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.
