The death of the home stereo system

[ShriDurga]

I do remember these days well. I have been without a proper home system now for 5 years: only laptops, MD, a Phillips mp3 player, a pair of headphones, and a couple sets of ear buds.

(CNN) -- For many years, it was a rite of fall.

You moved into your dorm room or new apartment. You started unpacking the car. And the first thing you set up in your new place was the stereo system: receiver, turntable or CD player, tape deck and speakers.

The wires could get tangled, and sometimes you had to make shelving out of a stack of milk crates. But only when the music was playing on those handpicked CDs, mix tapes or (geezer alert!) vinyl records did you move in the rest of your stuff.

Daniel Rubio wouldn't know.

To the 23-year-old, new dorm rooms and new apartments have meant computers, iTunes, Pandora and miniature speakers.

"All I had to bring was my laptop. That's pretty much what everyone had," says Rubio, who attended Emory University in Atlanta and now works for a local marketing and communications firm. "It was actually pretty good sound. It would get the job done."

"Get the job done"? That sounds like the white flag for an era that used to be measured in woofers and tweeters, watts per channel and the size of your record collection.

Indeed, the days of the old-fashioned component stereo system are pretty much over, says Alan Penchansky, an audiophile and former columnist for the music trade publication Billboard.

"What's happened in the marketplace, the midmarket for audio has completely been obliterated," he says. "You have this high-end market that's getting smaller all the time, and then you've got the convenience market, which has taken over -- the MP3s, the Bluetooth devices, playing on laptops."

He wishes more people knew what they were missing. At its best, he says, audio reproduction has "a religious aspect."

"There's a primacy to audio," he says. "It's a form of magic."

Wires and jacks

Of course, new technology changes things all the time. When was the last time you bought a roll of film for your camera?

Still, for a long time -- and for a certain, often youthful, audience -- the stereo system was a point of pride.

Greg Milner, the author of the audio recording history "Perfecting Sound Forever," remembers the process. There were components. There were boxes of tapes and CDs. There might even be some vinyl.

It could be a pain, no question. The equipment was heavy. There were all those wires, plugs and jacks -- Line In, Line Out, Aux, Phono, CD, keeping track of the positive and negative strands of speaker wire. It was an effort just to break down and set up the stuff, never mind moving it.

Milner, for example, grew up in Hawaii, and when he went away to school in Minnesota, he had to figure out what he was going to do with his system.

Whole stores were once devoted to stereo components. That hasn't been the case in years.

"I remember agonizing, what do I do? I can't take my stereo," he recalls. "There was this thing that, looking back on it, took up a ridiculous amount of psychic energy."

Audiophiles vs. AM radio

However, he observes that the history of audio technology has often been one of convenience.

Even in the '50s and '60s, when stereo sound first became widespread, the audiophiles had their hi-fis -- and the younger generation listened to tinny AM radios and cheap phonographs.

Indeed, music styles had a lot to do with music consumption, he points out. Audiophiles listened to classical and jazz, music from clubs and concert halls. On a good system, you could hear every pluck of a violin pizzicato, every inflection of a jazz singer's vocal, recreated in your living room.

The kids, on the other hand, listened to cruder rock 'n' roll.

"The seeds of the decline of what it meant to own a stereo were planted way back then, because the original audiophiles were people who were baby boomers' fathers and mothers," he says. "As rock 'n' roll starts to become more of a thing, a lot of that stuff is produced so it's meant to be heard on AM radios."

A Phil Spector Wall of Sound production -- in glorious mono! -- would probably have driven a hi-fi enthusiast up a wall, says Milner.

The mass market moves on

In the '70s and '80s, the twain did meet, for a time. Rock and pop music production techniques improved. At the same time, grown-up baby boomers, now working adults, invested in better audio equipment, all the better to listen to Steely Dan's "Aja."

There were whole mass-market stores devoted to audio gear -- Sound Trek, Hi-Fi Buys, Silo -- and no issue of Rolling Stone was complete without several ads for turntables, cassette decks and equalizers.

But technology marched on, and so did change. Some was for the sake of convenience: Cassettes had more hiss and less range than LPs, but were more portable -- especially when listening on your handy Walkman or boombox.

However, we also started focusing more on visuals. Penchansky traces the decline of the stereo system to the early '80s rise of the music video, which brought visuals to the fore. Suddenly, the concert hall in your living room -- or the audio imaging in your head -- was gone, replaced by surrealist pictures overwhelming the television's tiny speaker.

That branch of consumption has helped lead to the home theater.

Penchansky has nothing against HDTVs and 7.1 systems, but believes that, for the most part, it's a "sonic compromise." With a pure audio system, "There was no way that television, even today, simulates the realism of visual experience the way (good) audio can simulate an audio experience."

Sure, technology has adjusted.

New materials and processing technology have improved the sound of small and inexpensive devices, says Patrick Lavelle, president and CEO of the consumer electronics giant VOXX International, which manufactures such brands as Klipsch, Acoustic Research and Advent.

Headphones and an iPod

And there's still a consumer market for good audio, adds Geir Skaaden, an executive at the high-definition audio company DTS. The top-selling products in Apple Stores, after Apple's own devices, are headphones, he says. (DTS recently introduced technology for an immersive system called Headphone:X, intended for mobile devices.)

Still, convenience still rules. Which means it's out with the component stereo system and in with the computer.

That suits Rubio, the Emory graduate, fine. He grew up in a house with a component system but doesn't believe he's missing anything.

"All you need is a good pair of headphones and an iPod and that's pretty much it," he says.

Milner, the author, can't question his decision.

"Now, why even bother?" he asks. "If you can take your entire music collection and more in something that fits in your pocket, why would you not do that?"

[freddyjollo]

Well I must be one of the stick in the muds. I still have my Roksan Xerxes record player & my Monitor Audio MD852 speakers. I have updated my amps to the Chinese Audiolab from my old lesser spec ones & I get good sounds even from UK DAB. I did have a listen a couple of years ago to the latest £600 or so loudspeakers, thinking that things must have got so much better in 20 years. I was wrong - a bit embarrassed as I made an exit from the HiFi shop. SO I will hold onto my MD 852's as long as I can. And my LPs.

One thing that has changed for me is finding Windows media centre software - really one of the best things they have made. but not some thing that many are aware of. Gone are the separate dvd players, Humax freeview pvrs & dvd recorders and become for me a PC box and a screen with TB's of storage for every thing - has been ultra reliable so far as well.

Regarding the new technology. I had a laugh this afternoon. I was on a London suburban train. There was this guy with his 3 devices - a tablet, some kind of smart phone and and another one all out and on the seat. He was playing an incrediblely tedious drive a car along a almost never changing road and occasionally going to the smartphone and in some way it what seemed talking to the tablet ( or maybe not ) . I looked around and there were other people fevourously playing with their devices.

Not sure this minature Complete Solution technology a good thing?

[SileEeles]

Any kind of music player is important to me, always has been. As far as portability goes, the guy with the silly amount of tablets and phone sounds ridiculous. How much do you need, and ultimately they all do the same bloody thing. Same reason I won't get a tablet. If I do, it will be Android, and my phone already runs that/does everything. Pointless.

As far as a home set-up goes, I will ALWAYS have some kind of hi-fi system. It is non-negotiable lol. I use my computer 80% of a day perhaps, and I watch videos, music, and so on. Not doing any of that out of silly little computer speakers. I like a full sound, like you get from a decent hi-fi, so that's what I use. I recently bought a new one (hi-fi), and switched to smaller speakers than I previously had, so I've been getting used to having a tad less on the bass front, but still a clear full sound. As an experiment I added two extra speakers but "out of phase" which adds a ... Not really sure how to explain it, but I find that it gives off a kind of faux surround sound, and also enhances things that you might not notice or are more hidden by louder parts of the music, etc.

I will always have a hi-fi, a home stereo, music center, whatever you want to call it, it will always have one.

[bluecrab]

When they come and make me give up my NAD C-372 int. amp. and various associated separates (including MD decks) and full-size speakers, then that's when I'll make the switch to whatever-it-is that passes for hi-fi these days. But they better not come half-steppin', because I intend to hold on to my gear for quite some time yet!

[PsychoPimpKiller]

My house has 3 different component stereo systems in it. One in the garage (amp, 5 CD changer, tuner, cassette deck), one in the game room (amp, 5 CD changer, MD deck, cassette deck, turntable) and one in the living room (amp, 5 CD changer).

Having a component stereo was always important to me ever since I was 15. And I have a feeling that it probably always will be. I would feel lost without one.

[PhilippeC]

I intend to keep in my house a close-to-high-end audiophile system. I don't want anymore to pay the money for 1.000$ or much more new amplifiers (my craziest : the very first Einstein integrated amplifier) and loudpeakers, so I look around to 200$-300$ vintage separates, all with the good old english (I am french) sound : Cyrus/Naim/Linn/Rega/Arcam/Mission,etc... I brought from France years ago my Cyrus IIIi, my Monster M1 speakers cable, my CD Cyrus daD3 (out of order.. replaced by a new Marantz CD5004) and 4 years ago, a JB980 deck. And this last summer I bought for 170€ in France a pair of Rega Ela MkII loudspeakers (2x15kg... my wife is working with Air France) ! This 90's vintage system (except the Marantz that has been bought new) is afordable, don't take so much place in the room and above all is audiophile.

[sescoscuba]

Hi all

Five years ago I finished my home stereo system.

I am very satisfied of sound and not edit anything in the future.

player: Naim CDX2

Pre: Kimo Merlin tubes

AMPS: 2 John Keng gold (tubes) 40 W class A. Tubes EL34.

Speakers. Tannoy Turnberry.

Xindak: silver cables.

A nice w. end to all

Sergio

[PhilippeC]

Unless I win with Euromillion, I think that I will never buy again very expensive audio separates > 1.500€. My system is now in Vietnam at the same "audiophile level" than my "old" system in France : http://forum.vintage-audio-laser.com/post335186.html?hilit=philippeC#p335186 . Exactely the same generation and even the same units (Cyrus IIIi instead of Cyrus II + PSX, Rega Ela MkII instead of Rega Ela). The difference is that nowadays we are using a PC in the system and so we able to listen to 24bit-96kHz music !

[minidisc883]

I read this article a few weeks back but I still use my Sony DHC-MD515

from time to time. It's 1 of the few reason why I visit my basement other than laundry or to check the boiler.

It still sounds great and I would never sell it.

[ggabriele3]

This is a super old thread but I've been on a long train ride with nothing to do but browse old threads. 

Totally true. At 34, so many of my memories centered around my old Aiwa and Sony systems with 3-disc changers. Hell, I even have the speakers from one of them repurposed with an Apple AirPlay setup. 

By contrast, my little brother and his friends have only passing interactions with music. No favorites,  just the occasional streaming. No good headphones, just Apple earbuds. No systems - just a little Bluetooth speaker. 

 

Its a shame. They don't know what they're missing.