Very true. When I entered high-end audio in a serious way it was the '80s and I was in my twenties. Back then I was the youngest guy in the room (by far) be it an audio society meeting, dealer open houses or CES. Salesmen still quoted magazine writers. There were subjectivist and objectivist and mostly high-quality recordings of shitty music were demoed. Fast forward to today and what's changed are forums, internet 'boards and the rise of e-commerce and micro brands. Those cos. no one ever heard of except for word of mouth over the 'web.
As for the lack of females, its well established in psychology that a substantial majority of women are into people and men are into things. Looking at a bell curve its 80/20 and at the extremes you get guys that don't know shit about guy-stuff like cars, tools, audio gear, etc. and gals that are totally into it. IMO, ladies like Jana Dagdagan are rare, unicorns even: Jana's story, the long and winding road to a career in the audio biz - YouTube
Good points, can't argue even though I got 10 years on you. I for one think the '80/20' rule of life bears out just about everywhere......
Wrong Objective: too many people who equate a good sounding album with good music. Hint: most so-called “audiophile recordings” are not great music.
It doesn't help things when one of the two major remaining print magazines devoted to high-end audio persists in publishing idiotic opinions and questionable "facts". TAS reviewed George Harrison's ATMP 50th Anniversary Edition, and despite dynamic compression of more than 6 dB compared to the 2010 HDTracks release (long since withdrawn from sale) the reviewer claimed that this was how the album was meant to be heard. And the review of the Luxman D-10X, a very good SACD/CD player (with a fair amount of competition in this category), claimed that "it will play virtually any 2-channel audio only disc", despite being unable to play DVD-A, audio only DVD-V or Bluray Audio (all of which have 2-channel audio, some only 2-channel audio). How is that different than any other SACD/CD player? A few years back one of their reviewers claimed that a hi-res album from QoBuz sounded better than the same album from HDTracks; almost immediately a number of posters on the SHForums posted results of AudioDiffMaker comparisons of the 2 filesets (they were bit-for-bit identical, including "timing"), although I am unaware of TAS ever acknowledging this.
Far too many people have Internet balls... post ridiculous things that they would never say to your face. Yes, we have all had a scuffle or two, but most of us try to have reasonable comments... more importantly, very rarely have I seen a comment here that the poster would not say to the person's face... a bit different then many forums out there.
Mike, Joe, and Mark do a great job keeping things civil around here!
With regard to the Luxman, DVDA and DVDV discs both have video content and aren't "audio-only."
I agree 98% with Mike with only one additional. The Internet has added one thing that I believe is very negative. The Internet has added Internet Balls, where people believe it is ok to say things and make comments that they would never do in person face to face....
Thank God for a forum such as The Shark having quality moderators that are able to keep much/most of this in check!
And why is it that all forums have become virtual WWE fighting matches? We have people wanting to fight at audio shows all because of varying opinions on audio gear. My god what have we become?
And the reason there's more old guys into audio is probably the same as most of the people I see driving new Vette's are old:
old guys have the time and the spare money to invest in a hobby rather than necessities. Mortgages and autos are paid off, we're not as career invested, etc. We can finally afford, and have the time to actually sit and listen, to the really good systems we wanted since our 20s.
Why women aren't as into it, no idea.
I've yet to have a wife or g/f who gave a crap about it and most were incredibly unsupportive.
But bottom line, this forum also has lots of people who not only behave nicely in the sandbox despite differing opinions, but offer their knowledge and experience freely.
wait a minute, I'm an old guy and I drive an old Corvette !
sadly though we don't have our hearing like we did in our 20's.......
LOL, they're smarter than us !!
once you get a little older you'll learn to keep the wife and girlfriend separated !
While in most cases I agree there are times when ones opinion runs counter to scientific facts / laws, etc. Sitting at home sipping on our morning coffee, hiding behind our computers typing away gives us subjective power, thankfully I want to believe most here have the objective ability to see the forest for the trees......