Hedge Funds, Investor Groups buying high-end audio manufacturers? Why? As an investment [do they know something we do not?] or as a hobby [trying to relive their 2nd, or like me, their 19th childhoods?].

I believe ARC, Krell, and Sonus Faber are in this category.

Then a few weeks ago Focal bought [reading between the lines] Naim.

Can we blame these troubles on the ipod? I saw a stat that 16 billion songs have been bought on itunes. That is 16 billion dollars that could have bought a decent system or two – but probably would have gone into CDs a decade ago.

Cisco, of all companies, conducted a survey of our youth and they would rather hang out on the internet than go on a date and rather own a smart phone than a car. That old ‘pendulum’ has swung kind of far from where it was when I was young[er].

Who knows what the future brings, but right now the sector of the market that was setup to be attractive to college students probably isn’t doing very well.

On the other hand, our part of the market, the ultra, uber, stratospheric part of the market is doing OK [would do better if so many people weren’t ‘short’ America deliberately trash talking the economy for personal gain (most large corps are reporting a bettering economy, and even the real-estate market locally is picking up, albeit our home here is still unsold – hint, hint :-).].

As for high-end audio ‘for the rest of us’ [get it? This is Apple’s old slogan], something like a wireless system headed by an iPad with DAC and Amps in the speakers might be ‘cool’ to the next generation [now Neli tells me that something like this was also proposed on c|net earlier today], the generation who will not know what to do with a CD and more than they know what to do with an LP.

… and those hedge funds must be doing this as a hobby – or a write-off – or are looking at a awfully long time-frame which has that pendulum swing back…… back to where we are 🙂

Some music genres are more dependent on various kinds of musical fidelity more than they are other kinds. If one listens primarily to one, or just a few, genres one may be able to get away with a system that has less fidelity overall, and cost a lot less.

It is always true that the more fidelity the better, but these are tough times, and sometimes we gotta do what we gotta do. For example, two of the genres we talked about last time, Folk and Opera, to not need deep tight bass as much as most other genres.

This can be looked at from multiple angles. The post will take one approach. Please feel free to correct or augment.

< --- LESS important ---- MORE important --->

Folk
deep bass, tight bass, dynamics… resolution in the voice band, harmonic richness in the voice band

Reggae
high resolution, high frequencies… PRaT, harmonic richness in the voice band, dynamics and resolution in the percussive band,tight mid bass, deep very dynamic bass

New Age, Some Electronica
deep bass, dynamics, tight bass, …. harmonic richness, harmonic and frequency resolution

Rap
harmonic richness, harmonic and frequency resolution (just enough to make the snare drum listenable, or, conversely, roll off the frequencies in the snare drum region) … dynamics, deep tight bass.

Rock & Roll
[demands seem to be even across all audiophile attributes, however, uber fidelity in any attribute does not lend as much improvement as the uber fidelity would in several other genres – because the recording qualities are typically low]

Orchestra
Deep bass… [everything else is pretty important]

Choral
Deep bass, dynamics… harmonic and frequency resolution [love when the voices resolve into individual voices]

Organ Music
Frequency resolution… harmonic resolution, deep bass

Jazz Fusion
Deep bass, tight bass… dynamic, harmonic and frequency resolution [Jazz fusion can easily become a mish mash without enough resolution]

3 or 4-piece Jazz, Simple Pop
[everything] … harmonic resolution.

By harmonic resolution we mean tonal richness and accuracy – approaching the Real.
By frequency resolution we mean loudness accuracy
By dynamic resolution we mean that notes reach their loudness level in a realistic, true-to-life fashion.

The idea then is to say, well, I am on a budget and I mostly play New Age , so I do not *need* deep tight bass, so I can get smaller speakers, smaller amps, a high-resolution amp [as opposed to a beefy one], clear sounding cables and sources [as opposed to those that are designed to hide, smother atrocities in other parts of the system].

During much of recent history, there has been a organization or group that was kind of the standard bearer – which kind of influenced the immediate future of high-end audio: hardware, attitudes, evaluation techniques, etc.

I wonder if this is no longer true – that we as a culture, and especially we as a hobby, have been fractured so much that we are just composed of a lot of different groups, based on some [I would say fantasy] of shared interests – and I ponder if most or all of these are just cul-de-sacs, and lot of niche dead-ends.

In the past [and correct / assist me if need be] we had:

Stereo magazine – Measurements are king

Stereophile – Measurements are still king, but the king is wearing shorts

The Absolute Sound/HP – subjective listening is King

Audiogon – pluralism and shills are king

Audio Asylum – pluralism and nastiness are king

Audio Circle – Discounts, pluralism and disinformation shills are king

…

Lately though, I think none of these sites is any longer dominant. HP reviews and Stereophile reviews and Audiogon and Audio Circle pumps no longer sell that much product. They are no longer guiding the industry.

Perhaps that is because the economy and politics are so dominating the culture these days [the middle class is too poor to buy anything and the wealthy are buying things left and right when they are not scared out of their wits]. So we have lots of very expensive gear and lots of very cheap gear – not much in-between.

And, somehow, the social networks got people hearing lots and lots of opinions, often believing and valuing what a complete stranger tells them.

The only way I have seen out of this mess, this tower of Babble [but better than the old days of a single dominant player!] is to rate things based on many different aspects. Not sure if this would work for Yelp or other rating sites – but we got whole spectrums of lean < --- > warm, dynamic < --- > closed-in, accurate versus non-accurate, etc. etc. and many more which we have talked about and listed on this blog and website many times.

That way instead of ‘it sucks’ we can get ‘it is warm sounding’ and instead of ‘its the best’ we can get them to say ‘it has good dynamic bass’. This would result in the neutering the shills [and the rest of the hyperbole-generating hordes :-)] because, although their goals is to convince everyone that a products is the best for everyone on this and every other planet, all they can now say is, for example, is that it has ‘great dynamics’ – letting all the people who like a more laid back presentation know that this is not for them.

Anyway, our hobby/industry is getting swept up along with all the other more modern industries by what is happening outside the listening room. Sure is fun to watch 🙂