http://edition.cnn.com/2013/09/27/tech/ ... index.html

This article is very sad.....our days are numbered.....

I think I'll go crank up the McIntosh and Bose 901's and rock the neighborhood....while I still can...

every high school student has ear buds.

no physical media, all the songs downloaded to their i-phones.

i weep for them.

Yep the era of the "stereo" is over. We live in such a fast paced society and of course portable music has been perfected so it makes sense that the young gravitate towards those kind of players.

It is amazing how much music is available to anyone inside a small package like an IPOD or iPhone. Played through a decent Bluetooth speaker (like a Jambox), it's not too bad.

But obviously none of these things can replace a real dedicated stereo system. But what are you gonna do? Time marches on.

While I'm alive, the era of the stereo system is still kicking!

I guess I kind of disagree with the article to the extent that I'd rather devote a room to setting up speakers for a DVD player than a "pure audio system". What bothers me more is the lack of boombox-type CD players on the market--my default player is an ancient Aiwa boombox that I sort of appropriated from my wife, and if it ever goes, I'm wondering if I'll be able to replace it. (I like having a player within arms reach, and I really don't need a lot of volume or resolution.) It was kind of a watershed moment last summer when I got the deluxe "Pisces Iscariot" with the bonus cassette and discovered that every remaining cassette player I owned had, at some point, completely lost the ability to play cassettes.

Ipods and stuff are all right, to the extent that I'm able to "navigate" the touchscreens. I much prefer actual buttons that I can feel myself actually pressing. Dagnabbit.

I grew up in the 60's myself (born in '49). I have a complete system set up 5 feet from where I am typing this and it hasn't been used for more than a couple of hours in the last 10 years.

When iPods and the resulting MP3 music first came out, I dismissed it completely. The main reason was how would I possibly know what several CD's I would want to listen to at any given time? And then the 120 GB iPod Classic arrived. Now this makes sense. All 500+ CD's in my possession any place I go. And with all of this music ripped at 320 kbps and a good set of ear buds or my Sennheiser headphones, to me they sound as good or better than ever.

I live by the creed of the last line in that article. "If you can take your entire music collection and more in something that fits in your pocket, why would you not do that?"

More people are spending more money than ever on home theatre systems, most of which could also handle high quality audio if the owners bothered to fuss over that part, but of course they don't. I have more than one neighbour with giant TVs and eight speakers and movie popcorn machines and everything, but for music they just listen on their phones. Video quality is something that resonates strongly with the mainstream consumer, while audio quality doesn't.

This is me, pretty much. All my music is mp3 or FLAC, and the home theater setup isn't used for playing at all. The room is such that it's not near a desk or a place where I could go on the computer or work at a desk while listening to music; it's literally designed for sitting and watching TV/Movies or gaming, and not anything else.

I listen to music on my phone with good headphones, or quite often on the porch over wifi with crappy built-in stereo speakers in my tablet. The music is the thing, not so much the quality of the sound.

My wife and I were recently talking about the Bose Wave Radio. I kind of like the idea of a higher end tabletop radio like that, something that could easily pick up radio stations and play the occasional CD. The thing that stops me though is that I'd like to have a radio that also has a USB port so that I could just slip a flash drive into it. Many radios will do bluetooth, but I refuse to buy anything apple and I don't carry music on my smart phone. If there was a high quality tabletop radio out there that played HD radio and could handle flash drives, I'd be interested. For now, I play most of my music on PCs. (with good sound cards and high quality speakers)

In the week the Yankees are eliminated - I got to read this? I hope next week is better.

a couple comments:

I (& others) feel that society/culture has changed more in the past 15 years than it did in the previous 50-75

The acceptance & even preference of low quality music reproduction sickens me.

I also don't agree completely with the statements about Americans going ape sh@t over video; while big screen Led/LCD/Plasma have completely replaced the old crt's for 90+% of the population; Blu-ray has never really taken off except amongst enthusiasts. I think the main reasons are the price of the discs (which are rapidly dropping & I mean rapidly for all but new releases) & the general hassles caused by copyguards/firmware/ etc. Also standard def cable is compressed beyond belief, even looking bad on 480i crt's, & most users don't care. I guess it's kind of like when I originally believed that cd really was "perfect sound forever"; even though my records sounded better I didn't believe what I was hearing & figured I must have a defective cd. (What I now know I was hearing were really crappy early cd players & crappy early a/d convertors used in mastering)

Several things I came to take for granted with dvd (the player remembering where I stopped the disc, almost instant playback, & Zoom to name 3), are either not available with br, or are only intermittently available. I.E.; use of br's is a an UNNECESSARY pain. By unnecessary, I mean if the b@$t@rd$ would stop treating their customers as pirates, there is no reason blu couldn't function just like dvd.

Bluetooth audio is quite noticeably lower quality than a direct connection with a cable if that matters to you, but you do know that there are lots of options out there to not have to use an Apple product, right? You could use Google Play Music, for one thing, on your smartphone, and not carry any music on it but just stream high quality from the cloud. They let you upload 20,000 songs for free, available anywhere you have a data or wifi connection. No storing on the phone needed.

I feel great.

We have Sonos in our house. Two standalone speakers - one in the living room and one in the upstairs rec room, and an amp that plugs into speakers that are wired both into the kitchen and master bedroom. We can play music ripped onto my main PC, or (more commonly) any number of streaming services - most commonly Rhapsody, Pandora or SiriusXM. Each unit can play different stuff, or they can be grouped together. The two standalone speakers can be configured as right and left channels, but I'm deaf in my left ear, so we keep them mono.

The whole shooting match is controlled by a smartphone app.

Well I have iTunes on my desktop computer for brief listening sessions with little Bose computer speakers.

But I also have two full-fledged stereo systems (living room, CD/music room) in the house for REAL listening, and a full-sized CD/iPod jukebox with additional external speakers for game room fun.

I will never be without a real stereo. My daughters have laptops and iHomes, but they are starting to get the itch for turntables and actual stereos in their rooms. Makes me happy!

Afaik, my 23 yo 1/2 sister knows that mp3 sucks (at least that's what she has told me), but they are still her listening format of choice. For her, everything is either streaming or using her smart phone as a playback device. And she's a huge music fan.

At one point, i had discussed with her leaving her my music & movie collection in my will as she is my only living immediate family member. Again, though she's a huge music fan & likes a lot of what I do, she had 0 interest. She seems to feel that physical media is a waste of space.......

sad

Hahahahaha. I feel great too. I love the portability of music today. I've listened to so much crazy loud music that I can barely hear anyway.

What?

I love the portability - where I usually use my iPods I wouldn't be using a good stereo system anyway. But when it comes to real listening, it's on the quality stuff.

lol...I wish I had time for real listening. It's either the car or the office for me. Or when I'm running.

Has the Sad Sack character HiFi changed his name to WiFi yet?

Most of mine is also either car or pc. Still better than an mp3 player!