Why don’t more young people have a hi-fi system?

[What Hi-Fi?]

We cover the wider issues preventing some people from getting into the world of hi-fi and discuss what can be done to spread the interest.

Why don’t more young people have a hi-fi system? : Read more

 

[russelk]

This will probably be a deeply unpopular opinion here but if I'm honest I think today's young people are better off not being into hi-fi. There are more important things to be spending one's money on these days. My kids (16 and 19) listen to music all the time, but they have zero interest in hi-fi. They're happy with a competent set of headphones and I think that's great. I don't want them to fall into that hi-fi rabbit hole that I was in for around 25 years, stuck in an endless upgrade cycle, obsessing over the next piece of equipment.

 

[Crabbydude]

This will probably be a deeply unpopular opinion here but if I'm honest I think today's young people are better off not being into hi-fi. There are more important things to be spending one's money on these days. My kids (16 and 19) listen to music all the time, but they have zero interest in hi-fi. They're happy with a competent set of headphones and I think that's great. I don't want them to fall into that hi-fi rabbit hole that I was in for around 25 years, stuck in an endless upgrade cycle, obsessing over the next piece of equipment.

Nothing wrong with a fun rabbit hole, I think the reality is also the increased quality of bluetooth speakers that deliver high-ish quality for not much coin. Even my circle of friends (45-60 yr olds) typically don't have a hi-fi system using separates, they make do with something like Sonos or a higher end smart speaker and maybe a sound bar. Gets back to the old "good enough"

 

[bradavon]

It's not a money problem. Plenty of young people use Apple Airpods. Hi-Fis have never been expensive if you don't want them to be.

It's a convenience and cultural problem.

A bluetooth speaker requires no wires other than to charge it and can be used anywhere that's not wet.

The moment we replaced high fidelity music with music convenience the Hi-fi was seen as overkill.

Young people live in the world where gadgets are small or portable. Phones, earbuds, laptops, bluetooth. None of it is large and certainly not stationary.

It's at the heart of why Spotify and YouTube Music are still Lossy only. Most under 30s only use bluetooth audio equipment with tiny drivers. The average CD Player in the 90s was far more equipped. They don't think they need High Fidelity sound because they've never heard and may well conclude they still don't need it.

You need to listen to Lossy vs Lossless music. If you're playing music whilst doing things you may well not notice. When you do it's apparent but the difference isn't apparent immediately.

It's a shame because even the best Bluetooth Speakers suck as home audio speakers, wonderful for the park though.

 

[Ian AV]

This will probably be a deeply unpopular opinion here but if I'm honest I think today's young people are better off not being into hi-fi. There are more important things to be spending one's money on these days. My kids (16 and 19) listen to music all the time, but they have zero interest in hi-fi. They're happy with a competent set of headphones and I think that's great. I don't want them to fall into that hi-fi rabbit hole that I was in for around 25 years, stuck in an endless upgrade cycle, obsessing over the next piece of equipment.

You are sort of right. But instead they fall into the technology rabbit hole. The difference is that the technology rabbit hole is infinity better for their future prospects.
I gained a liking for music in the seventies because thats all we teenagers had, it had no value to future prospects, but we enjoyed it. Quite why I got into striving for the ultimate sound I could afford I don't know, hence my HiFi bug that still haunts me now and made me £10s of thousands poorer as a result. But I still love it today and expanded into movies too which was unthinkable in the seventies.

 

[halldors78]

Here in Iceland young people haven't had great stereo since the 70s, in the 80s and 90 the small speaker systems started to come and the sound sucked but it took less space. I got very old sensui and it was great and got some fine pioneer speakers. And now have marantz amplifier in the garage. Now kids only have some Bluetooth speakers that are fine but when you blast a true two speaker system you really hear the difference, but also maybe it's just the normal people that have bad stuff while people that actually buy albums and listen too whole albums have great stuff. And it wasn't too bad here in my small town there was a great music shop that a great drummer had and you could listen the albums before you bought them and he also picked out some stuff, like Pantera for example and Alice in chains. Great times.

 

[zhongliangong]

2 factors come to mind.

Convenience - lossy audio streaming is available on Spotify and YouTube. It's so much easier to form families with regular plans compared to finding enough crazy audiophiles to form a family group for lossless audio from more niche services such as deezer. Even lossless audio requires a wired connection unless you have a dedicated streamer, otherwise the audio stream sent to the DAC will still be lossy even if the service is lossless.

Housing costs. With the rising cost of housing it's rare for most younger people to be able to afford a place of their own. Renting usually comes with restrictions unless your landlord is an audiophile. With greater urbanization - even smaller apartments become less affordable. And small rooms (possibly serving multiple uses) mean that even good speakers would have their output colored by environmental factors

 

[king_alphonso]

Probably an unpopular opinion as well but I experience a market failing young people simply by targeting only older (probably more wealthy) customers.

Have you ever walked into a hi-fi store and heard music that the younger generation might also listen to? or have you heard demonstrations of hip hop, electronic music, or similar at a hi-fi trade fair?

I'm from this industry and unfortunately I hear all too often the same jazz, classical music, blues and a lot of Hotel California by the Eagles. Nothing against this kind of music, but there are other genres

I don't think the younger generation doesn't want to have expensive hobbies or are easily satisfied. You can see a corresponding willingness in other areas such as coffee machines and accessories or even cyclists who spend a lot of money on good accessories and constantly buy new parts.

 

[Kenneth Fernandes]

This will probably be a deeply unpopular opinion here but if I'm honest I think today's young people are better off not being into hi-fi. There are more important things to be spending one's money on these days. My kids (16 and 19) listen to music all the time, but they have zero interest in hi-fi. They're happy with a competent set of headphones and I think that's great. I don't want them to fall into that hi-fi rabbit hole that I was in for around 25 years, stuck in an endless upgrade cycle, obsessing over the next piece of equipment.

How many Hi-Fi Start-ups have evolved from Silicon Valley, San Francisco Bay Area, California or the E.U. in the past week or earlier? There seems to be an Apple event in the next week, isn't it?

 

[Kenneth Fernandes]

Housing

It depends where you are located and the age of the building. There are endless ways in mitigating this concern both through private and public agencies.

 

[hifipete]

This will probably be a deeply unpopular opinion here but if I'm honest I think today's young people are better off not being into hi-fi. There are more important things to be spending one's money on these days. My kids (16 and 19) listen to music all the time, but they have zero interest in hi-fi. They're happy with a competent set of headphones and I think that's great. I don't want them to fall into that hi-fi rabbit hole that I was in for around 25 years, stuck in an endless upgrade cycle, obsessing over the next piece of equipment.

You're right about unpopular, at least with true Audiophiles. Almost everybody likes music, and audiophiles certainly do. But liking music doesn't automatically make you an audiophile. But I respect people's choices on how they listen to music.

 

[podknocker]

I think it's many things. Many younger people (not all) might not have the disposable income to by HIFI. I'm getting on now and still don't have the disposable income either, with the current living costs being so high these days and living on my own means no other income to split the bills etc.

It's also an aspirational thing. Many people between early teens and late 20s would rather grab a portable device, like a mobile phone and use some BT headphones, or earphones. They probably don't put HIFI purchases at the top of their list and have different priorities to their parents and much older people.

It's a mistake to generalise, but teenagers have other things to worry about. I'm fairly settled in my IT job and have my system on all day in the flat. It's still a luxury thing for me and I could get by with the mobile phone and my trusty Sennheiser headphones, but I've enjoyed this hobby since my mid teens. I was unusual preferring to spend my time looking at Sony midi systems, when my peers were clubbing an kicking a ball round a playing field. I've had many hobbies, but music and HIFI have been a large chunk of my spare time.

Younger people these days have other distractions and use social media much more than their parents. I use email of course, but don't bother with the huge choice in social media apps these days.

 

[DougM]

The bottom line is that commonplace audio equipment (air pods at <$500) now produces sound that is >95% as good as the best you can buy at any price. Most people don't see the value in closing that tiny gap at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars (price of moving up to owned rather than rented housing, plus the cost of a system). Even for young people who have made the leap to owned housing, the cost is ridiculous.

 

[podknocker]

The bottom line is that commonplace audio equipment (air pods at <$500) now produces sound that is >95% as good as the best you can buy at any price. Most people don't see the value in closing that tiny gap at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars (price of moving up to owned rather than rented housing, plus the cost of a system). Even for young people who have made the leap to owned housing, the cost is ridiculous.

If I plug my Sennheiser HD600 cans in to my new PC, or my fairly new phone, then Spotify sounds amazing. I do like the music system on all day in the background, but yeah, portable devices and headphones sound so good these days, it seems strange wanting to clutter up your living room with lots of expensive boxes and leads everywhere.

 

[Hubert Cumberdale]

I wonder if it has anything to do with the cost of music. When we were buying records and CDs the price of what we were listening to was much higher, and I suspect the process of trying to make it sound as good as possible led us down the hifi road. Now music is so readily available for a pretty much unnoticeable outlay and people seem to be happy playing it on similarly cheap and easy hardware

 

[Stanny1]

I've learned a lot from my 11 year old granddaughter that I am raising. She listens to free Spotify off her iPad on Bluetooth ear buds. So fidelity isn't a concern or learned. I expect that when streaming is more universal, that will be the preferred form of music for the current generation. Also, young people have limited concentration and focus, especially for just music. If MTV would come back with videos, they would have a big market. When streaming includes music videos in surround, this gen will go beyond Sonos (the new Bose) and want better equipment.

 

[podknocker]

I think the current vinyl revival has been overhyped and the demographic buying LPs is probably well off middle class types, with lots of disposable income who want to appear cool and trendy amongst their well heeled peers. I doubt turntables and LPs are being bought by teenagers and those up to late 30s, even if they have disposable income. Most of the current and many of the previous generation are using portable devices and headphones and don't buy LPs. As I've said before, this fashionable fad for LPs will be a fleeting trend and streaming on many devices will prove the be the preferred method in the long term.

 

[Wolf]

Not (entirely) blaming the younger generation, but it's all now down to get it fast, cheap, dispose and of to the next thing tomorrow.
It was the same 30-40 years ago, but we still had to buy it, if we want to listen a song more often and therefore appreciated the sound quality.

Spending any money on "quality" and stick with the same appliance, gear, TV, or Hi-Fi equipment for a few years is alien to a lot of people. It's mostly, having the newest tech, no matter if you will use it in the near (short) future, even if you won't use never.
These days, people need to be entertainend visually or by clicking on something.
Fewer people these days can sit still for 1/2 an hour or more and really listen to music,
headphones or over speakers.

 

[Hifiman]

I think some of it is that hifi was part of the Zeitgeist of the 70s and 80s when there were affordable, exciting developments that both older and younger customers looked forward to. Music also seemed socially more important which only added to the appeal of being able to play it well.
My guess is that we will never return to these halcyon days which is why manufacturers seem intent on extracting larger margins from the kit they do manage to sell. However, that does not seem to bode well for the future.
There are some exceptions. WiiM, for example, seems to have created quite a buzz by introducing affordable products while using the internet to involve their customer base in product development. PMC have laudably introduced excellent but less expensive speakers which I hope might make other UK firms follow suit.

 

[R2D2]

We cover the wider issues preventing some people from getting into the world of hi-fi and discuss what can be done to spread the interest.

Why don’t more young people have a hi-fi system? : Read more

I have done away with my rear speakers in my home cinema setup, so it’s more like a HiFi setup now in my view. I listen to music through it via Bluetooth, Spotify, Apple Music, CD and Blu-rays. I find I am not missing anything with not having rear speakers and I like the sound all coming from in front of me.

If I ever upgrade again I would do it this way too, instead of spending thousands on rear speakers, where I personally don’t feel the need for rear speakers. I find I get the same enjoyment without them.

 

[Crabbydude]

I have done away with my rear speakers in my home cinema setup, so it’s more like a HiFi setup now in my view. I listen to music through it via Bluetooth, Spotify, Apple Music, CD and Blu-rays. I find I am not missing anything with not having rear speakers and I like the sound all coming from in front of me.

If I ever upgrade again I would do it this way too, instead of spending thousands on rear speakers, where I personally don’t feel the need for rear speakers. I find I get the same enjoyment without them.

Rear speakers add subtlety to audio but a huge difference in TV or movies. My audio system piggybacked my TV setup so rear speakers are a no brainer for me.

 

[Crabbydude]

Rear speakers add subtlety to audio but a huge difference in TV or movies. My audio system piggybacked my TV setup so rear speakers are a no brainer for me.

Truthfully TV piggybacking my audio, music is the main driver, pardon the pun

 

[NakamichiEnthusiast101]

I think it's an exposure issue in all honesty. I'm 18 myself, got into hifi in general around 15 and started building up from there. I went from inheriting a technics cd player from my dad and going bargain hunting on second hand sites to add to my system. I think my biggest interest was and still is cassettes. I remember borrowing a TR-575 from my dad to test out with this very cheap looking cassette and the audio which came out of it was dreadful, I didn't understand how people could listen to something which sounded so awful. I then picked up a Yamaha KX-393 off ebay for 30 odd quid and thought to give cassettes a proper chance. And from there that journey led me to where I am now, in only a few years I went from a Yamaha KX-393 to a Nakamichi Dragon that I got at 16 and now am getting it properly serviced and done up. Hifi is a beautiful thing. The joy of building your own system is amazing, my bedroom is crammed with three different hifi systems (don't worry about the speaker placement) and even got my dad interested in investing in his own hifi system which he got back in 1994. There is a resurgence we are seeing in three distinct physical formats. cassettes, cds and vinyl. And it's not all older gentleman and nostalgic men and women, it's young people discovering how cool a spinning disc can sound or making mixtapes with cassettes on their yamaha or technics they picked up at the local car boot sale out of curiosity. While most young people will prefer the convenience of bluetooth earphones and streaming, there are still many like myself who understand the best of both worlds and love to appreciate music in many different formats and experiences.