My first portable music gizmo was a personal cassette player, probably an Aiwa one although I can't remember the model. I had a few hundred cassettes until one day my favorites were stolen out of the back of my car (via a smashed window), at which point I redoubled my efforts to migrate over to CDs. Still, I have kept a few dozen cassettes of favorites or things that cannot be replaced, and it's fun to take them out and play them in a cheapo new player once in a while. I do miss the boom boxes of the 80s, and I find it sad that, although as a cassette listener I have no high ground from which to scorn Bluetooth sound quality, there aren't many people who seem to listen to music on any sort of loudspeaker these days, and most people seem satisfied with built-in TV speakers as well. Plain old speakers with plain old cables can sound far better than a cheapo Bluetooth speaker with murky ported bass. How do we bring this wisdom to the youth of today (aside from giving them an economy that pays them enough to be able to buy decent consumer home audio equipment, obviously )?
Welcome to Stereo2go Jamie Flournoy. I don’t miss boom boxes of the 80’s, as I remember people playing their crappy music out loud and subjecting everyone else to it. People are playing their music over TV, phone, Bluetooth speakers etc because its easy and convenient for them plus they are readily available. Also most of these people don’t know or have not experienced anything better and if they have, they are not exploring that route because they think it’s too big / cumbersome or too expensive. We all know you don’t have to spend an arm & a leg to get good sounding equipment, you just need to spend wisely.
Welcome Jamie Flournoy! It's a topic of frustration for music lovers, I've offered vintage systems to friends to upgrade the quality of their sound. A lot use apps on a TV, or smartphone/headphone these days so anything is an upgrade. Nobody cares, a few think it's cool but it's not a passion anymore like the old days. Kids don't even like cars anymore, something everyone wanted, and flaunted back in the 70's-80's. As far as new song sound quality, I've read that music is now played (recorded) to sound good on TVs and phones, Apple Garage Band is responsible for something like 80% of newly released music and my understanding is the engineers have made it take full advantage of the limitations of the playback equipment. I've been collecting audio equipment for twenty years, people used to give me stacks of equipment, tapes and albums and then they'd laugh because I had all of this old Pioneer, Kenwood, Sansui and Marantz monster dinosaur gear on my shelves and they had a pocket MP3 player with thousands of songs on it. The times have changed! People are discovering and re-discovering all of the old stuff, it's not a huge group but enough to get excited about. There's something about tangible music that makes it much more enjoyable over digital music to listen and collect. Throw in some audio equipment with a ton of knobs and dials to really get the party started.
