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.