Ask any elevator operators why they enjoy their job.
" It’s for the music." 
Not for the muzak? 
Man…only in America can such a large sum of money be made for such low-fi musical drek. hmmm… 
I’ll admit that I’m mainly interested in the sound. That’s why I spend so much time and money on my “sound system”.
When I just care about the music, I can listen to it on anything.
3 Likes
Peanut butter sandwich is my favorite food!
I don’t care how one obtains and listens to music. Use a 10 cent transistor, boombox or a megabucks system. Rock, classic, trashcan, but get there as fast as you can. Enjoy, share and don’t forget to dance, boogie and shake.
Chas
For me, playback quality or also live music sound quality is an e extremely essential contribution to the overall experience.
The interesting thing is, which music remains important when you only have a very simple playback gear available. Think about it.
With great sound for me a lot of music is fascinating which I wouldn’t listen to on a kitchen radio. On the other hand a good Bill Evans album works on both.
3 Likes
Agree with ronp and jazznut here - music enjoyment is one thing, hifi enjoyment is another, they compliment each other well of course, but only some music works no matter what - much of my music choice requires the hifi to even hear some of the notes 
1 Like
I know this is an old post. It showed up in my related list.
This post was started before the global events that started in 2020.
It feels like the companies and options for hi-fi products has grown and not dwindled over the past 4-5 years.
Be interesting to run a similar poll today. No. Not me
And hasn’t “the lack of new hi-fi enthusiasts been plaguing the industry” for the last 50 years?
Lastly, I hope that Profile - Roy8731 - PS Audio is okay.
1 Like
I expect engaging in the same interviews would reach the same conclusions.
With the “extra time” people had, you don’t think that some more would have come around?
Maybe not to the equipment side, but to the quality of music source file quality side?
If you are asking me, the answer is “nope,”
1 Like
As often reported my son and I passed the entire lockdown time (remember we live in Bergamo, the sadly second Whuan of the world at the time) listening to music in our basement. I could say that music saved our lives (psychologically speaking).
I became an audiophile. He learned playing guitar!
I spent (am spending) a fortune in audio gear.
He spent (is spending) all his income in guitars and amps.
We are alive, we work together in our own small company (until we drive it to bankruptcy!).
In our experience music meant a next step needed, quality of sound to me, the ability to create sound to my son.
Lots of 20yo friends of my son never played an entire album in their life and probably never will. This is what makes me less optimistic about future of music. But… but… lots of them love LPs and have bought almost 1 album, even if they don’t own a turntable. This is what makes me less pessimist.
Interesting thread, congrats.
3 Likes
My daughter got a turntable when they moved into the new place a couple of years ago, and I thought that was a good opportunity to introduce them into audiophile world.
I gave them a spared pair of Silverline floodstanding speakers, a Euphony Summus2 streaming transporter with 2TB of music, plus some nices ICs and PCs. The housewarming gift was north of $10k. I told them they just need to get an integrated amp with dac built in and they were all set!
Today they only hooked up the speakers and are still using the Sony receiver and the streamer is still in the box.
To them the system sounds good enough for them as well as for all their friends🙄
5 Likes
They are listening to the music, not the equipment. By definition the equipment is “good enough.”
4 Likes
You’re right! My daughter knows better than me!
3 Likes
All I “needed” in college was a receiver and turntable. I enjoyed FM radio and a modest record collection.
I bought a Technics CD player with Sony introduced “perfect sound forever”. I eventually ditched the turntable as a young adult but was still completely satisfied with enjoying the music with the kit I had.
Other priorities needing my time and money naturally got the attention they deserved. The audiophile in me was not awakened until time and money would allow for same, once more resources were available and all the kids were in school.
I can’t help but wonder if age, time and money all have to align before music lovers turn their attention to the finer options for reproducing and enjoying music. In other words, I tend to think there are plenty of “audiophiles” in the making out there. Just give it time.
On the other hand, but for AM/FM radio, “we” never had ready access to the sheer volume of music that the “kids” do today. I also think the relatively limited access to music I had back in the day might have contributed to my wanting to see if I could get what I was listening to to sound even better.
Thoughts…?
3 Likes
The young generation has many higher priorities than audio to consume their time and money. The fact is listening to music in an “audiophile” setup is very time consuming. After a busy day of work, most want to go to the gym, outdoors, and meet with friends for dinners and parties. Audio setup is the least of interest to them, not to mention it is very expensive to build one.
In my younger day I never had a friend telling me “Let’s spend a weekend in my house listening to my high-end system” There must be more important activities going on to lure my friends to listen my separates back in the days. I even had little time to listen to mine back then.
4 Likes
I get the impression (perhaps wrongly) that the responses and perceptions expressed so far in this thread are from the USA. If you read audio show reports from Poland, Germany, Japan, Singapore, etc. one regularly reads comments about how the attendee demographics as far as age and gender are more varied than shows in the US. Worldwide, there’s no doubt this hobby is still pursed by older people with more disposable income but if show attendance reports are accurate perhaps there’s more interest among younger people elsewhere? My own experience is that the younger (30ish) artsy folks I’ve worked with professionally DO listen to music a lot but they don’t have any interest in spending more than Sonos level gear for streaming. On the other hand, vinyl lps are of interest to some of them. They are buying vintage turntables and equipment because they can’t afford most of the new stuff. I see lots of younger 20-30’s people in the music stores buying vinyl too. In our medium size town of 250,000 people we have one small music store that moves a lot of vinyl records and many of them are in the 20-30 age group. Last Record Store Day there was a line more than a city block long that had started at 4:00am for opening time.
I suspect high end audio will follow a path somewhat like photography has. High end cameras still exist for hobbyists, just on a smaller scale than before. A few people are still buying wet darkroom equipment and film. There will probably always be a large enough critical mass of consumers that appreciate good music reproduction to sustain some manufacturing base.
4 Likes
Scott, I can relate to the getting music to sound better when there were fewer recordings on hand. My audiophile fever really ran high when I got married and my wife asked me to stop playing out. I got into improving my stereo playback to sort of give me more of a kick that playing with others brought. And at the same time the reissue boom on cd had started, so my collection kept expanding.
3 Likes