Re: I have a hunch that those Golden Era designers designed their Hi-Fi equipment wit
Ok, now for the counterpoint. At the risk of sounding elitist, Once upon a time, You needed to be seriously committed to music for getting into Hi Fi - the other day, My boss was asking me about buying some expensive audio equipment - apparently he had come across a sizeable sum of money and was planning to spend it as 'home renovation' so that it would escape the taxman, and he had budgeted for some of it to go into buying a good stereo setup, and this is not the exception - I have a lot of friends who want to get into audio just for the heck of it, or because they can afford it, or its the latest fad - probably they got tired of sitting around with a $$$ DSLR waiting for that killer photo opportunity to arise, and want to spend it on a pursuit where nirvana is easier to attain.
Ages ago, it cost my dad more than a month's salary to buy what was essentially a basic tape deck. Today I can buy a full setup for a fraction of mine. If you adjust for inflation, though, its a different picture. A gram of gold was 40~50 INR, now costs approx 2.5K. with that in view, Hi Fi Prices have fallen drastically, and in that context, comparing a mid end amp from the the 70's to a current mid end amp doesn't make sense in my opinion, And more than the technology or the products themselves, the target demographic has changed, and that makes a bigger difference for the manufacturer. add to that cost cutting, and you have things going downhill very quickly.
Even within what I can remember, in 2002, it would cost about 100$ to buy a cambridge soundworks 2.1, and those were good, but people who bought them at that time were seriously crazy about getting good sound from their computers. Another 5 years later, in 2007, creative's 100$ speakers - some gigaworks were no great shakes, and now you get some inspire S2 for that kind of money.
Even if you look at a specific speaker model - again using PC speakers as a reference, The Altec Lansing ATP3 cost 2k in 2006, and was pretty decent. The replacement, the VS 4121 cut a few corners , but was still okay, but prices had gone UP to 3k. The next model the VS 4621 is far worse, and it costs 4.5K. The same goes for my Logitech Z2300. The current Z623 costs much more,
while being a shadow of its predecessor.
I look at where this is going, and honestly, I'm not very enthused.
/rant
