Maybe why I see a high efficiency low power amp system approach as having potential worth exploring for the more recent generations is just reflective of my experience and is just anecdotal and maybe not applicable. I just considered some of the generational traits I’ve experienced as well as read about. Perhaps gen Y and gen Z aren’t just quite into the same scale of acquisition and not as driven to be obsessed and absorbed by the process of acquiring and improving things continuously quite the same way that we have been.
It took me a while to move across to a high efficiency setup with low power amp after getting a fair bit of exposure to various SET and lower power tube amps over the last 14 years.
Back in 2014 I started auditioning SET and horns for a second system but then after trying out half a dozen speakers over a few years I didn’t finally find what I wanted until 2018.
It took virtually no time at all for the new horns OB SET setup to become the main system for me instead of just an intended other system and left me not really wanting to change gear as much any more.
I’ve now lived with SET and 2 way open baffle and horns full time for the last six years with two different sized OB horns and find I’m unusually content and being seduced and chilling out into listening to what I have and more focussed on exploring more music. It’s quite strange (but good) being content after decades of continuous restlessness with what I have had before.
I have found a stabilising and settling quality with the characteristics of this gear type and the flow state experience with music that it can easily induce as opposed to other gear I’ve had being more sensational and more sonically overt in nature.
Maybe it’s comfort with its simplicity. It might be that the gear has a human scale. It’s certainly intimate in character.
It could just be anecdotal but I thought that it might be a better fit for gen Y and gen Z. Who can tell though. Only time will reveal what will work for others in the future. Design is about change and iterative adaptation… it’s just that maybe it’s not a small change that’s required now but a more fundamental or transformational one.
Many of us started our journey in the 60’s, before mobile phones (the girls I knew had their own line and “princess” phone), before cable/satellite TV (before “reruns”). It was a time when you got more for your money; your burger and fries could be delivered to your car by a girl on roller skates, your pizza accompanied by live ragtime. Hi Fi then was analogue, delivered through valve amplification (often SET) and high-efficiency speakers.
The future in hi-fi came through changes in technology, introduced to us by salespeople who highlighted selling points that turned out to be red herrings, differences in measurements that supposedly demonstrated superiority yet never really improved sound quality. After years of going with the flow, buying the latest and greatest, many of us have come to the realisation that we prefer the sound of 50’s-60’s hi-fi, turntables, analogue records, SET’s and vintage horn speakers.
The path most of us have taken to get back to where we started has been expensive and laden with regrets. I wouldn’t want the youth of today to go through the same, but how do you keep the hobby from dying out? They’ll need to experience it as we did/do. I believe owners of Japanese Kissa bars and Devon Turnbull has shown us the way. Instead of leaving your analogue/SETs and vintage speaker rig to an unappreciative relative in your will, donate it all to anyone willing to place it in a listening bar/coffee shop. A kissa.
I believe most of the youth today, even if they knew what it sounds like (most don’t ), couldn’t afford the sort of gear we’re into. In Japan space is expensive. Few can afford high end equipment, fewer still a place large enough to play music for friends. Herein is the reasoning for the Kissa/listening bar. A small commercial venue is rented, the owner installs their vintage hi-fi and vinyl records and sells coffee or drinks to guests to defray the costs. Guests buy drinks and listen quietly out of respect and delight in finding a place where they can get away from the noise and crowds and enjoy a cup of tea while listening to lovely analogue music.
Picture a corner building with wrap around windows with views to the city centre, or park, or river, etc. Inside are sofas and chairs and old rectory tables, potted plants and slow turning fans. Upon entrance you put money on a debit card, used to dispense wine from the on-the-wall self-serve wine dispensers or to purchase tapas or other snacks from sub-contracted catering partners, then at one end, shelves of vinyl jazz and classical records fronted by your donated vintage analogue rig. Big Altec’s, JBL’s or Klipschorn’s will of course catch their attention, then when the music starts …
The key point that must be made before donating your equipment is that they put into writing that they will never insert a digital player or allow a DJ to play modern music on digital-to-vinyl records (then you are just playing what the kids are hearing on their ear buds only louder over speakers. The loudness of talking over the music will then manifest and your system will not impress anyone, total loss). AAA records played one side at a time fully through is the only way ‘else the Kissa goes the way of other “listening bars”.
Sorry, I too often believe what needs to be said is “self-evident”. I am suggesting that if the youth of today hear a great analogue rig, playing decent analogue records (even if unknown to the listener), in a cool environment that enough will be so taken that they build systems of their own and save this hobby from extinction.
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