"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.
It's quite sad, but DABradio has also killed off high quality FM Stereo
audio.
For some people so long as they hear a "noise" they think it's better than
nothing.
The con merchants selling £100/m speaker cable have moved on to things like
gold plated SCART and HDMI leads now. When there are thick people about
who will buy something because a magazine says it is good there is always a
market. I prefer to listen to the sound quality. I have found some makes
of
small speakers and subwoofers will provide a better sound than some normal
speakers - this is only down to clever processing.