Stereophile As We See It; High-End Audio & the Invisible Hand

[garylkoh]

I think drawing analogies with beer can be misleading. Mass-market beer brands, like cigarettes and gasoline, are differentiated primarily by advertising. The only equivalent in high-end audio, where the advertising provides the primary brand differentiation, is cables. Everything else in high-end is differentiated primarily by performance and technology.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

John, are you saying that all cables sound the same and the only difference is brand?

 

[Stereoeditor]

I think drawing analogies with beer can be misleading. Mass-market beer brands, like cigarettes and gasoline, are differentiated primarily by advertising. The only equivalent in high-end audio, where the advertising provides the primary brand differentiation, is cables. Everything else in high-end is differentiated primarily by performance and technology.

John, are you saying that all cables sound the same and the only difference is brand?

A cable manufacturer told me years ago that there are only 3 types of speaker cable: 1) spaced-pair, ie, zipcord-like; 2) special weaves and conductor geometries; 3) cables with boxes. Within each of those categories the _primary_ brand differentiation comes from advertising. That doesn't mean that there aren't also sound quality differences, only that as with mass-market beer, those differences are relatively small.

BTW, this is why making a judgment on a cable's value for money comparing its retail price with its bill of materials is misleading, as the large cost of advertising needs to be factored in. And what if there was no advertising? Decades ago - and my apologies for not remembering which brand it was - a cigarette brand decided that they could make a lot more money if they drastically cut back on the ad budget. (This, of course, when cigarette advertising was endemic.) Without ad support, their market share collapsed!

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

No doubt advertising has its place. I was taught name recognition is the primary purpose of advertising. When you make that choice you recognize the name you have seen in the ads. We want what we see. I am more likely to go to the hi-fi store after the magazines come out.

Funny though I never need a tv ad to wet my appetite for beer. You might recall that beer is one of the few products where the marginal utility increases as you drink more.

When I was trying to sell my car before buying a new car ,the salesman told me "nothing sales like price."

Very old school, from the days of big network TV and Magazine buys. While that still goes on with products that are simple and very image/brand oriented, these days marketing mines deep customer data and segments broad markets into narrow niches, then goes after them with very targeted messages. They will know...and I'm making this up...that you're a lawyer who drinks Corona (they got the data from your grocery store who captures purchase data every time you shop and sells it. So they pitch a new premium brand of Mexican beer to you, already understanding that you like Mexican beer and have the means to afford something better than Corona. Crude example. There can be a whole lot more personal data and demographics involved, but the days of just selling the name and expecting that to motivate purchase behavior once you've entered the market are gone. Today's marketers bring the market to you, already knowing enough about your preferences, habits and demographics to put the right offer in front of the right people at the right time.

Of course high-end audio is a very different animal. Many barely advertise at all. Their current customers do it for them. Word of mouth over the internet. That's very old school on steroids.

Tim

 

[Gregadd]

Unfortunately there are doing the same thing in politics.

 

[fas42]

Going by the tone and focus of this discussion so far I can see why younger people are not coming into the audio world. The whole way of thinking would be quite alien to them, they just head off in other directions to do more interesting things ...

Frank

 

[JackD201]

Perhaps the question could be how many 24 hour a day console playing, friend texting, youngsters will find jobs that will allow them to keep doing their thing and buy anything more than a six pack of Red Bull.

How's that for a run on sentence?

My opinion is that good sound has to be integrated into the new market's lifestyle. A gentleman from Hong Kong bought a monster system north of $250,000 not mainly for music but for playing Grand Turismo on his Playstation. The guy may not take his music seriously but he sure takes his sound seriously. Personally, I'm an inbetween-er in terms of age. I was in on the beginning of gaming all the way up to console dominance but dropped out at the onset of massive online multiplayer. Now, I'm a parent and my kids love their Guitar Hero, Rock Band and Kinect dancing games. Heck, I enjoy it too. These games are a lot more fun when they are played with a good sound system to back them up. I suppose what I'm saying is that the industry has got to go with the flow instead of being dogmatic.

 

[c1ferrari]

Haha

...an amplifier that looks like it came out of a Russian submarine from the 1950s and doubles up as a radiator.

I wouldn't exactly describe my equipment that way
Those Russians sure knew good sound

 

[c1ferrari]

Some will bring the beer to another bar and ask for a glass to drink it out of. The bartender spits in the glass before handing it over.

GARY
hehe...

 

[c1ferrari]

"Three audiophiles walk into a bar..."

Stay tuned. I'll be working on this over the weekend.

Tim

I, for one, cannot wait
The sole dramatic episode I can imagine precluding it would be another power outtage, haha

 

[fas42]

Nah, I betcha it'll be a variant of "My soundstage is bigger than your soundstage!!", "Well, show us what you've got, eh!"

Frank

 

[c1ferrari]

...marketing mines deep customer data...They will know...There can be a whole lot more personal data and demographics involved,...Today's marketers bring the market to you, already knowing enough about your preferences, habits and demographics...Tim

If I didn't invoke coping mechanisms or perhaps, rationalizations -- this would be both positively revolting and genuinely terrifying

Currency, anyone

I don't know about coping mechanisms and rationalizations, but thankfully, few of them are all that good at using the data. But make no mistake, the data is being gathered, and it is either revolting or frightening, depending on you point of view. Or it can even be empowering. These days I work primarily with business customers. They want us to gather all of this data about the end users in their companies, because the more we know about them the better we can serve them. But there is no doubt that there is a dark side to the evolution of marketing into personal, and increasingly granular information.

Tim

 

[Orb]

Going by the tone and focus of this discussion so far I can see why younger people are not coming into the audio world. The whole way of thinking would be quite alien to them, they just head off in other directions to do more interesting things ...

Frank

What is interesting on the SP forum is how one member there can be so critical of Stephen Meijas due to not liking the content and context of his articles.
Ironically and IMO younger people and potential audiophiles are more likely to be hooked on this subject by contributors such as Stephen, who take this to the real world and beyond articles in SP.
And yet some readers are resistent to such approaches by Stephen instead of supporting him and SP.
IMO we need more contributors like Stephen in the audiophile world and magazines.
Cheers
Orb


Cheers
Orb

 

[Alan Sircom]

Sorry, I hear something like this all the time. Let me brutally frank, why do I care if young folks want to be audiophiles or not? Really?Is any body worried about why I don't like to play games all day on the X-box or text my friends all day..........

Perhaps, they just don't care about the audio world you or I may know.

Why should they?

BTW, these are the same folks who tell me that MP3 is better quality than CD, and that milk out of a plastic container tastes better than milk out of a sort of cardboardy type container. Tastes change. They also tell me its impolite to turn up your speakers and bother others...


Tom

The reason why you might want to care is enlightened self-interest. If there are fewer thirtysomethings buying decent audio as part of the 'settling down' process (good audio might have been an aspiration for the young of past generations, but the typical first-time buyer of good audio equipment was commonly in their mid 30s), companies that supply them will ultimately shrink in size and number. Even if there are a lot of people buying these products, just not in your part of the world, the same thing happens because the support network needed to supply those products locally becomes increasingly untenable at its present scale. That only leaves the 'carriage trade' luxury goods, supplying very high-end products to those who are mature enough to appreciate the finer things in life and don't mind paying for them.

Put simply, fewer aspiring audiophiles today means fewer audiophiles tomorrow means fewer audiophile companies the day after tomorrow. And, because the newly-minted audiophile tends to buy more entry-level equipment more regularly than the fully-grown audiophile, that means higher value, higher priced products sold to those still interested. So, when you go out to buy that new or replacement product in a few years time, you find it harder to buy something in your price range and find the selection of products on offer greatly constricted.

Part of the reason why there seems to be a disproportionate slant toward increasingly expensive products in audio today is because we are already about 15 years into the 'fewer aspiring audiophiles' part. Millennials/Generation Y/Echo Boomer kids largely didn't buy into the idea of good audio, because they had games consoles to take their place, and the uptake now that they are in their 30s is disappointingly low in the West. The iGen that follows them have even less interest in home audio because they consider music to be something you carry around with you. Interestingly, iGen kids are even starting to look upon consoles as a throwback to a bygone age where you had to sit in one place to play games, and I'd guess those who come next (Generation Alpha? the Cloud Generation?) will view the idea of locking your digital self to bits of hardware - and using different devices for different tasks - as 'charmingly quaint', or whatever the 2020 version of the word 'lame' proves to be.

 

[Alan Sircom]

IMO we need more contributors like Stephen in the audiophile world and magazines.

You have no idea how much I agree with you on this one. We need younger writers writing about things that appeal to a younger audience. The tough part of this is the young writer will tend to adapt to the tone of the title, especially as they receive the ire of the more fusty, yet vociferous, part of the readership if they don't.

There are some good writers who aren't in their dotage, but 'up-and-coming' audiophile writers are hard to find.

 

[Orb]

The reason why you might want to care is enlightened self-interest. If there are fewer thirtysomethings buying decent audio as part of the 'settling down' process (good audio might have been an aspiration for the young of past generations, but the typical first-time buyer of good audio equipment was commonly in their mid 30s), companies that supply them will ultimately shrink in size and number. Even if there are a lot of people buying these products, just not in your part of the world, the same thing happens because the support network needed to supply those products locally becomes increasingly untenable at its present scale. That only leaves the 'carriage trade' luxury goods, supplying very high-end products to those who are mature enough to appreciate the finer things in life and don't mind paying for them.

Put simply, fewer aspiring audiophiles today means fewer audiophiles tomorrow means fewer audiophile companies the day after tomorrow. And, because the newly-minted audiophile tends to buy more entry-level equipment more regularly than the fully-grown audiophile, that means higher value, higher priced products sold to those still interested. So, when you go out to buy that new or replacement product in a few years time, you find it harder to buy something in your price range and find the selection of products on offer greatly constricted.

Part of the reason why there seems to be a disproportionate slant toward increasingly expensive products in audio today is because we are already about 15 years into the 'fewer aspiring audiophiles' part. Millennials/Generation Y/Echo Boomer kids largely didn't buy into the idea of good audio, because they had games consoles to take their place, and the uptake now that they are in their 30s is disappointingly low in the West. The iGen that follows them have even less interest in home audio because they consider music to be something you carry around with you. Interestingly, iGen kids are even starting to look upon consoles as a throwback to a bygone age where you had to sit in one place to play games, and I'd guess those who come next (Generation Alpha? the Cloud Generation?) will view the idea of locking your digital self to bits of hardware - and using different devices for different tasks - as 'charmingly quaint', or whatever the 2020 version of the word 'lame' proves to be.

Spot on IMO, and fits in well with JA's article.
Cheers
Orb

 

[jazdoc]

The reason why you might want to care is enlightened self-interest

And so we have come full circle from the Stereophile article. The invisible hand of Adam Smith is enlightened self interest. Indeed as he wrote in "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" our self-interest is judged and tempered by a (either a real or imaginary) 'impartial spectator' who must fully empathize with our actions.

Younger folks have a found a substitute for the traditional entry portals into the high end. The industry will either adapt...or it won't.

I fully agree with everyone's enthusiasm for Stephen Mejias. Unfortunately, he's fairly unique in the reviewing industry that is one of the key entry points into the hobby. In a similar vein, another thing that isn't helping: go to an audio show and ask yourself "Does any of the music I hear appeal to a potential young audiophile?" Playing the 23rd reissue of a Blue Note warhorse or Diana Krall is like an Ambien to most teenagers or 20-somethings. Ask your kids what is on their iPod, get the vinyl and demo something new that might get reviewed on Pitchfork. Even if it's not a audiophile gem in terms of sound quality it will demonstrate to potential young customers that it can sound better than through an iPod. Some of them will get it.

 

[MylesBAstor]

Speaker technology seems more accurate but then they are tuned to "sound" good.
Tom

Accurate to what? A test signal? Fat lotta good that does. It's like saying the surgery was a success and the patient died.

Do you think a Strad was created using test signals?

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Do you think a Strad was created using test signals?

I don't think a Strad is an engineered box full of components thats objective is to reproduce recordings. I think it is, rather, the hand-made musical instrument created to create the music. God knows accurate reproduction of recordings is an evasive challenge for transducers. Giving up and pursuing a pleasing tone, as if the speakers were the musical instrument, is fine, if that's what you want to do. It's resignation, in my view, but if you enjoy the results, enjoy the results. In the meantime, I've got some really fine recordings I'd like to reveal. I'll go down that path, thank you.

Tim

 

[MylesBAstor]

I don't think a Strad is an engineered box full of components thats objective is to reproduce recordings. I think it is, rather, the hand-made musical instrument created to create the music. God knows accurate reproduction of recordings is an evasive challenge for transducers. Giving up and pursuing a pleasing tone, as if the speakers were the musical instrument, is fine, if that's what you want to do. It's resignation, in my view, but if you enjoy the results, enjoy the results. In the meantime, I've got some really fine recordings I'd like to reveal. I'll go down that path, thank you.

Tim

But you still are dodging my initial question: what the hell does accurate mean? Accurate to what? Accurate to a test signal? We know where that got us! Accurate tonally? Accurate spatially? Accurate frequency wise? Accurate to a real instrument? The master tape? The digital recording? I hate to tell you but few recordings are accurate reproductions of the original work tape or bits put down on the computer.

And why is it that accurate and musical are mutually exclusive. You write as if all manufacturers purposely color their equipment. Do you know that for a fact? Or do they modify it to look better on the bench too?

About the only (ex)-reviewers qualified to judge whether a component was accurate were David Wilson or the late JGH who used their own recordings to review with and was there at the original recording session.

 

[Alan Sircom]

Alan, I appreciate your knowledge of the industry. However, I guess I am not convinced still from your observations that the lack of youth interest in high end audio will affect me.

There are far more audio companies now to choose from than ever before via the internet. Yes, there are far fewer places to audition locally, and those places only carry the high advertised stuff that the older audiophiles see in magazines such as yours, as it is sort of "pre-sold", but that is not my concern, thats the market exerting its desires (or lack of desire in the case of high end).

There is nothing new in analog audio amplification.

There is so much highly compressed music to my ears, yet the youth don't seem to mind, its what they are used to.

Digital is getting better and better in accuracy all the time. Speaker technology seems more accurate but then they are tuned to "sound" good. Speaker brands are in abundance as well.

The audio suppliers who do not sell at a price point affordable to a young person can be specifically blamed for not giving a sheeeet about that market. Only when they have to sell at a price point there, will they adapt. And by then, that young generation will be more familiar with brands from China as that is what is most affordable now, even in the so called high end.

And us old timers will still buy used stuff if we can not afford or refuse to pay out huge costs of new stuff. And the well healed will still buy the most expensive stuff.

I agree we are into the retraction in the high end market, and the big audio companies we know well are sucking hard on the teets of the older, or also, more financially well off individuals....there will always be a market for exclusivity items.

I truly don't see the lack of new audiophiles affecting me. Times change.

These are just a few quick thoughts as I am time pressed.

Tom

Young people have never been that interested in high-end audio. It's the broad lack of interest in anything that doesn't fit in their pocket or their ears that should concern you long term.

Why? Because a lot of what happens in a business is predicated on a lot of new people coming along and buying new stuff. When they stop coming along, two things happen - a lot of prices rocket upwards, and there's suddenly a spate of new brands. The first happens because if you need to make $10 an hour and you can no longer sell 10x $1 things, you'll try your hand at 5x $2 things or even 1x $10 thing, and the second happens because laid-off workers who know how to make stuff make their own version of the stuff they used to make for someone else. Both of these things are already happening in part because the Echo Boomers didn't start buying home audio in great numbers. The economic downturn merely speeds the process along. Where iGen go from here is anyone's guess.

Their lack of interest has nothing to do with price. There are still many good audio suppliers who sell at price points that are perfectly affordable to anyone. At the entry-level, price vs performance massively exceeds what was available even a decade ago, and at lower cost especially if you take inflation into account. These products also don't appear to sell in large numbers to a younger market, either.

Ultimately, if no new blood comes along, brands big and small start disappearing, or at least disappearing from the places where there are no sales. This hugely increases the price of second-hand goods in those places, because those still interested in the topic still need their fix.