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CONTRARY
TO POPULAR BELIEF,
HIGH-END
AUDIO IS NOT DYING.
IT HAS BEEN DEAD AND ROTTING
IN ITS GRAVE FOR OVER A DECADE.
The
high-end audio Emperor has no clothes.
In
the annals of capitalist enterprise, no industry—that we are aware of—has gone to greater lengths to
alienate, bamboozle, and disenfranchise the very consumer base that can
secure its preservation and growth than high-end audio. In the process, it has
practically lost its
audience, not to mention its own soul.
This
peculiar industry, fueled—instead of being called to
task—by an utterly discredited high-end audio press, would have
you believe that you need to spend the equivalent
cost of a house in order to assemble a
system—connected together with wires costing the
equivalent of an automobile—which will provide you
with
compelling, emotionally involving, truly high quality music
reproduction. Meanwhile, industry pundits rack
their brains wondering how they can demonstrate to
youngsters—on whose shoulders the future success of
the industry rests—why mp3s aren't all that great-sounding. Talk
about fighting
the absolutely wrong battles.
It
used to be that the pursuit of emotional music
reproduction drove the high-end audio industry.
How times have changed. Today, the equipment has become the end instead of
the means, with the industry doing little more than fueling
unbridled conspicuous consumption motivated by a patently pornographic
mindset.
Implicitly, we
see the pornography in the physical appearance of ever more
astronomically expensive "audio jewelry" and
the consumer lust it is intended to foster, stoked by a high-end audio press
that,
instead of exercising its proper role as responsible
watchdog, serves as little more than the
manufacturers' servile pimp. We see it, moreover, in the
audiophile press's adoption of locker room parlance
in its component reviews, where we are constantly
reminded of "bass with balls" and pummeled by the
even more ingrained and repulsively sexist mantra of
the "wife acceptance
factor"—as if the women are the actual
problem.
Explicitly,
the pornography is manifest in the manufacturers' advertising
components embellished by voluptuous women in
hyper-tight dresses. (We know that sex sells, but are we supposed to get more
"bass with balls" with the shorter skirts?)
Even one
popular online review magazine's web site shows the latest components under review
framed by—get ready for this—young women in underwear adopting very
highly provocative poses. (It seems not just the
Emperor has lost his clothes.) When you need to scream like that to get your
audience's
attention, you and the industry that you represent are in deeper trouble than you
understand.
Is it
any wonder that this peculiar industry, with only rare exceptions,
has become an almost exclusively
middle-aged and above, male-only club? (If you think this is
exaggeration, take a careful look at pictures of the
crowds attending all the major high-end audio shows.
Draw your own conclusions.)
But moving beyond the pornography,
gratuitous as it has become, there
lies the even more insidious aspect of a decadent industry
in full demise: it has become
anti-capitalist and anti-consumer at its core. The
marketing of ever more
astronomically priced audio jewelry negates and
undermines the very
concept of competition and progress. The venerable capitalist
ethos of
"How can we make it better for less?" has
fueled progress and sustainability in every
industry. Today's high-end audio culture has
utterly perverted this maxim, inviting its own
extinction in the process. The new ethos is
motivated by a "How
we can we gussy it up and charge way more while delivering
microscopically less?"
mentality. Anyone with a little know-how can easily
produce a product, bling it to death, and
psychologically price it
to nourish a buyer's deep-seated insecurities (it
costs $100,000 so it MUST be good). But it requires authentic
genius to design and produce something
truly exceptional yet within the realm of
affordability to the average white collar worker. The
former example bespeaks profligacy for its own sake;
the latter, true inspiration and talent.
After
all, what is better, in the end, for the
sustainability of high-end audio: four new purchasers of $250,000 systems
or five hundred new purchasers of $2,000 systems?
The industry gains a cool million either way, but the long-term
survival implications of
either scenario play out very differently, don't you
think?
As
dark as things have gotten, it's
not all doom and gloom, happily. The Emperor simply
needs a new tailor. The
(remaining) brick and mortar dealers that can see the forest for
the trees can turn the tide by behaving more as
patient farmers instead of gung-ho fishermen, and
their product selection and customer service must
reflect the new ethos if they have any hope of
surviving.
Farmers till and fertilize the soil, taking their
time to educate the
younger generation of music lovers now and reaping
the harvest later when they acquire
some disposable income and desire something nicer
than that thousand-dollar plastic box they're seeing
heavily advertised in lifestyle magazines and on
television.
Dealers, take note:
take the time
to show the new generation around the store, even if all they
want is information or a set of headphones. Introduce them, expose
them, educate them. Hell, even
play mp3s for them, if that's what they listen to.
But play them some cuts from an LP, as well. Water
their seeds.
Fishermen,
always intent on going after the big one, risk drying up
the pond before its time. Farmers, on the other
hand, feed
and nourish more people in the end. Therein lies the
lesson.
______________________________________________________
Our primary mission at EarHead Audio
is to bring
truly high quality music reproduction into the lives
of music lovers. Even
if you cannot invest in our more expensive offerings, we are betting
that you will at least purchase a
set of GRADO LABS SR60i headphones once you've listened to them,
simply because...
FOR AS
LITTLE AS $79.00 PLUS TAX,
YOU CAN OWN THE BEST SOUNDING
STEREO SYSTEM YOU’VE EVER HEARD
LISTEN TO YOUR ENTIRE MUSIC COLLECTION AGAIN...
FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME
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