I have Sonos throughout my house and I love it. The company was founded and is headquartered in my town. I’m a big fan but no one should be bragging about getting it for the sound. It’s meant to be convenient with good enough sound. You can definitely get better sound for the same dollars and much better for more money. Nothing to brag about but if you’re like me, and most people are these days, you’re listening to services like Spotify or SiriusXM streaming and better equipment shouldn’t make a difference.
Totally! And I’m in no way trying to degrade either Sonos or Sonos owners. I love having a home full of (good) sound.
But this is a big shift from the main driver for most classic audiophiles: to reproduce as accurately as possible the experience of live performance. For example, I mentioned the sweet spot. One thing to expect from hobbyist audiophiles is, “We need to sit side-by-side in THIS couch.” A typical comment from my audiophile friends in the 70s was, “I shifted each DCM out about 6” and then angled them. That meant I had to move the couch back a few feet, so I had to get rid of the sideboard behind it.”
Of course we’re just talking about music. The other type of audiophile, which didn’t exist before, is for having systems connected to high end tvs and want an immersive audiovisual system. That seems to be alive and well.
Which brings us around to the almost universal and relatively inexpensive access to video and music on demand of pretty much every movie, TV show, or record ever made. How does any hobby compete with that for our leisure time?
It makes sense - when you connect your audio system to a high-end TV, you’re planning on sitting in a fixed location at length to watch TV and movies or play video games, so there’s an incentive to optimize the sound quality at the “sweet spot.” OTOH, just sitting on the couch and listening to music on a high-end audio system that’s not connected to a screen is going to strike most people below a certain age as a bizarre use of their time.
Re audiophiles: How is the vinyl collectors sub-hobby doing these days? I go to see a lot of retro-genre (Rockabilly/Surf/Garage/Punk) bands and it seems that vinyl is as popular as the t-shirts at the merch booth.
Absolutely! Fascinating to hear the difference and subtlety you get from moving around in a good 5.1 or 7.1 system.
And I have to confess that I’ve always caught hell for being a fan of bidirectional speakers. Many audiophiles consider them a tool of the Devil. But, for me, they really make sense in some situations.
Pretty well though vinyl sales are leveling off after years of solid growth. Like nearly everything else, it’s a hobby where money talks. New albums are increasingly a ‘premium’ product with producers trying to justify the $35-$45+ price tags with ‘limited’ colored vinyl and fancier presentation. In other words, you’re buying it for the vinyl as much as for the music on it.
CD collecting is becoming the common man’s vinyl collecting. The used record stores are pretty picked over for great cheap vinyl finds but I guess there’s still plenty of $5 CDs in the used shops from people liquidating their old collections in the digital age.
Heck, any time I pass a tennis court it is always empty (with the notable exception of a set of courts near my late mom’s condo in Florida).
I saw, and cannot now find, an article with some eye-opening statistic about how many vinyl purchasers do not own a turntable. Something on the order of 50%!
There’s a number of stats that are broadly the same. This article says that 50% of purchasers don’t own a turntable and then names an earlier survey that 41% of buyers own a turntable but don’t use it. I assume this doesn’t actually equal only 9% of vinyl purchasers ever spinning their records though.
In previous vinyl-related posts here we’ve have Dopers who mentioned owning and not playing (or having the equipment to play) their albums. They own them just to own them. I personally make a point of spinning everything at least once and the bigger barrier is the location of the turntable in relation to the TV. Hard to play records when my wife is watching Love Island.
Like buying books as decoration.
When I started collecting vinyl in the early 2000s, I was amazed at the stuff I could pick up on the cheap - The Who, Ray Charles, even the Beatles. You could walk into a flea market, and, without spending a lot of money, walk out with two armfuls of records.
Now, even artists who don’t have much of a following today, like Greg Kihn or Kim Carnes, will command a premium.
Another thing I’ve noticed in recent years is that even Herb Alpert’s Whipped Cream and Other Delights has become rare in the wild. That record used to be available in just about every thrift shop, flea market and used record store in the country, but I can’t remember the last time I saw a copy.
Anyway, the market for used CDs is where the market for used vinyl was about 20 years ago. You can get some great albums for under five bucks in just about any flea market and thrift store. Hell, I remember going to a rummage sale last year where a guy was literally giving his CD collection away, and he had a lot of good stuff too.
Film Photography!
You’d think that it’s because the gear is no longer being mass produced–there are a few today, but nothing like in the 90s–but there was more than a century of film camera production, so there are tons of them out there, many in perfect condition, some in need of a little TLC to get them going.
Mostly it’s because you really have to love the art of film photography for it to be worth the effort. I have cameras that I carry around that cannot come close to my phone in photo quality, but I still prefer them any day of the week.
Even more rare: printing photos in the darkroom. I do this, and I wonder just how many darkroom hobbyists remain.
yep, I am (used to be) one of those …
nobody today really gives a $hit … my kids, while enjoying my decent setup couldn’t care less about the equipment behind it. Also, today there is lots of inexpensive (often chinese) hifi-stuff that is surprisingly / incredibly good.
Just look at those $30,- IEM / headphones that play with the best of established brands that cost 5-100 times that. Same for $100,- digital-amps that outperform easily your 1990ies $5k amps (you probably know Amir’s website).
I am surprised (and moved into this segment a couple of years ago) - of what great sound you can get out of a “3 digits dollar” hifi-set if carefully selected.
fwiw: I go BT into a D50 Topping DAC → Virtue Audio 2 d-amp → small Dali 8” sub and Q-Audio Concept 20 —> = audio heaven compared to what I used to own before that
I read about pickleball, but have not seen it (might look it up) … but here locally (Chile), Padel has taken the crown over the past 2-4 years - just in my neighborhood there are now more padel-courts than you could shake a stick at.
Its a crossbreed between tennis and squash it seems, but I am pretty sure its a fad, b/c who wants to play tennis with a solid racket (scratches head) … that HAS to be awkward.
also: in a moment of stupidity, i bought rollerblades a couple of years ago (I was an avide ‘blader in the 80ies) … they must have now have some 15.000 miles on them (ALL of it in the trunk of my car 
) … yep, some youth memories are best not re-hashed and left alone
With hints of ping-pong and wiffleball.
Yes, indeed! And speakers continue to be 80% of the sound.
“Uncle ZonexandScout, why do you have these huge old speakers? You know they make bookshelf speakers now, don’t you?”
“Well, Nephew Digithead, why do some guys fix up muscle cars?”
Here is the ultimate example of a crazy audio system that ended up going to waste. Old dude spent around a million dollars on his home system. His kids wanted nothing to do with it and ended up parting it out for $156k
https://www.headphonesty.com/2024/04/audiophiles-dream-stereo-system-sold-death/
Do you have any experience with the Fosi gear?
Can you please talk me out of buying this one? I need another amp like I need a hole in my tire but I already wanted a Fosi before I found this local ad.