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Not if you read some comments on the internet.
But I just got done talking to someone who just returned from the Winter CES show who was so hyped over over the new NOLA and ELAC speakers among other things that it just got me to thinking. If you haven't heard the little~$560/pair ELACs, you are in for a treat. There are now speakers easily up t o $5000 pair including say the little stand mounted Evolution Acoustics that will give a lot of speakers from not so long ago a run for the money. The little Maggies are exceptional performers given the right space committment. Little Vandys and so on.
I know thinking can sometimes get us in trouble but in reality today we are experiencing unprecedented levels of performance at all price points in audio today. In fact, some entry level components might do things better than what was considered SOTA not so long ago. Probably the one area we see this the most is in digital though other areas aren't far behind. There are DACS sporting DSD or PCM at under 1000 dollars that would give SOTA from a couple of years ago as serious run. And as Mike Lavigne and I talked about, we may not have gotten everything there is off RBCDs either. Me hearing the Baetis server/Pacific Microsonics HDCD DAC and MikeL with his Trinity DAC. None of that skeleton like sound so often associated with red book CD. Eventually what Trinity is doing will filter down too.
But even more than that, improvements in materials science has resulted in huge changes in speaker design, components, xover design, etc. More is less now (like we used to joke about ARCi n the early years that each new version was taking parts out.
) Machining that was impossible just a couple of years ago or only available to the military is now available to ordinary companies. That machining and parts also has made possible huge improvements in turntable design, bearings, motors, tonearms ad so on. At the upper level, whatever your source material, whatever your choice of electronics and whatever your choice of speakers, the sound today allows us to as JGH once pointed out, more glimpses of reality than ever. So much of this improvement is related to reducing the noise floor in the system allowing more of the music through; in the case of speakers, it's improving their settling time, resulting in less coloration, less blurring of the music and allowing the drivers to operate in a better atmosphere. Just as the function of a tonearm is to hold the cartridge motionless over the record groove, the same thing can be said for the speaker cabinet. The function of the cabinet is to hold the drivers still and allow them to operate properly.
I'd also say the industry has matured in the fact that consumers are no longer beta testers. All of the equipment gotten in, has functioned flawlessly. Huge difference from years ago. Even to the point of withstanding the shipping.
And we had nothing like this ever on the music side. Music available to us on reel-to-reel tape, RBCD, hi-rez digital files and LP. When in the history of audio have we had that many choices. Not to mention the quality of the LP reissues has never been better with QRP producing near perfect, ultra-quiet vinyl; and Pallas and RTI aren't far behind. And 4X DSD right off the master tape or now directly recorded in that format offers unprecedented sound quality for digital recordings.
I'd say for the industry to support all these choices, things are healthier than you'd think reading many naysayer's posts.
But I just got done talking to someone who just returned from the Winter CES show who was so hyped over over the new NOLA and ELAC speakers among other things that it just got me to thinking. If you haven't heard the little~$560/pair ELACs, you are in for a treat. There are now speakers easily up t o $5000 pair including say the little stand mounted Evolution Acoustics that will give a lot of speakers from not so long ago a run for the money. The little Maggies are exceptional performers given the right space committment. Little Vandys and so on.
I know thinking can sometimes get us in trouble but in reality today we are experiencing unprecedented levels of performance at all price points in audio today. In fact, some entry level components might do things better than what was considered SOTA not so long ago. Probably the one area we see this the most is in digital though other areas aren't far behind. There are DACS sporting DSD or PCM at under 1000 dollars that would give SOTA from a couple of years ago as serious run. And as Mike Lavigne and I talked about, we may not have gotten everything there is off RBCDs either. Me hearing the Baetis server/Pacific Microsonics HDCD DAC and MikeL with his Trinity DAC. None of that skeleton like sound so often associated with red book CD. Eventually what Trinity is doing will filter down too.
But even more than that, improvements in materials science has resulted in huge changes in speaker design, components, xover design, etc. More is less now (like we used to joke about ARCi n the early years that each new version was taking parts out.
) Machining that was impossible just a couple of years ago or only available to the military is now available to ordinary companies. That machining and parts also has made possible huge improvements in turntable design, bearings, motors, tonearms ad so on. At the upper level, whatever your source material, whatever your choice of electronics and whatever your choice of speakers, the sound today allows us to as JGH once pointed out, more glimpses of reality than ever. So much of this improvement is related to reducing the noise floor in the system allowing more of the music through; in the case of speakers, it's improving their settling time, resulting in less coloration, less blurring of the music and allowing the drivers to operate in a better atmosphere. Just as the function of a tonearm is to hold the cartridge motionless over the record groove, the same thing can be said for the speaker cabinet. The function of the cabinet is to hold the drivers still and allow them to operate properly.I'd also say the industry has matured in the fact that consumers are no longer beta testers. All of the equipment gotten in, has functioned flawlessly. Huge difference from years ago. Even to the point of withstanding the shipping.
And we had nothing like this ever on the music side. Music available to us on reel-to-reel tape, RBCD, hi-rez digital files and LP. When in the history of audio have we had that many choices. Not to mention the quality of the LP reissues has never been better with QRP producing near perfect, ultra-quiet vinyl; and Pallas and RTI aren't far behind. And 4X DSD right off the master tape or now directly recorded in that format offers unprecedented sound quality for digital recordings.
I'd say for the industry to support all these choices, things are healthier than you'd think reading many naysayer's posts.
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