CEA Study on the Demand for Sound Quality...

Good point.

 

Most people want better sound but don't understand how much better it can be. Sometimes I persuade people by playing an SACD in my listening room for my neighbors. It's sort of like an educated consumer is high end's best friend.

I agree.

 

I agree with Lee, but you're right.

 

That's exactly the thing. Audiophile buzz words and obsessions mean nothing to most people. It's not that they're idiots or knuckle draggers, it's just that they don't have any interest in it.

Think of it this way:
I don't give a rat's behind about wood working as a hobby, so if a hard core wood working enthusiast came to my house and rolled his eyes at my off-the-shelf furnishings and eloquently (or arrogantly) preached the virtues of high quality DIY furnishings what do you think would happen? I'd never invite the guy over again as long as I live. And then I'd sit on my crappy furniture and listen to my stereo.

Maybe it's not the best analogy, but I think it's close to what we're dealing with. Audiophiles are basically hobbyists. That's all.

dan c

 

I'm convinced at this point that lots of people literally can't hear the difference between good quality sound and poor quality sound. They may subliminally sense more engagement or disengagement to the music depending on the quality, but it's not anything they could ever put their finger on.

Now the screen on their TV -- that matters to them. Doesn't matter much to me, but whatever.

 

IMO there is zero consumer demand for sound quality. Consumers love their heavily compressed files and their slammed/clipped/maximized albums. 99% of the music that people listen to don't even approach the capabilities of a good CD that guys like Steve, Ted Jensen, Doug Sax et al make. Throwing new systems and new formats into the mix isn't going to change anything.

I'm sure the CEA can cook up any kind of biased poll that they want to try to spin something and maybe sell some new gear, but I'm sure it's all filthy lies. Only the miniscule audiophile niche cares about sound quality, and that niche seems smaller than ever.

If anything, what some consumers want is to be handed a Bose Wave Radio and be told that it sounds better. They'll be as happy as can be, and be none the wiser!

 

I have a different perspective. I think consumers have seemingly no demand for sound quality because most of them suffer from:

1. Lack of understanding about sound quality and how good it can be.
2. Confusion among technical specifications.
3. Horrific marketing by most consumer electronic companies, especially high end ones.
4. Conflicting advice from store to store about technical subjects like speaker placement, cables, specs, all sorts of things.
5. A plethora of competing standards...SACD v. DVDA, CD v. DualDisc, HDMI v. DVI v. Component, 5.1 versus 7.1, black levels versus contrast ratios, 1080i v. 1080p, 720p, 480, it's all one big alphabet soup.
6. Remote controls even a recording engineer and math PhD can't figure out.

Let's face it the industry has made life far more complicated than necessary so people have turned their attention to easy to use things like the iTunes store.

 

Or perhaps ease-of-use is something consumers are mostly interested in. I'm embarrassed to tell my coworkers the ritual I go through before I listen to an album. It's something they would never dream of doing. I don't even mention I still listen to vinyl, I got tired of the "you still listen to those old scratchy things?" comments. Nobody I know or work with even listens to music for pleasure. They might listen to the radio on the way to work, they might listen as background music when they're doing something, but it's not important to them the way it is to me. If I held a seminar and explained all the pros and cons of music listening and all the benefits they could get from an improved setup and the right software 99% would leave and not change a thing. It's not a priority to them.

 

Not me. I have a lot invested but I understand the problem with affordability. I'd like to see people get the best for their money, though. It's possible to spend plenty on lousy equipment, and that's where I think the need for education and good information is important.

 

I know many people that really seem to love their music but don't care about the sound quality. My next-door neighbors and my daughter are two examples. In fact my neighbors tell me they used to have a good sound system when they were younger, but got rid of it when they moved and now just have a little bookshelf all-in-one compact thing. They have have lots of CDs, though, enjoy them, and even play things specially for me when I visit.

 

My takeaway from this is different than the foregoing posts. Surround sound listening modes are important principally to someone who is using the audio system in conjunction with a TV (probably in a home theatre or large TV setup). The most important specification cited by the purchasers is that the audio system will play the Dolby and DTS modes that the typical DVD movie or HDTV viewer encounters. Therefore, it appears that less than 27% (and perhaps a lot less) of the purchasers are actually acquiring an audio system principally to listen to music.

I would be interested in seeing the results of the survey for the universe of purchasers who did not cite surround sound modes as the most important spec. I am hopeful that this group - which I expect includes a larger proportion who are interested in listening to music on their systems - would be somewhat better informed.

Also note that the survey results are skewed in the comparisions of sales between portable audio and home separates. People who buy the portables are principally doing so to listen to music (or what they consider to be music). We see that about three-quarters of the audio separates purchasers are really just buying audio systems for their TVs. Now consider the comparison between portables sales and non-TV-related audio separates sales.

 

Good point Hal. This is a very difficult thing to get good results on...

 

I've said this before, but we have passed into a situation now where if people (the overwhelming majority) want to listen to music only, they use iPods or equivalent. The only thing audio components and speakers are used for anymore is computer sound (small desktop powered speakers) and TV/Movie sound (larger speakers and/or subwoofers). I know so many people who used to have audio systems (they used to be called "stereos") but have put them away in the attic or gotten rid of them.

 

I still listen to music on my mid-line HT system.

 

I agree. I don't care about driving the latest and greatest sports car - to me, a car is a means from getting to Point A to Point B (especially if there's a record store at Point B ). While someone who owns a new Mercedes S-Class sedan would probably look down at my means of transportation, it gets the job done. For lots of people, an entry-level bookshelf CD system serves the same musical purpose as my crappy used car - it gets the job done.

 

Just for the record. I used "Joe Public" to mean your normal clueless consumer that asks for your typical marketing buzz word when shopping. I did not mean to demean working class people. Maybe the "Joe Public" concept as you are interpreting it escaped me as a result of getting lost in translation.

BTW, I bet you that the guy you describe is an expert at things he likes, be them cars, girls or whatever.

Finally, please notice that I centered my comment on the lousy marketing communications. The general consumer goes into a store and asks if a certain player can play mp3 or Dolby Digital because that is what he/she has read or heard everybody mention. Regardless of if they plan to use it or not, correctly or not. It happens on your neck of the woods and I've seen it happen in mine. It is also why people are more into flat panel TVs and mp3 players than other technology we love.

 

Quite in line with what I meant.

 

Things are not important until they become so.

When I first bought my cheap universal player, the guy who sold it to me suggested I get good interconnects (maybe hand made at a specialized store). It took me over a year of listening to HiRez to start to feel the need for that.

It is true that tech talk alienates the normal consumer, yet ignorance in this matter might be bliss specially to record companies that do not have to feel forced to put out better product than to the clueless consumer him or herself. Just think about all the hard work that goes into producing a well played, recorded and mastered album especially if it is also to be HiRez and include 5.1 option. Isn't it just easier to go the less
-effort-more-money way?

 

You guys are creating class warfare where it doesn't exist. We are not saying at all that one needs to buy some $5K amps. We are saying the high end community needs to do a better job of marketing $1,000 systems.

Everybody can listen to fine sounding music these days with all the technology advances and trickle down technology...many a bookshelf system sounds great these days.

 

They "DO NOT" care, "AT ALL" and no amount of advertising will change that. Think about how much many of us pay for the privilege of hearing the best quality we can afford. I know you must realize how much mark-up there is in most of our purchases. Don't you think that if the manufacturers had even a half of a chance at reaping that profit they would have been on it like flies on pooh. The profit margin right now on downloads is astronomical. The record companies are richer and therefore happier than they ever have been, each and every download -100% Profit-. Those horrible cheap players, that they make or have investments in, (in some cases) 70% Profit. I look at Sony and .

 

Absolutely right. People are buying huge HDTVs in droves. Profits must be staggering. I read an article in my local paper this week about how people are rearranging their homes and furniture and the way they live just to accomodate the TVs. It's even effecting home design and architecture now. But music - no. Smaller is the ticket no matter what the quality that results. For a long time now, placement of a song on a movie soundtrack is a great way to generate sales and success for artists, too. More so than radio airplay anymore it seems like, but I don't have statistics.

Video killed audio.

 

The "average" consumer heard the music, not the technology or the sound of the music. And, they aren't wired to hear sound like we are, so they don't care or have a clue. So, 128 kbps mp3s downloaded from Napster fits their bill perfectly. "There are no scratches, no skips, no surface noise, there's bass and treble, so what's the problem?" they ask. Even if they could hear the details, what do they care? All they understand is loudness or surround. Soundstage? Imaging? Air? These terms mean nothing to them.

 

Think about it, with the mp3 craze record companies have found a way to save on printing costs. Now the consumer carries the load of the hardware. The record companies mainly dedicated to this market now only need to produce less-than-optimum quality software that is gone once you drop out of your chosen music subscription service. Plus, any employee with a little knowledge of the process and a computer sitting in a back room can produce mp3s from any source the company decides (usually, I imagine, CDs).

So if the general public is content with less-than-good software, why wake them up from their slumber. That would be bad business practice or, as they say in Spain, it would be tantamount to spitting up in the air (or against the wind, if you will).