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--- audio:american_audio_ages [2018/10/16 00:19] – [American Audio Ages: The medium is the message [DRAFT]] mithat
+++ audio:american_audio_ages [2021/05/10 20:10] (current) – mithat
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 **Abstract**
-We establish that a relationship exists between an age's dominant audio delivery media and the sociology of that age. Implications of this relationship for successful audio system design are explored. It is posited that the decline of the high-end audio niche in the United States owes predominantly to its failure to recognize the sociological shifts in the mainstream market as represented by shifts in dominant audio delivery media.
+We establish that a relationship exists between an age's predominant audio delivery media and the sociology of that age. Implications of this relationship for successful audio system design are explored. It is posited that the decline of the high-end audio niche in the United States owes predominantly to its failure to recognize the sociological shifts in the mainstream market as represented by shifts in dominant audio delivery media.
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 The first major challenge to the LP was the compact cassette. While originally it was incapable of delivering results comparable to the LP, several technological innovations led to it performing well enough that its physical advantages over the LP began to assert significant appeal. The greatest of the physical advantages was the medium's portability, and this was leveraged initially in car audio. However, it didn't take long for the portability to be leveraged in other ways.
-Around the time that the cassette started to approach hi-fi quality, people in the U.S. stated becoming more concerned with physical fitness, and many began to make activities like jogging, running, and other solitary workouts part of a regular routine. This led Sony to develop the Walkman, and this ushered in a whole new way for people to engage with recorded music.
+Around the time that the cassette started to approach hi-fi quality, people in the U.S. stated becoming more concerned with physical fitness. As a result, many began to make activities like jogging, running, and other solitary workouts part of a regular routine. This led Sony to develop the Walkman, and this ushered in a whole new way for people to engage with recorded music.
 The audio performance delivered by the Walkman and similar products that followed was high enough that users began to use Walkman-like devices over a broad range of activities. And because the Walkman demonstrated that reasonably good quality audio could also be portable, a big shift in user expectations regarding portability resulted.
-One class of product resulting from the increased expectations of portability was the boom box. While small and portable LP systems had existed for some time, their convenience was limited by that medium's format. The boom box didn't suffer from those inconveniences, and for a large number of users it provided sufficient audio quality. The combination of a Walkman-like device for personal listening and a boom box for social use had additional appeal for some users since it meant they didn't need to duplicate media. Owing to the low acquisition costs that resulted from its high level of functional integration as well as the ease with which it permitted sharing of music, the boom box let a large social demographic who normally wouldn't or couldn't purchase music playback systems become active music consumers.
+One class of product resulting from the increased expectations of portability was the boom box. While small and portable LP systems had existed for some time, their convenience was limited by that medium's format. The boom box didn't suffer from those inconveniences, and for a large number of users it provided sufficient audio quality. The combination of a Walkman-like device for personal listening and a boom box for social use had additional appeal for some users since it meant they didn't need to duplicate media. Owing to the low acquisition costs that resulted from its high level of functional integration as well as the ease with which it permitted sharing of music, the boom box also let a large social demographic who normally wouldn't or couldn't purchase music playback systems become active music consumers.
-This rise of low-cost personal and social cassette-based playback equipment put pressure on the kinds of systems that evolved around LP playback for bedroom-community lifestyles. Mainstream manufacturers of these systems started to look for ways to maintain profits, and one of the common ways they did this was by lowering quality. Thus, the audio high-end niche came into its own as a reaction against the resulting "low-fi" (boom-box) and "mid-fi" (mainstream component) audio markets. A strong marketing differentiation between audio-for-everybody and audio-for-audiophiles began, narrowing the high-end niche to only those who "really cared about sound."
+This rise of low-cost personal and social cassette-based playback equipment put pressure on the kinds of systems that evolved around LP playback for bedroom-community lifestyles. Mainstream manufacturers of these systems started to look for ways to maintain profits, and one ways they achieved this was to lower quality. Thus, the audio high-end niche came into its own as a reaction against the resulting "low-fi" (boom-box) and "mid-fi" (mainstream component) audio markets. A strong marketing differentiation between audio-for-everybody and audio-for-audiophiles began, narrowing the high-end niche to only those who "really cared about sound."
 ==== CD: quality and competition ====
-The digital CD (compact disc) was introduced as an alternative to the analog LP in 1982. Unlike the other delivery media discussed here, the introduction of the CD didn't coincide with sociological changes in its target user base or general population; it represents almost entirely only a technological innovation. However, a strong nod to the portability requirement brought about by the cassette age is evident. Retail distribution channels were clear in their desire that any new medium designed to supplant the LP not force them to change their existing handling and merchandising.  Even though a form of optical disc about the same size as the LP was already available for video content delivery, Philips and Sony opted for a format that was less than half the diameter of the LP.
+The digital CD (compact disc) was introduced as an alternative to the analog LP in 1982. Unlike the other delivery media discussed here, the introduction of the CD didn't coincide with sociological changes in its target user base or general population; it represents almost entirely only a technological innovation. However, a strong nod to the portability requirement brought about by the cassette age is evident. Retail distribution channels were clear in their desire that any new medium designed to supplant the LP not force them to change their existing handling and merchandising. A form of optical disc about the same size as the LP was already available for video content delivery, and this seemed to match the requirements of music retailers.  In spite of this, Philips and Sony opted for a format that was less than half the diameter of the LP.
 The launch of the CD was accompanied by promises of "perfect sound forever" that neither the cassette nor the LP were capable of. And while it quickly became evident that for the first generation of players those promises were hyperbole, it did establish in users' minds that there was a potential standard of audio that was significantly higher than the LP and cassette status quo. Many consumers were captivated by this potential, and this no doubt benefited the high-end niche for a time.
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 relationship with phone as "life repository".
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-==== What's next? ====
-Without doubt, future changes in sociology and technology will occur, and these changes will impact mainstream audio consumption. The exact changes that are likely to happen are not clear. However, for the near future, we can engage in some speculation.
+===== What's next? =====
+Without doubt, future changes in sociology and technology will occur, and these changes will impact mainstream audio consumption. The exact changes that are likely to happen are not clear. However, we can engage in some speculation.
 Sociological trends we expect to continue include reurbanization/gentrification, specifically young and wealthy demographics choosing to live in multi-unit structures in urban areas rather than bedroom communities. In addition, we expect to see increased disparity between wealthy, middle class, and impoverished demographics. The disparity will likely not be limited to income: access to social services and technological infrastructures may also be impacted. Technologically, we expect to see advances in wired and wireless streaming capacity as well as pushes in the area of IoT.
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 One possible outcome for those with means is an increase in "interdeviceness" --- multiple devices functioning in integrated, intelligent ways --- in support of increasingly instant and virtual mindsets. For those with lesser means, greater reliance on a minimal set of technology, including a minimal set of devices, to solve and manage life issues might result.
-===== Implications for high-end audio =====
+==== Implications for high-end audio =====
 A relationship between an age's dominant audio delivery media and the sociology of that age is evident. Equally evident is the impact of these on successful audio system design.
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 The high-end's failure to maintain formal relevance to the changing sociology, lifestyle requirements, and lifestyle choices in the greater population is compounded by advances in technology that render promises of heightened experience less convincing.((This is a subject I don't deal with further here but deserving its own paper.)) This without doubt is at the core of the significant downturn in the volume of high-end sales in the last several years in the U.S.
-There are strong indications that depth of the high-end niche (which is to say, the interest on the part of existing user demographics to bear a cost in the pursuit of higher experiences) has saturated in the US. Given this and the fact that the width of a narrowing niche eventually approaches zero, the prognosis for high-end audio isn't good. Even if the former were able to be overcome (e.g., with convincing promises of yet better performance), it still won't stop the progressive narrowing of the niche --- a narrowing caused by the high end's dogged insistence on formal paradigms that are increasingly irrelevant to new user requirements.
+There are strong indications that the depth of the high-end niche (which is to say, the interest on the part of existing user demographics to bear a cost in the pursuit of higher experiences) has saturated in the U.S. Given this and the fact that the width of a narrowing niche eventually approaches zero, the prognosis for high-end audio isn't good. Even if the former were able to be overcome (e.g., with convincing promises of yet better performance), it still won't stop the progressive narrowing of the niche --- a narrowing caused by the high end's dogged insistence on formal paradigms that are increasingly irrelevant to new user requirements.
 In the absence of profound change, the fate of high-end audio in America is clear.