Whats the future of hi-fi, is it all MP3's.
 

For people of a certain age, hi-fi was all about separates. Pioneer, Marantz, Tannoy, or if you were nerdy enough Nad. Now all the hi-fi shops seems to be closing. Sevenoaks are a good example, the one in Hull has shut, and whenever i go into the one in Lincoln, its empty. If you go into the Apple store in Meadowhall though, queue's,queue's and queue's. Is the future all mp3's. I have to admit the last three music items i bought were two ipods and a dock.
However, if its quality you want, you cannot beat separates, and by that i mean an amp, cd player and two speakers. Not a 5.1 set up.

Is the future all MP3's, docking stations and headphones. (it would be sad if it was)

I have load of cds but can't be bothered with them as I now have a big ipod collection

flac

Sadly these is a generation of peple growing up thinking MP3s are hi-fi... they are not. Put an iPod output into a decent separates system and you will hear a nasty compressed sound nothing like the expansiveness of a CD or vinyl LP.

Trouble is while everyone wants better quality TV and associated theatre sound it seems they are happy to listen to music on an iPod or the likes... it makes no logical sense to me.

With it all going to downloads I fear that compressed MP3s maybe as good as it gets in the future :(

Yes, funny that. If you go into Comet, Curry's its all about the improving picture quality of tv's, yet at the same time music is going in the opposite direction.
With the news of HMV closing stores.
Another little story. I was talking to some young lad the other day about ipods, and he was surprised when i said i listen to albums all the way through. "You mean every track". Yes i said. He only listens to stuff through playlists.

Yes anther sad trait of the MP3 generation.

I think high quality music will go underground a bit like the following for vinyl that is still going strong.

You can get uncompressed files, and lossless compressed ones for better quality. Convenience is what people are after. Instant access and no storage of delicate discs. I used to be well into hi-fi, but as I've got older I have not the time or money to seek out new recordings and pursue that next upgrade to the system. My old Cyrus set-up is in the cellar and might be resurrected if I ever have the right place for an audio only system (thinking a summerhouse in the garden), but in the living room the big TV and surround set-up is more use to more of the family. It is a shame, and I miss enjoying the subtleties and intimacy of hearing a great piece, well recorded and replayed on a good system. But I also really enjoy a big, epic disaster movie shaking the foundations of my house as chaos ensues all around me.

Very well put. As a DJ I know all about the MP3 thing taking over. I started on vinyl which although not the best quality has something about it soundwise that CD nor MP3 can reproduce.

I'm now on CDJ's for my music and play audio CD's not MP3's. They are downloaded as MP3 but written at x8 speed to audio CD. This compared to an MP3 disc gives a notably better sound quality. Now if your in a bar getting pissed or out with mates looking for women with nice boobies then the sound quality difference between MP3 and CD is not necessarily top of your agenda. But for home listening, a trained ear can tell the difference.

Erm, bit pointless the above, but that's my take :lol1:

I loved my old technics system. Now I just dont have the time or the money to invest, and MP3's make it convienient.

This is the future of my HiFi as of a 2months ago.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...b/hifijamz.jpg
Looking forward to returning it to its rightful place once music gets better again.

HiFi will always be around I think.DJ's need records to start with.

Most "DJ" vinyl has about as much to do with HiFi as MP3's do. Most are terriblely produced.

I've a mate who spent years collecting Vinyl records...you know 'rare stuff'...all kind of trendy (as the time) 90's and early 00's dance etc. Some costs him a fair amount. Back when having a record bag was cool and Vinyl was 'so cool' man.

Now worthless.:lol1:

In the context of financial gain. Now for centemental or nostaglic value, some of those records will be priceless. Plenty of times I've had "fellow DJ" mates come round and crack open the vinyl from 'back in the day'. Brilliant looking through the trawls of vinyl I've got, regardless of what some musically uneducated cretin would pay for it on eBay :lol1:

Not all worthless. I've got a vinyl single that still goes on ebay for upwards of £400, depending on condition. :)

And you expect us to believe the rest of your post?

Kudos to this lot for drawing a line in the sand on the subject:

The reason i did this thread was tonight i decided to drag out my old hi-fi set up, including a PM17. Blo0dy heavy bit of kit isn't it.
Whats the rest of your stuff.

mine is a KI signature and yes, damn heavy! I also have a Myryad MCD500 and Monitor Audio GR10 bookshelfs on Q Acoustic stands and an Apollo rack. I use an Ixos Ixotica X1 phono cable for the cd to amp and some custom made speaker cable. It really is a lovely setup but just wasn't being used.

It was replaced with an ipod dock!!!!

My problem isn't so much MP3's as I'd quite happily listen to a high quality mp3 using a media PC using something like a Cambridge DAC Magic and be reasonablely happy with the results.

My issue is the sheer lack of good music. Music died sometime around 2005 for me.

I have a huge CD collection but since I got an iPhone I've never bought one. I can see how HMV and the likes are closing down. It's to easy to pop onto iTunes and with in a min or two you have the song or album you want. I still have auto changers in my car but I can just plug my iPhone in and got 100,s of songs to listen to. I have a huge hifi but unless we have a party it's never on. When I have a bath I just plug my iPhone into a sound wall.

I never listen to 'compressed' music. I only listen to CD or uncompressed digital ie FLAC etc.

You could say that mp3 is a democratisation of music. Before it was all expensive hi-fi separates and the elitist snobs who needed gold plugs for everything and bought stupid magazines.:lol1:

Funny you should say that... A guy I know who's really into collecting music was telling me about this. He sometimes makes me *ahem* copies, but does it on some kind of special machine to keep the same quality, as he says that when you rip a track on to a pc etc you lose something (should really listen to people more). Lol! But then some people say that mp3s can be as good, if not better quality?! Pretty confusing stuff.

It is still a compressed sound recording from the beginning though?

You have a large collection of Ipods? Is one not enough ... :Suspiciou :D

I never play my CDs or vinyl these days (though I've managed to break my turntable so that doesn't help ... ) but I've kept them and ripped them all to MP3. If you're in the car then you have too much else to listen to to notice the quality difference, even though mine get ripped at a reasonable bit rate. I keep the originals because that way I can rip them again at a higher quality if needs be.

Never bought a 'download' and probably won't. Unless you can get CD quality over the interweb.

As for where the system thing is going, I still use my old Technics separates with floor standing Mission speakers but no CD player now, just my phone as an input with ALL my CDs on it. Oh, and the tape deck is no longer there either ....

I never listen to an album the whole of the way though now, just have the 'CD's on 'random play'. That way I get to listen to all this stuff I haven't heard for years!

Dave

I have bought a fair number of downloads, from Emusic. The quality is awful, but on the plus side, I have got to hear a lot of music and discover a lot of new bands that I wouldn't have done otherwise. Much of it is either unavailable on CD or very hard to find.

What's really sad is that even now we have reasonably fast internet connections, and disc space is laughably cheap, resellers still use MP3 as a format rather than FLAC. I'd happily wait a few minutes longer to download music if the quality were there, and I can always re-encode to MP3 myself.

Not that I ever would, though. At home I listen through a Squeezebox hooked up to an external DAC, and at work I have a dedicated external headphone amp and a pair of Sennheiser HD650 cans. With FLAC these setups sound great.

Andy have a nose at 7 digital, much better quality rips than emusic.

As for music, i rip and convert to flac as/when i can.

It depends on what you want really,

If you want to listen to music with all the natural range, no compression, and plenty of power to add depth and authority when required, then you need to have a good amp, integrated, or pre-power.

Separate cd, tape, tuner are all down to individual taste, some may not be the flavour of choice.

Looking at amps, the choice is varied, with traditional valve amps, to ic pre-power setups.

Record decks are another choice of individuality, with a deck ranging from sub £100 to thousands

For me i like to use a combination, a combined prepower/ av amp, suffices for my main source, then the rest is separates.

I havent used my record deck for years, simply because the cost of the moving coil stylus used to be bloody prohibitive :D

Ive tried valve pre-power amps, and whilst the add huge amount of power and depth, i found them for me to deliver a slabby type of reproduction, huge slam on the base, with depth, but no finesse, almost over powereing treble

On the other hand, if you want convenience, simplicity, and no thought, then its a dock type setup.

Small speakers, maybe a sub, and midrange, no soundstage as such, but fits a an average sized room, and many people are happy.

There sort of like modern day ghetto blasters, they do the job, but don't excel in any one area.

ive just replaced my Tannoy 611's with Kef IQ3's, i like point source speakers :)

Mart

There are two issues to expand on here IMHO.

Music business has always been about the listening audience - they're the ones that actually buy it. Think about where music is heard these days, particularly by the younger generation (as this is where our love of music starts.... as a "young one")

Most music isn't even listened to on headphones/earbuds now. It's off internal speakers in a phone. When they want to hear HQ sound, (by definition, "loud"), they'll go to a club etc. Not allowed to have it playing loud at home for various reasons.

From my perspective (and a great many not just producers, but more specifically mix engineers), it is somewhat soul-destroying to hear a track you've worked on for 19-odd hours (just balancing and mixing - this doesn't account for recording it in the first place!) - getting all the nuances and intricacies correct, and balanced for home hifi (not just studio reference monitors - proper monitors ;) )for ALL that hard work to be undone by listenin to it on a cr@ppy phone.
The art is to actually make it sound good on the phone speaker - which is where a lot of proper mixing focuses (at the same time as HQ sound).

The focus is now on the music/song rather than the sonics in some respects.

I'm am in all fairness, talking in generics, not specifics (and somewhat tongue-in-cheek).

The other issue is that of the "Producer" - who's creating the sound. These days any amatuer interested in Music can apparently call themselves a "Producer"- someone who is wholly responsible for the creation, development and delivery of an audio product.

And they do this without ANY concept of what the technical issues are behind the glamour. Akin, IMHO, to giving the old YTS trainee the keys to the production line.
DJs, I'm sorry to say are a CLASSIC example of this - and again, a generic comment. Just because you spin a few tunes (and their art is reading the crowd and taking the audience on trip, along with beatmatching tracks etc as it were - and KUDOS to this skillset.) this does NOT mean you are a technical engineer versed in the arts of audio engineering - mic selection, placement, setup, signal flow, recording, mixing, and that's off the top of my head without taking into consideration the "what if something goes wrong?" aspect. The same skills are required to use a computer music/audio package.
Any mook can stick some samples together and create a music masterpiece (subjectively), and this is a GREAT thing :thumb:
The issue to consider is that of the sonics - an art that as is being highlighted in this thread, is being forgotten.

No wonder a great deal of music SOUNDS rubbish (in posters opinions) - the "producers" don't have the underlying engineering skills to create a professional sound.

My other point is that I wholeheartedly agree with Pink Floyd's legal win. The "ipod generation" have got used to selection of tracks. Not albums.

There was a statistic that in the lifetime of a CD album, it gets listened to 1.5 times ALL THE WAY THROUGH. The rest of the time is down to the "track skip" button.

Probably less now due to the playlist concept.

IMHO, there will be more artists dictating that the buyer MUST buy the album to experience the whole concept in one go.
Not just rock/pop etc but the more underground and ecelectic genres in dance music.

Then again, it could be that this is the shape of things to come, and we, as the older generations may have to accept that this new wave is for a different generation.

But in answer to the MP3 thing, it DOES have a place - portable music players, the car (no point in HQ audio, due to the roadnoise, engine etc) and auditioning of tracks (due to its small file size).


End of my morning rant!! :D (now to have my first cuppa, read this back and argue with myself!! :D)

Dan :D