The subwoofer has an interesting role in high-end audio.

I’ve been thinking about these beast ever since we started our new high-end audio subwoofers page in the Audiophile’s Guide to the Galaxy

It is both loathed and reviled and cheered and loved with abandon.

PRO

1. If your system is not flat to 20 Hz, then your system sucks. It is just for leettle boys.

[Of course, at 100 dB, a subwoofer flat to 20 Hz… oh, excuse me, it says 15 Hz on the spec sheet, would have to be registered as a weapon of mass destruction. It would be hard to walk across the floor of most homes but at least the mice would finally give up and go live somewhere else :-).]

2. Subwoofers are cool and should indeed be registered as WMD

3. It is too expensive to buy a full-range speaker that goes this low

CON

1. The crossover in your subwoofer is necessarily not as deft as that in your much-more-expensive speakers, and in any case it is different, so the overall sonic quality of your playback suffers.

2. Most real music does not go down to 20 Hz. In fact most modern music is heard through JBL-like speaker systems and the satisfying bass we hear on those systems is way above 20Hz.

3. Subwoofers take up space

 

Most people buy subs for home theater, pairing them with small speakers that only go down to 100Hz or so. They NEED to use subs to get any bass at all. I’ve heard Magnepan systems designed like this that were excellent – small Magnepan wall-hanging speakers and a REL sub.

Us? We’ll stick with full-range speakers that go down MOSTLY to 20… uh…. 25… uh … Hz. It works for us at this time.

Subs are just not a necessity for us.

However, having heard the Acapella ION Plasma tweeter again here for almost a year now – I think super tweeters might indeed be a necessity. 🙂

[Having a hard time convincing Neli of this… but there is just so much more Presence and Life when the high frequencies are fully fleshed out…  Then again there are the same pesky CONs #1 and #3]

In the end, it is this argument [and not the “You ain’t no manly man without a sub” argument :-)]:

How can it be “high fidelity” if your system can’t reproduce all of the frequencies?

I confess. We don’t use a subwoofer. And this question annoys me.

 

The High-end Audio Munich Show has been growing. Growing. GROWING.

 

From the Highendsociety June 2014 newsletter

452 exhibitors from 40 countries (+25%)
5.387 trade visitors from around the world (+3%)
• 17,855 visitors (+10%)

Compare with these charts below, and you can see that Munich is continuing on course to pop off the top of the charts.

[Charts from Lesnumeriques (a French site that apparently tracks statistics)]

 

 

Here at home, high-end audio shows are shrinking. Why?

CES High Performance Audio show attendance is about a third of what it once was

RMAF reached its peak a few years ago and is shrinking.

Newport, for all its upbeat energy, is [anecdotally] not growing anymore.

I don’t hear anything positive [to be kind] about any of the other shows [except that Capital Audiofest has been a good place to buy and sell things].

Why?

The security state makes it hard for foreign visitors to attend our shows anymore. Is this the problem?

Not if CES as a whole is still growing.

But is it?

According to Wikipedia: 2006 attendance was over 150,000 individuals in 1.67 million net square feet of space, making it the largest electronics event in the United States.

Yet in 2014 it has only grown to 160,000. Whereas Munich Show grew from 12,000 to 18,000.

 

So CES has grown 6.6% and the Munich high-end audio show about 50%.

The effect of the Great Depression on the shrinking Middle Class makes them too worried to care about audio. Is this the problem?

Note the tiny drop in Munich attendance in 2009, while CES was down 20% at 113,085 attendees. The Great Depression hardly affected Germany at all.

10% of American home owners lost their homes and 30% are way behind on their debt payments

 

[map from CNN ]

But this is just too depression. I mean depressing.

[infographic from the Wall Street Journal ]

 On a more upbeat note, has streaming music taken over here in the U.S. and we are ahead of the rest of the world in adopting this method of enjoying music? Is this the problem?

Based on this infographic, the future portends real problems, but right now, with the typical audiophile who is able to afford $10K+ systems probably being older than 24 years old, this is not a problem yet.

Are our shows just more boring? Hard to navigate? Do not have that synergy needed to make people excited about the show and tell their friends they should come too? Is this the problem?

Never considered this until now after watching Fremer’s video.

Certainly hiding High Performance Audio away at the top of the Venetian in elevators that are always hard to find [yes, and in a hotel that tries to trap you in the casino :-)] and always jammed and very slow – this can’t be a great thing to attract casual visitors.

Are hotels also just too boring? By isolating each system in its own room for sonic purposes, does this dampen any kind of enthusiasm for the spectacle of it all [the RMAF CANJAM, for instance, is not in a hotel room, and continues to grow and grow. Is this because of headphones or is this because of the synergy of seeing all the gear in one ‘place’?]

Crazy to argue for a Munich-like conference floor layout for high-end audio shows… but this might work to our industry’s advantage, if not so much for the show goer’s ears.

Anyway, choose your poison – something is wrong and between reversing the security state, fixing the economy, or holding shows on conference show floors – I think the latter is way more the easiest 🙂

 

 

 

This came to me at the gym.

First, someone, a couple actually, brought and played some classical music in the weight room.

[Our gym is under-going a $5M remodel as they convert a functional gym into a new-looking non-functional gym. This means our weight room has been on the basketball court for about 6 months now. They used to hold aerobics classes in the basketball court – which needed a sound system with a couple of Sansui? speakers. So, for awhile anyway, people who pump iron at our gym get their own sound system that plays loud CDs]

No one said anything about their classical music selection – but, although kind of interesting in a ‘whoa, this is weird’ sort of way, it just didn’t help to psych us up to Arnold-like intensity and focus. When they brought music again in subsequent weeks, it was, BTW, not classical.

The second incident occurred, again at the gym, when someone was blasting ‘uplifting’ heavy metal. I did not recognize the band, but whereas some heavy metal is angry, and most rap is angry, this was more of ‘you can do it’ with a beat and a lot of guitars.

This was great!

But then someone complained because he was doing Pilates in the same room [part of the stupid remodel again] and he said it was hard to relax with all this loud headbanging music. And apparently he went to the gym to relax after a hard day.

Do you see what happened?

Your favorite music is very dependent on what your mood or activity is at the time when you are doing your actual listening. 

When we are traveling to or through New Mexico, we both like to listen to a few hours of Mariachi music. It is great. But we only listen to it at these times.

When pumping iron, heavy metal or techo-rap is great to help psych oneself up before attempting to do something that most times would seem really, really stupid. I like this music, but it is not like think it is great – but at the gym I think it is the best music ever. [And way better than the top 40 crap they usually play, which is way better than the crap they play now with commercials]

When  doing Yoga, New Age, calming music is great to center oneself by. But it is not like we play a lot [though we do play some] of New Age at any other time.

People love Christmas music, but usually they love it most around Christmas.

Now, we all know that young men think everything goes just perfect with the testosterone-fueled music of the day [rock & roll, heavy metal, and now rap]. Weddings? Yep. Funerals? Yep. Studying? Yep.

Putting your new baby to sleep? Y… Nope. All of a sudden, you’re singing ‘Chim chiminey Chim chim cher-ee! ‘ and ‘When I wish upon a star’ and your baby is laughing and this is the Best Music Ever.

I think most people, who lead real lives, have lots of ‘favorite’ kinds of music. It depends on the setting. All music requires an appropriate setting – or, sorry, its going to suck. 

Most older people say they do not like Rap, but have you watched Jet Li in ‘Romeo Must Die’? One of my favorite movies of his – and it has a Rap music soundtrack. Works awesomely well. Similarly for Eminem ‘8 Mile’, one of my favorite movies of all genres.

All of you whose favorite music is Classical [or New Age, or Folk, or Opera, etc.], your favorite music would suck for these movies [and for the weight room]. And you know it. 🙂

[Don’t be bummed. This is really awesome. It means we all have lots more favorite kinds of music than we may of thought we had.]