them to it and take cable tv away throw the video games out and set them up with their own systems.
They also had to have a few months of disbelief and come to terms with no one was coming to save them and their spoiled life  they had been living.
Did I mention the installation of two wood stoves and now we heat with wood, another shock but now they look forward to cold weather, yes we cut and split our own wood:).
I have a bedroom I turned into a stereo storage room, more like a store, we all change our systems about at will, we go shopping in the store.
All this was made possible for about what some people pay for a good bass boat, or a fraction of what that latest greatest new car cost.
I hope this does not come across wrong,I am just so happy to be able too show my kids there is so much more to life and it's all about choices we make along the way.
I think audio today is suffering because the youth today does not care about great music , any old music will do on the phone or computer.
I have down loaded  music  off line , when I burn them to cd and put them in a great system the play back is less than stellar.
I have used other computers and have cd's people have made for me, I just think the quality of mixing and recording has suffered because it's just not that important anymore, they will buy anything!
 

I'm 55 and have always had a system. I have actively bought and sold gear for ten years, but slowing down now and enjoying my music more. 

There seems to be a large number of gear manufacturers fighting for market share. This competition is good for us I guess price wise. Plus there is a healthy used market of quality gear to choose from. 

I have a turntable and many albums but I tend to be leaning toward smaller and smaller gear that gives me good sound. I'm excited about technology and the positive changes it will bring in terms of form and function. I no longer aspire toward a 90 pound amp, etc, but I'm not quite ready for a Bose Wave yet!

I think we are living in an exciting time for our hobby. I'd like the US to manufacture more and provide jobs, etc, but I'm not well versed enough to pontificate on the subject.

I'm thankful for Audiogon and all the help offered here. It helps me buy smarter and learn about new gear rather than learn from only advertising.

It's not just audio, it's a lousy economy in general. We're in a malaise that we can't seem to pull out of. (Politics aside)

 

Perhaps I’ve missed it, but I haven’t seen in this interesting thread any mention of the reasons I think account for the death throes of the audio industry in America.

1. I live in a city with an MSA of a million people. In a typical issue of Stereophile magazine, not a single piece of equipment reviewed can be auditioned in my city. If one piece does happen to be on display in our one remaining stereo store, none of the others will be, making comparisons impossible.

2. The published specs for audio equipment are meaningless. Virtually all amplifiers, integrated amplifiers, and receivers can reproduce the entire frequency spectrum. So can virtually all CD players. Speakers are more variable, but they all can go higher than I (or most people) can hear. The low end does matter, but there are scores of speakers out there which go lower than any orchestral instrument (except piano and harp and pipe organ). But the fact that a piece of audio equipment can reproduce a note, tells you nothing about how it sounds. They can all reproduce a middle C; so can a car horn. Therefore, auditioning is essential; indeed, people like to advise you to trust your ears; but as noted in #1, there’s nowhere nearby to hear anything.

3. Well, there are online sellers who offer free trials. So, for example, I tried a pair of Ohm MicroWalshes, didn’t like them, the company kept its promise and refunded every cent I paid for the speakers – but shipping cost me $50 inward (a bargain) and $180 outward, for a total of $230 for my free trial. Larger and more expensive speakers would cost still more to ship. Let’s say you fancy a pair of Harbeths, which have a fanatic following. The three middle models are around the same size and run from around $4,000 to $7,000. There is nowhere within 500 miles of my home to audition these speakers. Home trial? I would need to find a seller willing to ship me three sets of speakers knowing he would get at least two sets back; I would need to lay out, say, $15,000, and spend many hundreds of dollars to ship them all back if I didn’t like any of them; and as the company does not sell direct in the U.S., I would be at the mercy of the seller’s solvency – if he went out of business, I would not be able to return them, indeed I would have no recourse if some of them arrived damaged as UPS and FedEx will only deal with the shipper to make claims.

4. Finally, there’s the “progress” of modern architecture. When I retired to Arizona, I brought with me the speakers I had lived with for 35 years and loved – a pair of Klipschorns. I discovered to my horror that modern houses have no corners, often no walls between the living room, dining room and kitchen. I did find a house with a few walls – I refuse to have a noisy refrigerator in my living room – but my living room has but one corner, the other should-be corners occupied by the front door, a back patio door, and an archway. In fact, as the walls are made of dry wall (cardboard, really), the single corner isn’t really a corner at all from the vantage of a K-Horn – sound doesn’t reflect off cardboard.

5. Finally finally, the audio magazines and catalogues are filled with superlatives which, applied to everything on offer, have no meaning at all. This amp is ideal, that one is perfect, that one punches well above its weight, that one sounds better than it has any right to at its price (which may be more than your car is worth, but when you hear it – which you have no way of doing without actually buying it – you’ll realize it’s really a bargain).

Music has played, and continues to play, a large part in my life. I can afford to indulge my hobby, and I have – since I culled my record collection for lack of room, I have acquired thousands of CDs. If I can’t upgrade my audio equipment due to lack of opportunity, I am scarcely surprised that young people – I’m much older than anybody in this thread – won’t even try.