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.

In article , Doki
wrote:
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.

The significant term above may be "hifialike". So far as have been able to
tell, the majority of people have never had any real interest in 'hifi' in
terms of getting audio kit that can deliver the kind of performance some of
us know to be possible.

Has the mass market for hifi stuff completely died?

Did it ever exist? :-)


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.

Dunno. May depend on how you select the items for the comparison.

One problem, perhaps, is that techniques like 'mp3' have given people a way
to distribute sound recordings/broadcasts in a way where lower quality
saves money and provides convenience. I suspect that more people chose CD
for convenience than for the results which can be obtained with a good disc
and replay system.

Certainly, when I occasionally borrow CDs from our local library, their
condition indicates that many people assume you can scratch the disc as
much as you like, cover it in grime, and it makes no difference! :-) Mind
you, borrowing LPs from a public library in the past was a rather stressful
activity - unless you happened to know the music librarian, so could get
first pick. :-]

Of course, if you read audio mags and take a keen interest, they you tend
to encounter a different approach and ideas. But this has always been a
minority interest so far as I have been able to tell. I doubt it has ever
been the case than well over 1 percent of people would even have regularly
bought audio mags, or done much more that buy whatever 'hifialike' was in a
local shop. Indeed, I wonder if most people even realise that 'stereo'
means more than 'has two speakers'... :-)

Slainte,

Jim

--
Change 'noise' to 'jcgl' if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

Jim Lesurf wrote:
I wonder if most people even realise that 'stereo'
means more than 'has two speakers'... :-)

I've seen in my local Poundland store, something described on the packet
as 'stereo headset and microphone'. Yup, you've guessed it. One ear-piece...

--
Adrian C

"Adrian C" wrote in message
...
Jim Lesurf wrote:
I wonder if most people even realise that 'stereo'
means more than 'has two speakers'... :-)

I've seen in my local Poundland store, something described on the packet
as 'stereo headset and microphone'. Yup, you've guessed it. One
ear-piece...

--
Adrian C

I was talking to someone recently who thought stereo meant the bass comes
out of one 'speaker and the treble out of the other. He couldn't see the
point of it........

S.
--
http://audiopages.googlepages.com

"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.

It's always been. Who remembers the first 'stereo' Hi Fi? Compared to my Pye
Black Box mono it was total crap.

--
John the West Ham fan C.E.T.



"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.

"housetrained" wrote in message
...

It's always been. Who remembers the first 'stereo' Hi Fi? Compared to my
Pye Black Box mono it was total crap.

What do you mean by the "first" stereo HiFi?

David.

"Doki" wrote in message


I noticed today in John Lewis that they had no hifi or
hifialike gear for sale at all.

How do you define "hifi"?

The word hifi is a shortening of "high fidelity" and high fidelity refers to
reproducing sound with accuracy.

Loads of digital radios,

Surely some of them are at least somewhat accurate in their reproduction.

mp3 players

Which can be used with highly accurate earphones and headphones to obtain
good, accurate sound.

and sets of little speakers that ipods fit onto,

Some of which are actually fairly accurate, or at least no less accurate
than some middle- or low-priced traditional home stereo sets.

but no mini systems

Some of those really sucked.

or seperates at all.

Arguably separates have been in their decline ever since integrated
amplifiers and then receivers became more popular.

Has the mass market for hifi stuff completely died?

The market for high fidelity audio has changed. It is now dominated by
portable and personal use equipment.

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.

There are many examples of that technology that sound great. You have to
spend a little money for them and be careful what you buy. IOW, nothing has
really changed except the format.

Some kit has
only tweeters for stereo seperation with a "sub"
producing the mid range.

Well, the speakers may be the size of tweeters, but it is possible that some
of them cover a lot more than just the treble.

Even the B&W zeppelin thing
sounded *very* poor to me.

I haven't had the opportunity to hear it.

It seems very strange to me given that development has
been driven by better quality in the past - ie moving
from LPs to CDs.

Many portable music players provide something that is effectively CD
quality, when they are playing files that are not lossy-compressed.


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.

15 years ago we knew that really good headphones at a given price point
would vastly outperform speakers at the same price. The only thing that has
changed is that we have more options for really good headphones and
earphones.

Doki wrote:

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.

That's been the case for some time. You want "proper" hi-fi then get
yourself to somewhere like Sevenoaks Hi-Fi. Or even Richer Sounds for
budget to mid-range stuff.

MP3 isn't inherently bad either when properly encoded. It seems to
achieve transparency somewhere between 192 and 224Kbit/sec bitrate - I
encode using LAME's VBR mode on the highest quality settings and the
bitrate averages at around 230.

My office playback system: Creative USB soundcard with SPDIF Arcam
Black Box 50 Technics SU-VX600 Celestion 1 connected with Chord
Company Cobra 2 interconnects and Audio Innovations Silver Micro speaker
cable. (And no I don't want to go into a cable discussion here.) The
speakers are kinda plonked on the desk so I've set up EQ in Winamp to
get rid of the midband peak this produces.

Bedroom system: Turtle Beach Audiotron Yamaha DSP-AX620 Gale
4/2i/Centre 2 speakers, Paradigm PS-1000 sub.

Main system: Turtle Beach Audiotron Arcam AVR250 Mordaunt-Short
908/905C/2x 903S, B&W ASW-1000, Chord Rumour 4 speaker cable (front),
generic 105-strand OFC for rears (looks identical to Gale XL105,
79p/metre at Richer, but comes on a 100m reel for about £20 from CPC).

So I'm not exactly playing MP3 music through crap kit! The other nice
thing with MP3 is that all CDs get ReplayGained after they've been
ripped, so no yanking the volume knob when I go from a 1980s recording
to a recent one.

I also did a little experiment a while back - I ripped and encoded a
track from a CD (no MP3gain applied) then burnt the uncompressed WAV and
the MP3 version back to a blank CD as audio tracks. I then tried an AB
comparison in various systems. The only one I could hear any difference
on was the Arcam/Mordaunt-Short setup in the front room, there appeared
to be a very slight loss of detail on the track burnt from the MP3
version. Although I wonder how much of this was psychological as I
"knew" that track 2 had been burnt from the MP3?

--
Squirrel Solutions Ltd Tel: (01453) 845735
http://www.squirrelsolutions.co.uk/ Fax: (01453) 843773

Registered in England: 05877408

Glenn Richards wrote:
Doki wrote:

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.

That's been the case for some time. You want "proper" hi-fi then get
yourself to somewhere like Sevenoaks Hi-Fi. Or even Richer Sounds for
budget to mid-range stuff.

MP3 isn't inherently bad either when properly encoded. It seems to
achieve transparency somewhere between 192 and 224Kbit/sec bitrate - I
encode using LAME's VBR mode on the highest quality settings and the
bitrate averages at around 230.

My office playback system: Creative USB soundcard with SPDIF Arcam
Black Box 50 Technics SU-VX600 Celestion 1 connected with Chord
Company Cobra 2 interconnects and Audio Innovations Silver Micro speaker
cable. (And no I don't want to go into a cable discussion here.) The
speakers are kinda plonked on the desk so I've set up EQ in Winamp to
get rid of the midband peak this produces.

Bedroom system: Turtle Beach Audiotron Yamaha DSP-AX620 Gale
4/2i/Centre 2 speakers, Paradigm PS-1000 sub.

Main system: Turtle Beach Audiotron Arcam AVR250 Mordaunt-Short
908/905C/2x 903S, B&W ASW-1000, Chord Rumour 4 speaker cable (front),
generic 105-strand OFC for rears (looks identical to Gale XL105,
79p/metre at Richer, but comes on a 100m reel for about £20 from CPC).

So I'm not exactly playing MP3 music through crap kit! The other nice
thing with MP3 is that all CDs get ReplayGained after they've been
ripped, so no yanking the volume knob when I go from a 1980s recording
to a recent one.

I also did a little experiment a while back - I ripped and encoded a
track from a CD (no MP3gain applied) then burnt the uncompressed WAV and
the MP3 version back to a blank CD as audio tracks. I then tried an AB
comparison in various systems. The only one I could hear any difference
on was the Arcam/Mordaunt-Short setup in the front room, there appeared
to be a very slight loss of detail on the track burnt from the MP3
version. Although I wonder how much of this was psychological as I
"knew" that track 2 had been burnt from the MP3?


I can quite often hear difference, but I can't do better/worse very
well. I've using a CDP's DAC for the last couple of months (from a Mac
Mini) and it's a sound I feel happy with - it seems smoother/more
detailed than either the Mini's own DAC or via an AV receiver's DAC.
Whether it's 'better' or not, couldn't say ;-)

BTW, couldn't you make your test reasonably blind by simply flipping
between the tracks a few times until you've lost track, ahem, of which
is which?

Also, I archive all CDs to a lossless format nowadays. Storage will get
cheaper, and/or compression/decompression methods will get better, I
would have thought. So, in years hence, I can be reasonably secure in
the knowledge I have the best quality available, all stored on a pen drive.

Also also, while I can reliably differentiate between 128kbps MP3 and
wav, I can happily listen to either. I'd choose the wav if/because I can
- not rational, I know.

Rob