This article showed up in my news feed, and I registered just to comment. I'm a mid-40's engineer who has been a lifelong lover of music, but only discovered HiFi about 15 years ago. Audiphiledom is suffering, but it's not dead. However, I don't think 2-channel HiFi is going to resurrect it.
The problem with HiFi today is rooted in MP3s. The ubiquitous digital music CODEC arrived in the mid-90s and revolutionized how people consume music. A single CD contains about 650-700MB of uncompressed music. In 1995 a 500MB hard drive cost a few hundred dollars! As the cost of storage dropped, people were able to own vast collections of compressed digital music. In time, people got accustomed to favoring quantity over quality.
Even though the conditions that made MP3 music so revolutionary no longer exist today, the average consumer
still values quantity over quality. The most popular digital streaming services (e.g., YouTube, Spotify) still stream compressed audio, and most consumer audio gear is only good enough to make sound, not to
sound good. Point is:
there is an entire generation of people who, for the most part, don't even know what good sound is!
I could continue with more trends, like how big box stores displaced smaller businesses, recession wiped out a lot of boutique high-end audio stores, and now the Internet is cannibalizing brick and mortar shops. The point is, where does one even go to experience HiFi? Especially if you don't know it exists? And if, as this article astutely noticed, you want to consume your entertainment as more than just music absent video, why would you look to invest big bucks in 2-channel audio?
Even when I was getting into HiFi in the mid-2000s there was a perception that more than 2 speakers was somehow impure. And I'm not saying that music shouldn't be rendered on 2 speakers in a traditional HiFi sort of way, but I am saying that one needn't limit their entertainment setup to 2 channels only. For instance:
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In addition to being an audiophile, I am a prolific XBox gamer. Hence, my entertainment center needed to be more than a simple 2-channel setup for music. I built a 5.1 surround system based on Sonus Faber Cremona speakers with their matched center and sub, and I have evolved that system over the years to keep up with the times. I have a Sony 4K projector for my big screen as well as 2 additional LG flat panels. At any given time I have several XBox consoles plugged into my system; I use an 8x8 HDMI matrix to route video from any of these to any of my 3 screens (and I have occasionally run extra outputs to monitors for even more outputs).
As busy as this setup is, I still have a path to pristine 2 channel audio, using Roon to stream to a Mac Mini hosting an Ayre QB9-DSD DAC into the McIntosh chain and out the left and right towers. It's still traditional 2-channel HiFi, but with lots of extra frills for movies and gaming.
Most of my gaming friends use TVs and soundbars and whatnot. When I've had people over to play on this setup, their heads explode. They are not used to the role that good sound can contribute to gaming--they haven't been exposed to it.
Where I believe audiophiledom may be redeemed is through headphones and personal audio. The fundamental problem that needs to be solved is simply exposing people to high quality music through good audio chains so that the ones who appreciate that kind of experience can make
informed decisions about how much to invest in audio. Headphones are at least 10-20x less expensive than 2-channel HiFi for comparable quality experiences. Moreover, China has been producing increasingly excellent head-fi gear at ever-falling prices. Competition is bringing truly excellent audio within reach of what consumers are willing to pay for things like gaming headsets. Sooner or later people are going to discover what their money can buy them, and then just maybe there will be a revolution in demand for quality.
This isn't just theory or conjecture--I have been actively sharing high-end headphones with people for a couple years, and
without exception everyone has been blown away by what music they know sounds like when they can actually hear it, lol.
In any case, if people discover what a difference good sound can make to their entertainment experiences, I think that may eventually lead to more interest in 2 channel HiFi or big integrated surround systems like what I've built. But people need to know those experiences exist before they can aspire to them.
