8 ms·

The home audio market has moved on, leaving this consolidation in its wake. There is something wonderful about listening to physical music recordings without u

The home audio market has moved on, leaving this consolidation in its wake. There is something wonderful about listening to physical music recordings without using a screen. It's like cursive writing, or knowing how to drive a stick-shift. But barring a Carrington event, or some moderate-to-severe internet catastrophe, its hard to motivate the utility of this kind of "middle path asceticism". "Shed no tears," the futurists say, since not too long ago most if not all "educated people" knew Greek and Latin, how to use a slide-rule, and how to saddle and ride a horse, and we don't particularly miss those things. I would argue caution, not least of which because this argument is too closely aligned with the market forces that know it's far more profitable to charge you per action than per object. It's always hard to know if we lost something important, or shucked off a barnacle holding us back, until we're looking back. I believe there is a sweet spot between the endless toil of "no technology" and the profound ignorance (and helplessness) that comes from putting everything behind a screen. I suspect that the hi-fi gear between the 1970's and 2010 will continue to be collectible for this reason for at least 100 years.

deadbabe 1y ago
It is more romantic to put on a vinyl record than to play digital music. The physicality of it is a ritual that leads us back into a more physical world, where the things that exist are what you can touch and feel, and every action and reaction comes naturally as a result of raw physical contact, with nothing in between.
- Farbklex 1y ago
  Yes, ritual is the right word. I used to do it quite a lot during COVID with cassettes and CDs while working. Helped me to more consciously get into work mode.
- Wowfunhappy 1y ago
  ...okay, but like, couldn't we choose a medium that doesn't physically wear out from repeated playback? CDs just seem so much better. Yes it's technically digital, but can you tell?
  - bradly 1y ago
    One nice thing about buying vinyl these days is that they almost all come with a DRM free digital download of the album as well. Buying physical records is what has caused my digital music collection to grow the most since my Hotline 1.2.3 days.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - bluedino 1y ago
    You can't scratch an mp3, ruining your copy.
    - Wowfunhappy 1y ago
      Hard to play without a screen though!
      - vel0city 1y ago
        I've had several MP3 players with more screen than any hifi CD player. Track number, maybe folder number, current time.
      - redwall_hp 1y ago
        The iPod Shuffle managed it.
        Wowfunhappy 1y ago
        Oops, yes! I should have said "hard to use" instead of "hard to play." With an iPod Shuffle, you needed a screen to load new music. The process of managing your collection happens on screen.
    - 10729287 1y ago
      It can bitrot tho.
      - 1y ago
- Scene_Cast2 1y ago
  I'll copy-paste a comment I saw on Nikon Rumors (not sure whether it's copypasta or not) --- I drove my electric BMW the other day, blasting a simulated V8 noise from speakers. It was a cold grey murky day but no rain. I stopped by the gas station to fuel my stomach by a bag of chips and the Snickers bar, because I went without eating a breakfast that morning. I saw a lonely dog by the roadside. It looked sad. I took my digital retro-styled camera with film simulation function out of my retro Billingham bag and took a photo. A little speaker in the camera has simulated the film advance noise just like in the past. Doggo looked at me with its sad eyes and went away. I took a glimpse of a photo of a dog and pressed "film grain +2" in the menu. Lovely shot. I'll post it to the Insta, probably. Then I entered the store, bought my bag of chips and the Snickers bar and saw a vinyl record corner. Man, I love vinyl. Those digital files pressed onto tangible, tactile surface. An AI-generated woman looked at me from the record artwork. Fonts were crooked. The price was $8.99 with a discount. I knew it's a pop record right away. Though, I'd love to blast an IDM track from speakers in my electric BMW alongside with simulated V8 noise, a pop record with vocoder vocals and autotune is also good. I took a record to place the vinyl on the bookshelf in my room. I know I'll be listening to the music via Spotify anyway. Man, I love vinyl. Just like film photography, it reminds me I'm alive. I'm real.
  - deadbabe 1y ago
    That piece is more about inauthenticity of faux replicas rather than true anachronisms. It would be a different message if he was driving a true V8 and using an actual film camera.
    - simpaticoder 1y ago
      Indeed. What the GP is talking about would be a record player that requires vinyl, but plays only enough of the vinyl to do a Shazam-style identification and then stream the remainder, adding vinyl-sounding noise with a DSP. (Alternatively, the stylus is entirely fake and contains a camera that identifies the album by label, and is moved toward the center using a stepper motor.) I really hope no-one ever makes such a monstrosity.
- steveBK123 1y ago
  I've gotten into vinyl in my 40s after never having owned it before. I came of age in the cassette and CD transition era and was quickly on to MP3s in my teens. I enjoy the Vinyl & CD vibe of being fully offline. And it's also interesting how much stuff from 90s/00s era, particularly electronic music and the various remixes never made it on to streaming platforms. I assume some of it is just complexity of licensing some niche pressing of Artist C remixing a song by Artists A&B, etc. Sometimes I see some of the 2-3 CD live albums make it onto a streaming platform with like 1/3 of the songs greyed out missing due to licensing.
- thewebguyd 1y ago
  To add, as a vinyl enjoyer, it's also that putting on a record is a deliberate action. I'm putting it on with the intent to listen and enjoy it vs. most often when I open up Apple Music it's just background noise while I'm working on other things, where I just hit shuffle on my 10k song+ library. When I put on a record it's because I want to sit with it and listen to that specific album. Plus there's the aspect of actually owning your media and not simply leasing it with a monthly subscription.
  - SoftTalker 1y ago
    Many (or at least some) vinyl record albums were also not just a collection of 10 tracks but were crafted to be a complete experience. You listened to the album not just one song. With streaming being the predominant way music is consumed now, people mostly just listen to one song by one artist before bouncing to something randomly selected to be next in their playlist.
ttoinou 1y ago
"asceticism" with a lot of stuff to buy though I always wondered if we could replicate the physicality of vinyl / CDs, games ROM etc. through memory cards (like SD Cards) in an enclosure with a label on it with a player made on purpose for them. This way we get physical media, easy to create yourself, not too expensive, in a digital way
- jsheard 1y ago
  https://kazeta.org https://kazeta.org is doing something along those lines for games.
- walthamstow 1y ago
  The Yota player for kids is basically this
- t_mann 1y ago
  We do have stuff like that, here's an example for kids: https://tonies.com https://tonies.com They seem quite well made, if not exactly cheap. I believe there's also a way to store your own mp3's, but I don't know how open the interface really is. Ofc you can also make sth like this from scratch.
  - locusofself 1y ago
    My daughter wakes us up every morning smacking her tonie box (that's how you skip songs). The figurines don't actually contain the music, they just have an NFC chip in them. The Tonie Box is connected to wifi and downloads the content. The child doesn't really know any better though, it still gives them the physical experience without a screen.
    - t_mann 1y ago
      Ah ok, sounds like a smarter way to do it. How hackable would you say is it, eg to register your own NFC chips? It seems like a nice platform.
      - 1y ago
ghaff 1y ago
After a kitchen fire, with a house cleanout, I was actually somewhat disappointed to get back my stereo rather than having it paid for by insurance. I'll hook up my receiver, DVD/stereo, and a couple of fairly large speakers, but I probably won't use much and certainly wouldn't have bought again.
zwnow 1y ago
I worked in this industry for years. Its actually sad what people consider "good" audio nowadays.
- baq 1y ago
  Kids these days literally have no idea how things can sound, so content is mastered for them and their el cheapo Bluetooth inears, so proper equipment (not necessarily expensive and most definitely not audiophile-tier, mind you, just something that acknowledges physics) owners get scraps and leftovers.
  - zwnow 1y ago
    Yea I used to listen with Focal speakers for a while. Dali is also pretty good. In the shop I used to work at we would have vinyl play a lot, real vinyl, not the plastic that is mostly fabricated nowadays. But considering to what kinda music some people listen (autotune rap) quality doesn't matter I guess. Its mostly about vibes now.
  - wolrah 1y ago
    It's not just "kids these days", look at the popularity of sound bars as well. Sure, they're better than what comes built in to a modern TV but as you note physics is still physics and small speakers will never sound as good as large ones. Hell, we can even chase that one back further, remember how much money Bose spent in the '90s convincing people that tiny speakers plus magic can somehow sound comparable to a proper stereo or home theater system? They were absolutely full of shit, but a ton of people believed every word of it.
    - qlm 1y ago
      While I don't disagree, I find that small speakers are dramatically better today than they were even 15 years ago.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
Arubis 1y ago
> it's far more profitable to charge you per action than per object. This is a really insightful and concise descriptor.
heresie-dabord 1y ago
> The home audio market has moved on The audio business has merged with the "home theatre" business. The pursuit of audiophile quality was always a boutique/niche market. > listening to physical music recordings without using a screen You don't need a screen to listen to good audio reproduction. FLAC does of course need a digital device and storage. But there are huge advantages to FLAC over "physical music recordings". You can store FLAC on a USB key and plug it into a modern amplifier to listen. If you must have a spinning wheel (get it?) you can burn FLAC to an optical disc and play that in a player without much "screen". But even optical discs are artifacts of the past. > It's like cursive writing, or knowing how to drive a stick-shift. Handwriting is much more profound for personal development and education. The US Constitution, for example, is a hand-written document. For transportation and tools, technology and innovation will change how people live. Those who remember the past recall how folks lived with trolley buses, ice-boxes, adjusting "rabbit ears", and dialing rotary telephones. Fortunately we can all watch old films in our home theatres. (^;
- majormajor 1y ago
  > The audio business has merged with the "home theatre" business. The pursuit of audiophile quality was always a boutique/niche market. That's not really what they meant - most people do not have "home theaters" they have a soundbar or a couple of bluetooth speakers.
  - crazygringo 1y ago
    Although on the other hand, if you listen with AirPods Pro streaming 5.1, you get a better surround sound and audio experience than 99.9% of speaker setups. For just a couple hundred bucks. Even beyond the audio quality and spatial processing, the noise reduction is magic that speakers can't do. It's amazing how much more detail you can hear when the sound of the HVAC is removed, the hum of the refrigerator, the rumble of traffic. Not to mention the total elimination of sonic reflections off your walls and ceiling that muddy the sound from speakers, unless you're applying treatments.
    - 1y ago
foobarian 1y ago
My pet theory is that stupidly powerful rare-earth magnets, and class D amplifiers are the two main things that killed "hifi" type audio. No more black magic needed messing with transistors and op-amps on bespoke circuit boards that used to be the moat for these oldschool brands. My Alexa Echo Dot 4 sounds better than my home audio setup from the 90s. Now, a fair comparison would be to a modern floor speaker with modern magnets and amps, but I'm too old for this :-)
- majormajor 1y ago
  Speaker box design advanced dramatically since the 90s too. The start of it was then - Bose made a lot of noise with compact-for-the-time stuff - but it's really advanced since then. Compare the sound quality of a laptop then with a larger MacBook now. And when you can get decent sound at decent volume out of a small package a lot of people don't want to give up a ton of space for extremely-good sound at high volume.
- ycui1986 1y ago
  The opamp back in the days were pretty terrible. NE5532 was the king of audio opamp for decades until the early 2000s. Modern Class D are built on advanced semiconductor processes (they are considered legacy node in the eye of Hacker News's primary audience. They are at least a lot better than the early days in terms of performance in analog domain.) When an IC company spend a lot of R&D money to develop Class D amp, they for sure exhausted what they can do before they tape out. That results in the superbe performance of modern Class D amplifier. There is still oppertunities in getting analog Class AB type of amplifier working better, such as adding motional feedback control sensor-less or with sensor. KEF recently released a motional feedback soundbar with back-EMF voltage as sensor. It sure improve the sound quality for a soundbar. Although physics is physics, one cannot make a 1 inch speaker sounds like a subwoofer, but motional feedback sure can make 10 speakder sounds like a 15 inch subwoofer. Sound reproduction is not just a flat frequency response. Perfect reproduction of phase information generates wider 3D sound stage, without the need of DSP to fake it.
- schrijver 1y ago
  > My Alexa Echo Dot 4 sounds better than my home audio setup from the 90s I have a hard time believing this… yes today’s small devices sound better than small devices ever did. A lot of work went into that because people appreciate the reduced footprint. Also, those speakers are super cheap in comparison to the budget people would allocate to their stereo setups in the day. But I’ve never heard a small speaker sound better than a 1970ies or later hifi amp + speakers from a decent brand. With big speakers you can reproduce all these frequencies without physics tricks. The sound is more laid back and the soundstage fills the room. All the recent engineering has gone into making speakers small, cheap and wireless, like in the 90ies it went into creating multi-channel audio, but I would say stereo sound quality, as used for popular music, already peaked in the 70ies / 80ies. Of course you can still get those quality hifi components today, or even better than that, but the median household is not listening on that and I’d wager has worse sound today than was the norm in the physical media era.
iancmceachern 1y ago
I agree, it already is. There are whole YouTube channels already, people collecting "old" hifi gear, collecting and listening to taoes and cds, etc. It's a whole subculture already, I think it'll grow. I think there will be niche brands that bring some of these things back.
MangoToupe 1y ago
> There is something wonderful about listening to physical music recordings without using a screen. Don't you listen with your ears? Or am I just misunderstanding what you're talking about. Edit: ah yes, vinyl is quite romantic. Maintaining the equipment and records and moving them is less so.
- skydhash 1y ago
  It's a less embodied experience. I prefer a knob than pressing a button for volume. And sliding on a piece of glass is a soulless UX.
  - MangoToupe 1y ago
    I agree completely. Of course, you can still use your sound systems with digital music. Fwiw I have a few hundred vinyl myself. I'll admit that I haven't unpacked them since my last move, though.
ikari_pl 1y ago
> barring a [...] moderate-to-severe internet catastrophe, its hard to motivate the utility of this kind of "middle path asceticism" Like a music producer contract ending with a streaming service? This is all it takes for you to lose "your" music today.
Der_Einzige 1y ago
Ya but the great things we lost to time were often computer tech. Vector display tech is dead despite being objectively amazing, for example. Central vacuums are also uncommon compared to the 70s and they were and still are better than what most Americans use today. Hi-fi isn’t like this because huge amounts of it is literally placebo. Sorry but your gold plated cables do not in fact improve your sound quality.
mrandish 1y ago
> There is something wonderful about listening to physical music recordings without using a screen. It's like cursive writing, or knowing how to drive a stick-shift. I'm old enough to have bought a lot of vinyl records, cassette tapes, VHS tapes, Laserdiscs, etc back when they were the mainstream consumer formats and there were no better alternatives, so I get what you're saying. However, it feels like you're conflating three different concepts here. 1. The abstract idea (or perhaps 'ideal') of using vintage technologies being an expressive act which demonstrates something about you and your values to yourself and/or others. 2. The internal physical sensory pleasure one might subjectively feel from performing a manual action, separate from the purpose or utility of that action - such as cursive writing, calligraphy, shaping a wet clay pot, etc. 3. The net utility and objective technical fidelity of an action like "playing recorded media". To me, these are all significantly different things and blurring them together niggles at my pedantic, engineering brain. If you're talking about #2 (internal subjective pleasure you physically feel from 'doing it'), that's great! I'm happy for you - but it's purely a "You" thing which may or may not be experienced by others. As for #1 (expressive act demonstrating your values), your values and whatever emotions performing that act evokes inside you are purely subjective. One person's 'sacred temple' may be another person's 'old building'. But #3 has elements which can be objectively evaluated on various dimensions. When we're talking about "playing recorded media", vinyl is objectively worse at recreating the full bandwidth present on the original studio master (probably an analog 2-inch master tape back in the day) - and I promise you I'm NOT being biased toward 'new' or 'digital'. Not all new technologies are necessarily better in all respects and not all digital processes are better than analog. For example, I posted here last week pointing out that there are still a few very specific technical parameters in which esoteric, ultra-high performance, high-definition analog CRTs costing >$20,000 (which most people have never seen in person) can outperform today's best reference-grade (>$10,000) flat screens (of course, outside those very rare, highly specific traits - most mediocre flat screens are objectively better than even a good consumer CRT TV). My point being that with #3, we can have an interesting and potentially useful exchange about traits which can be objectively assessed. We may not always agree about the relative utility or value of various traits, but at least we're talking about traits which can be mutually measured and understood - so we know we're disagreeing about the same objective thing. Whereas with #1 and #2, other people may not share your exact values or the sense of sacredness they evoke in you. And, sadly, I cannot share the internal pleasure Yoyo Ma experiences in the act of playing the cello. Of course, I DO have my own flavors of 'meaningful rituals' which evoke ineffable feelings and sensations in me - but I've always understood they only exist in my own mind, not the external environment.
Workaccount2 1y ago
I don't think there is any special development other than the cheap comodification of hardware. Hardware has been largely solved in our everyday domains, and it's not where the money is anymore, or has been for years. Stuff that is "good enough for anyone" is cheap, made in China, and readily available from a manufacturer skimming by on a 5% margin.
olelele 1y ago
I have a complete setup from the 70s. NAD 3045 with new acoustic design on the panel, technics record player and Braun speakers. Sound super super good. The increase in soundquality since that tech is marginal at best. The biggest improvement regarding class-D amps is power consumption and weight.
- globnomulous 1y ago
  > The increase in soundquality since that tech is marginal at best. I'm glad you enjoy your system, but, having upgraded from a very, very good 70s system to a pretty excellent system using contemporary parts, I can assure you that both objectively and subjectively your system from the 70s is inferior, and the difference isn't marginal. It's massive.

deadbabe 1y ago

It is more romantic to put on a vinyl record than to play digital music. The physicality of it is a ritual that leads us back into a more physical world, where the things that exist are what you can touch and feel, and every action and reaction comes naturally as a result of raw physical contact, with nothing in between.

Farbklex 1y ago
Yes, ritual is the right word. I used to do it quite a lot during COVID with cassettes and CDs while working. Helped me to more consciously get into work mode.
Wowfunhappy 1y ago
...okay, but like, couldn't we choose a medium that doesn't physically wear out from repeated playback? CDs just seem so much better. Yes it's technically digital, but can you tell?
- bradly 1y ago
  One nice thing about buying vinyl these days is that they almost all come with a DRM free digital download of the album as well. Buying physical records is what has caused my digital music collection to grow the most since my Hotline 1.2.3 days.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- bluedino 1y ago
  You can't scratch an mp3, ruining your copy.
  - Wowfunhappy 1y ago
    Hard to play without a screen though!
    - vel0city 1y ago
      I've had several MP3 players with more screen than any hifi CD player. Track number, maybe folder number, current time.
    - redwall_hp 1y ago
      The iPod Shuffle managed it.
      - Wowfunhappy 1y ago
        Oops, yes! I should have said "hard to use" instead of "hard to play." With an iPod Shuffle, you needed a screen to load new music. The process of managing your collection happens on screen.
  - 10729287 1y ago
    It can bitrot tho.
    - 1y ago
Scene_Cast2 1y ago
I'll copy-paste a comment I saw on Nikon Rumors (not sure whether it's copypasta or not) --- I drove my electric BMW the other day, blasting a simulated V8 noise from speakers. It was a cold grey murky day but no rain. I stopped by the gas station to fuel my stomach by a bag of chips and the Snickers bar, because I went without eating a breakfast that morning. I saw a lonely dog by the roadside. It looked sad. I took my digital retro-styled camera with film simulation function out of my retro Billingham bag and took a photo. A little speaker in the camera has simulated the film advance noise just like in the past. Doggo looked at me with its sad eyes and went away. I took a glimpse of a photo of a dog and pressed "film grain +2" in the menu. Lovely shot. I'll post it to the Insta, probably. Then I entered the store, bought my bag of chips and the Snickers bar and saw a vinyl record corner. Man, I love vinyl. Those digital files pressed onto tangible, tactile surface. An AI-generated woman looked at me from the record artwork. Fonts were crooked. The price was $8.99 with a discount. I knew it's a pop record right away. Though, I'd love to blast an IDM track from speakers in my electric BMW alongside with simulated V8 noise, a pop record with vocoder vocals and autotune is also good. I took a record to place the vinyl on the bookshelf in my room. I know I'll be listening to the music via Spotify anyway. Man, I love vinyl. Just like film photography, it reminds me I'm alive. I'm real.
- deadbabe 1y ago
  That piece is more about inauthenticity of faux replicas rather than true anachronisms. It would be a different message if he was driving a true V8 and using an actual film camera.
  - simpaticoder 1y ago
    Indeed. What the GP is talking about would be a record player that requires vinyl, but plays only enough of the vinyl to do a Shazam-style identification and then stream the remainder, adding vinyl-sounding noise with a DSP. (Alternatively, the stylus is entirely fake and contains a camera that identifies the album by label, and is moved toward the center using a stepper motor.) I really hope no-one ever makes such a monstrosity.
steveBK123 1y ago
I've gotten into vinyl in my 40s after never having owned it before. I came of age in the cassette and CD transition era and was quickly on to MP3s in my teens. I enjoy the Vinyl & CD vibe of being fully offline. And it's also interesting how much stuff from 90s/00s era, particularly electronic music and the various remixes never made it on to streaming platforms. I assume some of it is just complexity of licensing some niche pressing of Artist C remixing a song by Artists A&B, etc. Sometimes I see some of the 2-3 CD live albums make it onto a streaming platform with like 1/3 of the songs greyed out missing due to licensing.
thewebguyd 1y ago
To add, as a vinyl enjoyer, it's also that putting on a record is a deliberate action. I'm putting it on with the intent to listen and enjoy it vs. most often when I open up Apple Music it's just background noise while I'm working on other things, where I just hit shuffle on my 10k song+ library. When I put on a record it's because I want to sit with it and listen to that specific album. Plus there's the aspect of actually owning your media and not simply leasing it with a monthly subscription.
- SoftTalker 1y ago
  Many (or at least some) vinyl record albums were also not just a collection of 10 tracks but were crafted to be a complete experience. You listened to the album not just one song. With streaming being the predominant way music is consumed now, people mostly just listen to one song by one artist before bouncing to something randomly selected to be next in their playlist.

ttoinou 1y ago

"asceticism" with a lot of stuff to buy though I always wondered if we could replicate the physicality of vinyl / CDs, games ROM etc. through memory cards (like SD Cards) in an enclosure with a label on it with a player made on purpose for them. This way we get physical media, easy to create yourself, not too expensive, in a digital way

jsheard 1y ago
https://kazeta.org https://kazeta.org is doing something along those lines for games.
walthamstow 1y ago
The Yota player for kids is basically this
t_mann 1y ago
We do have stuff like that, here's an example for kids: https://tonies.com https://tonies.com They seem quite well made, if not exactly cheap. I believe there's also a way to store your own mp3's, but I don't know how open the interface really is. Ofc you can also make sth like this from scratch.
- locusofself 1y ago
  My daughter wakes us up every morning smacking her tonie box (that's how you skip songs). The figurines don't actually contain the music, they just have an NFC chip in them. The Tonie Box is connected to wifi and downloads the content. The child doesn't really know any better though, it still gives them the physical experience without a screen.
  - t_mann 1y ago
    Ah ok, sounds like a smarter way to do it. How hackable would you say is it, eg to register your own NFC chips? It seems like a nice platform.
    - 1y ago

ghaff 1y ago

After a kitchen fire, with a house cleanout, I was actually somewhat disappointed to get back my stereo rather than having it paid for by insurance. I'll hook up my receiver, DVD/stereo, and a couple of fairly large speakers, but I probably won't use much and certainly wouldn't have bought again.

zwnow 1y ago

I worked in this industry for years. Its actually sad what people consider "good" audio nowadays.

baq 1y ago
Kids these days literally have no idea how things can sound, so content is mastered for them and their el cheapo Bluetooth inears, so proper equipment (not necessarily expensive and most definitely not audiophile-tier, mind you, just something that acknowledges physics) owners get scraps and leftovers.
- zwnow 1y ago
  Yea I used to listen with Focal speakers for a while. Dali is also pretty good. In the shop I used to work at we would have vinyl play a lot, real vinyl, not the plastic that is mostly fabricated nowadays. But considering to what kinda music some people listen (autotune rap) quality doesn't matter I guess. Its mostly about vibes now.
- wolrah 1y ago
  It's not just "kids these days", look at the popularity of sound bars as well. Sure, they're better than what comes built in to a modern TV but as you note physics is still physics and small speakers will never sound as good as large ones. Hell, we can even chase that one back further, remember how much money Bose spent in the '90s convincing people that tiny speakers plus magic can somehow sound comparable to a proper stereo or home theater system? They were absolutely full of shit, but a ton of people believed every word of it.
  - qlm 1y ago
    While I don't disagree, I find that small speakers are dramatically better today than they were even 15 years ago.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]

Arubis 1y ago

> it's far more profitable to charge you per action than per object. This is a really insightful and concise descriptor.

heresie-dabord 1y ago

> The home audio market has moved on The audio business has merged with the "home theatre" business. The pursuit of audiophile quality was always a boutique/niche market. > listening to physical music recordings without using a screen You don't need a screen to listen to good audio reproduction. FLAC does of course need a digital device and storage. But there are huge advantages to FLAC over "physical music recordings". You can store FLAC on a USB key and plug it into a modern amplifier to listen. If you must have a spinning wheel (get it?) you can burn FLAC to an optical disc and play that in a player without much "screen". But even optical discs are artifacts of the past. > It's like cursive writing, or knowing how to drive a stick-shift. Handwriting is much more profound for personal development and education. The US Constitution, for example, is a hand-written document. For transportation and tools, technology and innovation will change how people live. Those who remember the past recall how folks lived with trolley buses, ice-boxes, adjusting "rabbit ears", and dialing rotary telephones. Fortunately we can all watch old films in our home theatres. (^;

majormajor 1y ago
> The audio business has merged with the "home theatre" business. The pursuit of audiophile quality was always a boutique/niche market. That's not really what they meant - most people do not have "home theaters" they have a soundbar or a couple of bluetooth speakers.
- crazygringo 1y ago
  Although on the other hand, if you listen with AirPods Pro streaming 5.1, you get a better surround sound and audio experience than 99.9% of speaker setups. For just a couple hundred bucks. Even beyond the audio quality and spatial processing, the noise reduction is magic that speakers can't do. It's amazing how much more detail you can hear when the sound of the HVAC is removed, the hum of the refrigerator, the rumble of traffic. Not to mention the total elimination of sonic reflections off your walls and ceiling that muddy the sound from speakers, unless you're applying treatments.
  - 1y ago

foobarian 1y ago

My pet theory is that stupidly powerful rare-earth magnets, and class D amplifiers are the two main things that killed "hifi" type audio. No more black magic needed messing with transistors and op-amps on bespoke circuit boards that used to be the moat for these oldschool brands. My Alexa Echo Dot 4 sounds better than my home audio setup from the 90s. Now, a fair comparison would be to a modern floor speaker with modern magnets and amps, but I'm too old for this :-)

majormajor 1y ago
Speaker box design advanced dramatically since the 90s too. The start of it was then - Bose made a lot of noise with compact-for-the-time stuff - but it's really advanced since then. Compare the sound quality of a laptop then with a larger MacBook now. And when you can get decent sound at decent volume out of a small package a lot of people don't want to give up a ton of space for extremely-good sound at high volume.
ycui1986 1y ago
The opamp back in the days were pretty terrible. NE5532 was the king of audio opamp for decades until the early 2000s. Modern Class D are built on advanced semiconductor processes (they are considered legacy node in the eye of Hacker News's primary audience. They are at least a lot better than the early days in terms of performance in analog domain.) When an IC company spend a lot of R&D money to develop Class D amp, they for sure exhausted what they can do before they tape out. That results in the superbe performance of modern Class D amplifier. There is still oppertunities in getting analog Class AB type of amplifier working better, such as adding motional feedback control sensor-less or with sensor. KEF recently released a motional feedback soundbar with back-EMF voltage as sensor. It sure improve the sound quality for a soundbar. Although physics is physics, one cannot make a 1 inch speaker sounds like a subwoofer, but motional feedback sure can make 10 speakder sounds like a 15 inch subwoofer. Sound reproduction is not just a flat frequency response. Perfect reproduction of phase information generates wider 3D sound stage, without the need of DSP to fake it.
schrijver 1y ago
> My Alexa Echo Dot 4 sounds better than my home audio setup from the 90s I have a hard time believing this… yes today’s small devices sound better than small devices ever did. A lot of work went into that because people appreciate the reduced footprint. Also, those speakers are super cheap in comparison to the budget people would allocate to their stereo setups in the day. But I’ve never heard a small speaker sound better than a 1970ies or later hifi amp + speakers from a decent brand. With big speakers you can reproduce all these frequencies without physics tricks. The sound is more laid back and the soundstage fills the room. All the recent engineering has gone into making speakers small, cheap and wireless, like in the 90ies it went into creating multi-channel audio, but I would say stereo sound quality, as used for popular music, already peaked in the 70ies / 80ies. Of course you can still get those quality hifi components today, or even better than that, but the median household is not listening on that and I’d wager has worse sound today than was the norm in the physical media era.

iancmceachern 1y ago

I agree, it already is. There are whole YouTube channels already, people collecting "old" hifi gear, collecting and listening to taoes and cds, etc. It's a whole subculture already, I think it'll grow. I think there will be niche brands that bring some of these things back.

MangoToupe 1y ago

> There is something wonderful about listening to physical music recordings without using a screen. Don't you listen with your ears? Or am I just misunderstanding what you're talking about. Edit: ah yes, vinyl is quite romantic. Maintaining the equipment and records and moving them is less so.

skydhash 1y ago
It's a less embodied experience. I prefer a knob than pressing a button for volume. And sliding on a piece of glass is a soulless UX.
- MangoToupe 1y ago
  I agree completely. Of course, you can still use your sound systems with digital music. Fwiw I have a few hundred vinyl myself. I'll admit that I haven't unpacked them since my last move, though.

ikari_pl 1y ago

> barring a [...] moderate-to-severe internet catastrophe, its hard to motivate the utility of this kind of "middle path asceticism" Like a music producer contract ending with a streaming service? This is all it takes for you to lose "your" music today.

Der_Einzige 1y ago

Ya but the great things we lost to time were often computer tech. Vector display tech is dead despite being objectively amazing, for example. Central vacuums are also uncommon compared to the 70s and they were and still are better than what most Americans use today. Hi-fi isn’t like this because huge amounts of it is literally placebo. Sorry but your gold plated cables do not in fact improve your sound quality.

mrandish 1y ago

> There is something wonderful about listening to physical music recordings without using a screen. It's like cursive writing, or knowing how to drive a stick-shift. I'm old enough to have bought a lot of vinyl records, cassette tapes, VHS tapes, Laserdiscs, etc back when they were the mainstream consumer formats and there were no better alternatives, so I get what you're saying. However, it feels like you're conflating three different concepts here. 1. The abstract idea (or perhaps 'ideal') of using vintage technologies being an expressive act which demonstrates something about you and your values to yourself and/or others. 2. The internal physical sensory pleasure one might subjectively feel from performing a manual action, separate from the purpose or utility of that action - such as cursive writing, calligraphy, shaping a wet clay pot, etc. 3. The net utility and objective technical fidelity of an action like "playing recorded media". To me, these are all significantly different things and blurring them together niggles at my pedantic, engineering brain. If you're talking about #2 (internal subjective pleasure you physically feel from 'doing it'), that's great! I'm happy for you - but it's purely a "You" thing which may or may not be experienced by others. As for #1 (expressive act demonstrating your values), your values and whatever emotions performing that act evokes inside you are purely subjective. One person's 'sacred temple' may be another person's 'old building'. But #3 has elements which can be objectively evaluated on various dimensions. When we're talking about "playing recorded media", vinyl is objectively worse at recreating the full bandwidth present on the original studio master (probably an analog 2-inch master tape back in the day) - and I promise you I'm NOT being biased toward 'new' or 'digital'. Not all new technologies are necessarily better in all respects and not all digital processes are better than analog. For example, I posted here last week pointing out that there are still a few very specific technical parameters in which esoteric, ultra-high performance, high-definition analog CRTs costing >$20,000 (which most people have never seen in person) can outperform today's best reference-grade (>$10,000) flat screens (of course, outside those very rare, highly specific traits - most mediocre flat screens are objectively better than even a good consumer CRT TV). My point being that with #3, we can have an interesting and potentially useful exchange about traits which can be objectively assessed. We may not always agree about the relative utility or value of various traits, but at least we're talking about traits which can be mutually measured and understood - so we know we're disagreeing about the same objective thing. Whereas with #1 and #2, other people may not share your exact values or the sense of sacredness they evoke in you. And, sadly, I cannot share the internal pleasure Yoyo Ma experiences in the act of playing the cello. Of course, I DO have my own flavors of 'meaningful rituals' which evoke ineffable feelings and sensations in me - but I've always understood they only exist in my own mind, not the external environment.

Workaccount2 1y ago

I don't think there is any special development other than the cheap comodification of hardware. Hardware has been largely solved in our everyday domains, and it's not where the money is anymore, or has been for years. Stuff that is "good enough for anyone" is cheap, made in China, and readily available from a manufacturer skimming by on a 5% margin.

olelele 1y ago

I have a complete setup from the 70s. NAD 3045 with new acoustic design on the panel, technics record player and Braun speakers. Sound super super good. The increase in soundquality since that tech is marginal at best. The biggest improvement regarding class-D amps is power consumption and weight.

globnomulous 1y ago
> The increase in soundquality since that tech is marginal at best. I'm glad you enjoy your system, but, having upgraded from a very, very good 70s system to a pretty excellent system using contemporary parts, I can assure you that both objectively and subjectively your system from the 70s is inferior, and the difference isn't marginal. It's massive.