"Rob" wrote in message
om...
Arny Krueger wrote:
"D.M. Procida" wrote in
message
...

Arny Krueger wrote:

The hypothesis is

[actually it wasn't - you originally said something somewhat different,
but never mind, we'll go with this, vague and woolly ("tend to") as it
is]

that consumers tend to make purchase decisions based on
reproduction quality.

... and then you provide some corroborating examples. That's great. But
you can't prove a hypothesis with corroborating examples, no matter how
many you have.

Since you do exactly the same thing below, your discussion of proof is
just so much wind.

However, you can falsify a hypothesis with just one counter-example.

Depends on the relevance and quality of the counter example.

Here's a counter-example: the CD is losing out to poorer-quality
compressed digital audio formats.

I think that:

IOW, no supporting evidence - just another hypothesis.

(1) consumers value convenience above sound quality, to the extent
that only if a new format offers significantly greater
convenience can it succeed an older one

Already proven false by a well-known example:

The Stereo LP offered less convenience than the Mono LP, yet it displaced
it.

Stereo LPs were less convenient than mono LPs because they required
significant equipment upgrades to play without being damaged, required
far more expensive equipment to play (2 amps and 2 speakers), were
initially in short supply, and were always far more susceptible to noise
because they used vertical recording. They were generally more costly.

The only advantage of the Stereo LP over the Mono LP was that it offered
improved sound quality,

Yet, the stereo LP essentially completely displaced the mono LP, even
when retailers stocked both or had larger stocks of mono LPs.

That's quite interesting; hadn't thought of it.

I lived it! ;-)

However(!) wasn't it the case that music, and new music in particular, was
*only* released in stereo after a while.

Of course, but the period of overlap was several years, and by then the
market was basically stereo. There were a few oddities like hits by the
Beatles and Stones that were basically mono only.

There are always people who will whine about being forced to upgrade due to
the lack of availability of the old stuff. We hear the same thing about CDs,
and that was about 20 years later.

Therefore, if you wanted to listen to it in stereo, you simply had to
invest in new machinery.

Incidentally, a 'proper' jazz musician friend of mine simply won't listen
to music in stereo. He was most put out that he couldn't buy a single
speaker when his old one broke. So, I suppose, stereo wasn't necessarily a
step up in sound quality

There are always a few people who don't want to adapt to new technology.

I actually ran into someone back in the day who was some kind of an
audiophile but didn't want to upgrade to stereo, even several years later.
OTOH, we were selling equipment for upgrades to stereo like crazy.

So one guy who resisted to the bitter end as compared to 100's or 1000s who
simply kept up.

I'm afraid I'm not old enough to remember in detail - ISTR that we played
our xmas stereo records on a mono 50s Decca with a ceramic cartridge (I
don't know if was stereo or mono). We certainly didn't 'upgrade' until
about 1975. And that had nothing to do with sound quality. The Decca
broke.

I worked in an audio store about the same time as the upgrade happened. My
own family didn't even have a record player until I built my first stereo.