Does anyone else find it funny

Nobody sees the irony in this thread?
We're all on this forum because we traded our large speaker guitar rigs for small digital units...lol.

That said - I used to have a crushing stereo system in my living room. When Korn's first album came out I remember that it rumbled so hard I couldn't keep the CD from skipping. One of my favorite listening experiences. It was an item of pride - big banging stereo system.
 
Andrew Male said:
I was born in 1980, and all through the 80s and 90s I remember every house I went to having a Hi-Fi or "separates" system, with some big meaty speakers attached, it would take centre stage with the TV in a living room, people took pride in their audio equipment and would show it off to friends and family. Roll on the 2000s, the big speakers become less for music, more for "home cinema", then to now, where I don't think I've ever seen speakers dedicated to music in any house I've been to for a long time (apart from musicians).

Just thought I'd ask if anyone else feels the same and also, why?
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Totally get it. I remember as a kid my father on a quest to buy good stereo speakers. He got several pairs on loan and we tried them all out for a few weeks. He finally settled on some Celestions. They were the pride of our living room. Our TV was in a different room.
 
If you're looking for cause, it's the smartphone world. The Stereo systems of yesteryear are complicated, expensive and the audiophile guy at the store is intimidating, annoying and always trying to upsell. In retrospect, when McIntosh put out their iPhone app, that was the last dying gasp before turning into a total niche market for the last holdovers from the Boomer/early GenX crowd. They're not making money anymore. Now you go into Costco and get a system in a box, you hook it up with 2-3 cables, control it with your phone and there's no more thinking involved.

Really this is a story of "No one gives a shit about anything anymore". There are a million more of these stories. People don't read anymore, they skim. People don't take care of their cars anymore, they run through the car wash and maybe vacuum once a year or after a big road trip if they have kids.

Gibson tried to sell us guitars that tune themselves. Fortunately, that pretty much went over like a wet fart in church. I've never seen one in the wild.

People spend so much time just barely keeping up with life in the digital age that they don't take the time to do the things we used to do when life moved at a slower pace.

Elon wants to chip all of us with neuralink eventually and hook us into the starlink network. This is how we evolve I guess.
 
Lemme guess. This is what you're looking for, hmm?

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USMC_Trev said:
If you're looking for cause, it's the smartphone world. The Stereo systems of yesteryear are complicated, expensive and the audiophile guy at the store is intimidating, annoying and always trying to upsell. In retrospect, when McIntosh put out their iPhone app, that was the last dying gasp before turning into a total niche market for the last holdovers from the Boomer/early GenX crowd. They're not making money anymore. Now you go into Costco and get a system in a box, you hook it up with 2-3 cables, control it with your phone and there's no more thinking involved.

Really this is a story of "No one gives a shit about anything anymore". There are a million more of these stories. People don't read anymore, they skim. People don't take care of their cars anymore, they run through the car wash and maybe vacuum once a year or after a big road trip if they have kids.

Gibson tried to sell us guitars that tune themselves. Fortunately, that pretty much went over like a wet fart in church. I've never seen one in the wild.

People spend so much time just barely keeping up with life in the digital age that they don't take the time to do the things we used to do when life moved at a slower pace.

Elon wants to chip all of us with neuralink eventually and hook us into the starlink network. This is how we evolve I guess.
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Don't forget to check your bird often...

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Totally this thread. My girlfriend has little Alexa units in every room. The main one in the living room has "stereo speakers" that are all of about 4" apart, so you never actually get a stereo effect... the rest of the units are the little round ones that sound terrible. And she doesn't care at all. It's music, she can hear it.

Our main TV sounds like a transistor radio. I demoed a decent sound bar for her that actually had some bass and high end, she said she couldn't hear the difference... (sigh). Before I moved in with her I had an older TV that had better sound to begin with, and I had it hooked it up to my stereo with Celestions and mini center speakers, but there's nowhere to put that setup in our townhome.
 
We have a huge TV in our living room and we all watch series and movies on our laptops and cell phones. Why? The picture is undoubtedly better on the TV. I think it's the pace of consumerism and abundance of possibilites. We used to share more before, if you were listening to a hi-fi before or watch a movie (which we nowadays have less attention for), you would probably share the experience with someone else or be more absorbed by your toys. We watch series on our cell phones cause it's good enough, we usually don't seek perfection but quick satisfaction.
 
TSJMajesty said:
...Then home theater started making inroads, with 5.1 surround, so I bought a new system, still with components, but now it was a DVD player, 4 small 'cube' speakers and a sub. I'd put on Pulse on DVD and enjoy concert-quality sound, at home. And that served me well for about 15 or so years. But later on, listening to music like that sort of took a back seat...
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I jumped on the 5.1 bandwagon in the late '90s. I had a decent home stereo setup already with Teac 12" 3-way speakers, so I just added a 5.1 receiver and grabbed some other spares speakers I had on hand. I used the Teac speakers in front, a pair of Bose 501s in the rear, a 10" 3-way in the center, and a consumer-grade JBL sub. The Eagles Hell Freezes Over DVD was my go-to demo disc when friends would come over to check out my "new" system.

These days the 65" plasma TV in the living room sits unused (because of the seating arrangement...long story) and I watch "TV" at my desk on my computer. (I don't watch real TV channels. YouTube and streaming services are my preference). I have an OK pair of 5" JBL monitors on my desk, but after my wife goes to bed I simply listen with a pair of AKG headphones. All of my music listening and creation happens at the desk these days, too.
 
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