The masses have a LOT to choose from now. But are they buying it up? Talk to college students these days. How many have, or even want, a stereo?

It is precisely this low end that is designed to appeal to the general public that is dying. Why? Because the general public is not interested in hifi. So making more products for them is a waste of money and effort.

As a guess I would say there are 20+ or so h-fi iPod stations available - from a couple $100 to a couple $1000. I do not see a lot of people getting rich off these.

[However, if Apple maed a stereo, then the younger generation would buy millions the first month and the audiophile industry would become rich off of the renewed interest in the hobby. Not saying that young people are lemmings when it comes to Apple, but… ]

Audiophiles are still interested in hifi and they still buy hifi. At all price levels. And from what I see for every one of us that dies we get a new young audiophile who really wants what he or she can’t yet afford [like the rest of us old timers - I’ll post Mike & Neli’s wish list sometime].

Anyway, that is how I am seeing things these days.

Definitely a lot of people see it like you do - especially some manufacturers and reviewers. But dealers typically do not - otherwise they would be carrying a lot of inexpensive gear. But they don’t. They can’t sell enough of it to have it make ROI sense. The ones that try it anyway go out of business [Circuit City for example. And yes, Amazon and Music Direct, etc. take some of the blame as well].

My 2 cents…

Take care,
Mike

Death of high end audio

which is only interesting, to me, as a view into what audiophiles are thinking about the future, or lack thereof, of their own hobby.

My speculations are based on the readily observable 1st and 2nd derivatives (we are not talking about 1 or 2% here) of the size of the market on the one hand and market penetration on the other.

I do indeed think high fidelity (hifi) is a Good Thing - but worship implies blind faith and fanatical anger at people who do not agree with one’s personal own interpretation of fidelity (or, more often, of some obscure nit only partially related to fidelity). One of the central points of this blog is to present the case that worshiping any aspect of hifi is Bad, and Listening is Good.

“… angry insects…” we thought this was hilarious! How true!

Is there any investigation behind your speculation on trends across the rest of the planet?

Worshiping hifi isn’t the point of hifi everywhere or for everyone. Oddly, sales of at least some high end gear turns out to be based on appreciation of music and that gear sells well in the places where people are nuts about music.

Lastly, the fact that much of high end audio sounds like angry insects at war with malfunctioning industrial machinery can’t be helping sales . . . .