If you really want to, you can still buy a turntable for $25,000, and a stylus for it for $5,000, and some really fancy audio cables for almost $3,000 per meter.  Your friends will probably think you’re nuts, and the hell with them.  But even if your audio system is the kind that most non-billionaires buy, it appears that the days of high quality audio appreciation are numbered.

The vast majority of music consumers now listen to heavily compressed files on portable devices, using the kind of cheap earbuds that most audiophiles consider to be an insult to their eustachian tubes.  And there’s another phenomenon that’s rendering high end audio systems irrelevant, at least for modern music:  there’s a nasty thing called the loudness race, where everyone wants his or her CD to sound louder than everyone else’s.  As a result, many of today’s CDs are so heavily overloaded, distorted and clipped that they sound like crap, and the only difference between listening to them on a cheap portable player and a good home system is that on the home system, you get faithfully reproduced crap instead of crap that’s degraded even more.  

Note that I said many of today’s CDS, not all – the new Snakes And Arrows album from Rush is a great example of how to not destroy great music.  

In any case, the signs are there:  traditional home audio system retailers are closing stores left and right while portable digital audio player manufacturers – particularly Apple – are racking up awe-inspring sales figures.  And why not?  For a generation of music consumers who have been raised on compressed music, without having anything to which they can compare it, being able to carry 20,000 songs around in your pocket is a pretty easy sell.  

Read more at CNN.

Speaking of clipped, overloaded crap, try listening to The Killers Hot Fuss.  It sounds like it was recorded out of a headphone jack.

another concern is space.  I just moved and I have no where to set up my stereo... but my billion gig iPod fits into one of those little docking speaker things and ttucks awauy int he living room.  I get the 6,000 songs, no space for CD racks, amps, speakers, cables, power bars... music sounds good enough.

being a music nerd, I couldn't chuck my record player and old Kenwood and racks of records, tapes and CDs so they are all in storage to be played with later.

..NO mention about using reel tape anymore..

-- shameful!

This on the day after the Canucks... its just too much, all too much ....

nothing beats the smooth sound of tubes and turntables...

I stopped buying CD's for this very reason. I refuse to buy total crap produced CD's all maxed out and compressed. I can't believe people still put up with it. The music industry just doesn't get it. They dug their own grave.

Me now.... I love vinyl... used to cassette all my records so I wouldn't wear them out, then re-record when they got fuzzy.  Does anyone know how well this new generation of turntable/cassette/CD burner combo systems perform?  I've noticed that at least somne manufacturers (like TEAC and Sony) are beginning to glance at this vinyl nostalgia demograpghic, small as I suspect it is.  
(Oh, and if anyoine knows yet, how well do the CD burners on these relatively inexpensive systems - 500 bucks or so - perform?

I'm not sure I like how those "classic" systems look or sound.  They look cheap and sound like my clock radio.

Q: Doesn't radio compress their songs and then compress them more when broadcasting?  Seems to me that I can hear compression artifacts in the music when I'm listening to terrestrial - over the air radio.

AM Radio - it's the Way!

("Daddy? What's a 'audiophile'?")

Quoted from pave

("Daddy? What's a 'audiophile'?")

Son, If one ever speaks to you or tries to touch you, run run screaming for help!!!! They are very dangerouse and most are crazy!!!!

Quoted from Airwaver

..NO mention about using reel tape anymore

Okay, I'll step up.  I still have my Studer Revox B77 MK1, which I acquired when I worked at Central Electronics (the service department for House Of Stein and Kelly's Stereo Marts).  It still works with much sweetness.

Also, Winston eschewed all things digital during the recording and production of his latest album, Limited.

Well, up til the point where they put it on CD, anyway.

Quoted from MonteVideo

Speaking of clipped, overloaded crap, try listening to The Killers Hot Fuss.

Also The Goo Goo Dolls -- Let Love In, Rush -- Vapor Trails and U2 -- How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb.  What a mess.

I'm often surprised that the artists don't listen to the results and demand that somebody fix it.  But then I guess quality control might be one of the things you give up when you sign that contract in blood.

Quoted from ScottJames

...Kelly's Stereo Marts

Wow, I haven't heard of Kelly's in so long, I can't even remember where I've seen or heard of one!!!  (Just remember the name!)

Quoted from Glen_Quagmire

Wow, I haven't heard of Kelly's in so long, I can't even remember where I've seen or heard of one!!!  (Just remember the name!)

Helluva great place to work.  All of the record store staff upstairs were music-heads, and all of the staff downstairs in The Service Dept Dungeon were tech-heads.  Mr. Johann Berno Shayne and Mr. Bill Reiter used to come in and buy discs from us.  Very cool folks.

Sigh ...