When CDs were about to come out my stereo buddy and I were licking our chops like lions that just killt something because we were going to get 98% of whatever they captured on the master tape fed directly to our stereos. We had to wait for a while until the price of CD players came down. And even then CDs themselves were a little pricey. They cost about as much as a good quality album at first and then came down some. I didn't have even 100 them when I took a hiatus from the hobby in 1994. When I came back in 2017 they were more or less free.
There has been lots of advancement in all sorts of things. But microphones are still a limiting factor as are the techniques of using them. Similarly over at Audio Science Review they tell me that there are great advances in loudspeaker drivers since I built my system in the late seventies but I actually don't see it. I have not seen any raw loudspeaker drivers (and I have looked) that make me want to change my system. There is much more choice today if someone was building a set of speakers. There have been some evolutionary improvements but nothing revolutionary.
I went to the "high end show" in Chicago at the CES in the mid seventies. The "million dollar" system then was Marc Levenson's stacked quad electrostat system, with decca ribbon tweeters, and giganto Hartly wooofers (30 inch), driven by levenson electronics. He had a Studer multichannel tape system playing stereo that he had recorded himself. But even that one was not as ridiculously priced as what we have seen since. Levensons electronics were among the first crazy priced things but they seem reasonable compared to todays stuff. I call it yacht store stereo equipment. If you ask the price you don't belong there. Also if you know anything about electronics or acoustics you also don't belong there because you might mention accidentally to other potential customers that speaker wire trestles are a fraud.
We have seen in other threads the sexy girls in old stereo adverts. They wanted to listen to their favorite rock acts in good quality hifi. I don't think that does the job today, but what do I know.
I listen to mostly classical music. I do like some rock and roll mainly up to when the Beatles broke up. Not much subsequent.
Hi,
@Sonik Wiz !!
I missed Quadraphonic I because 1) I didn't see any album releases that made me want to upgrade 2) I never ever heard a quad system even though I frequented stereo shops. None of them had quad on display 3) I didn't happen to know anyone who had a quad system that might have given me the bug.
My only exposure during my hiatus was I saw a small setup in a store that had digital discs I don't know which flavor they were. They had four small speakers suspended in the air. I remember checking the price tag of the smallish system and the program discs and was dismayed by both.
