"Doki" wrote in message
...
I noticed today in John Lewis that they had no hifi or hifialike gear for
sale at all. Loads of digital radios, mp3 players and sets of little
speakers that ipods fit onto, but no mini systems or seperates at all.

Has the mass market for hifi stuff completely died? The emphasis seems to
have turned entirely to subwoofers that produce midbass at a very small
range of frequencies (bandpass box perhaps?) along with a load of little
speakers that sound absolutely horrible. Some kit has only tweeters for
stereo seperation with a "sub" producing the mid range. Even the B&W
zeppelin thing sounded *very* poor to me.

It seems very strange to me given that development has been driven by
better quality in the past - ie moving from LPs to CDs. I suspect if you
did a side by side comparison with £500s worth of relatively mass market
gear from 15 years ago (probably an amp, CD player and a pair of bookshelf
speakers, or a mini system) compared to current gear (ie, ipod dock and
ipod), the old stuff would sound better.


What would you have seen 40 years ago? I know that when I was a teenager I
traded my Hornby 00 guage train set for a portable record player (possibly
one of the worst deals I ever made looking at prices today). It had the
obligatory piezo pickup, a triode pentode amp and a 4" speaker mounted
right below the arm. All my friends thought it super cool but it was crap.
My MK I iPod nano has sound 1000% better even on relatively low bit rates
and it is a lot more convenient to carry around. The main market for audio
products, cashed up teens and 20s, by and large don't care about the sound
quality. Even when they spend thousands on car audio, the only important
things are the volume the bass output and "Real cool looking gear".

High quality sound has only ever appealed to a minority of people, most are
happy with a mini system (popular with the wife as it doesn't take up too
much room) or a pre-packaged surround sound outfit if they want "High end
audio". Remember Alan Sugar's all in one Amstrad system, looked like a stack
of separate components, but it was one box and sounded like crap. Popular
with the punters because you didn't have to fiddle with all those wires.

'Tis as it ever was.

Keith