Another take on the state of quality media

[Ducatista47]

I was looking up the state of Telarc and found this. It is a brief, interesting analysis of the past, present and future of the audiophile music business, its technology and its market.

http://hometheaterreview.com/telarc-...s---firing-26/

Clark

[BMWCCA]

I get it and it's a sad commentary. I miss Windham Hill, too, though they were never as tech-savvy. At least the recordings were clean.

Thanks for the article link, even though they could use some good editing and a basic command of sentence structure, punctuation, and grammar. Some of those sentences were pure torture!

In the mean time, audiophiles are left sifting through bins of filthy, played out LPs in what remains of dingy record stores trying to convince themselves that some how the high signal to noise ratio and lack of dynamic sounds better than HD audio because the majors are just too stupid to repackage their music in an HD format that people could repurchase their entire back catalog of music in at least one more time.

[Hoerninger]

Michael Bishop, the engineer most associated with the forward thinking label, has left to start an upstart audiophile label called Five/Four Productions which will focus on audiophile endeavors

What will happen in the future? For the moment I do not find any interesting SACDs or DVD-As, preferably in multichannel, anymore.
BTW most of my SACDs are multichannel, I have quite a few of them.
____________
Peter

[jcrobso]

This a sad thing to lose Telarc, I have many of there records and CDs.

The Mp3 has become the music preferred format, and listened to by cheep ear buds. I noticed a trend of more people on the train using headphones, maybe there is hope after all. Yes I have a MP3 player, but I don't use this as my main music source at home. I'm amazed at the number of people that use the MP3 player for this function.

Growing up at the beginning of the Hi-Fi era I can remember going shopping with my dad for a Hi-Fi console. My dad had frequency response test record and used to help evaluate. He bought a console the had a 15" coaxial speaker and 35w of power. At the age of 4 I started listing to 331/3 Hi-Fi, I'm the one that made the switch to components. Over the years I been a big proponent of JBL and high quality sound.
I still buy CDs, guess I'm old fashion and I have gone through the record bins at resale shops.

[duaneage]

I don't see many people getting into 2 channel audio with serious equipment. MP3 players on cheap docking stations are everywhere. In homes I visit seldom do I see audio systems anymore. Even car audio is dead, people just live with the factory system.

But the sales of vintage gear on the internet gives hope that there is still a market for audio. But unless young people take up an interest in music appreciation and casual listening, it's slowly going to die out.

Convenience is trumping quality by a long measure. Maybe the solution is to accept the shortcomings of the new systems and try to reproduce the music as faithful as possible. Implying that you need to buy a 2000.00 CD player with tubes or a 3000.00 turntable to play audiophile records shuts down the debate for most people.

Speakers and amps will always have a market, tuners and tape decks not so much. HD radio, XM, and cable radio are a better source with limited commercials. Honestly I think the only thing keeping AM and FM around are car radios.

It's a hard sell to convince someone to fill their home with large speakers, huge amplifiers, and arrange the furniture around the stereo image. The TV offers a focal point and HT is the prime vehicle for audio into the home. But HGTV never shows a single speaker on their shows, they are just not fashionable enough.