Brighton Listening Cafe

[Ruprecht]

Q: Who thought records / record shops etc would make a comeback?

Like you I see holes in quality and currently the same in the emerging audio fashion. That said it’s attracting interest…

The average age of the ‘New breed audiofool’ appears to be 32 - 38 approx. Much of this audience is in the US. Audio is not seen as fashionable currently here outside of trendy but growing spots - Over there it’s becoming aspirational to a far wider audience.

Supreme still holds some kudos in terms of street wear. Here’s their shop (Skateboarders FFs)

Here’s another

One of many bars

South Korea is booming (Everyone knows this place but there are more popping up all over Seoul)

I guess initially the resurgence is about fashion / interest / story and sound. Fitting analogue audio into venues affords the owners / bar / brand a USP and builds a community which in turn go on to build their own systems.

My micro example are the x5 bars we’ve worked with in the US which have probably shifted 30 turntables over the last 3 years. These are turntables we would previously have never sold to customers we would never have reached (They were non-audiophiles). Here’s the latest one in Chicago:

A better example would be the OJAS workshops where people go along and make (From kits) speakers or amps - This fosters a relationship with kit that can’t be had when you buy ‘off the peg’ - Some of the customers may even stick with it and drive things forwards?

I genuinely believe the pleasure (Dopamine) a good looking and good sounding system can deliver can be made desirable / lovable again in a younger audience.

Sure it costs money - Not everyone in 1958 could afford Tannoy autographs or Westrex either but today those speakers are viewed by some as not just speakers, they are deemed classics by people outside of the audiophile sphere. These people want something more than just a speaker, when placed in the right setting they kind of become Art / artifact / history.

It was interesting seeing Devon’s set up at the Lisson gallery - The thing that struck me more than the sound was in this environment, the kit was perceived as something else, architectural, cool looking ‘things’ judging by the reactions of the non audiophile attendees.

I don’t know what analogue audio will will trickle down to? (Perhaps hifi ends up as a pay to listen experience? or Valves become a coffee shop staple?) Weather the ‘old breed’ like it / can see it or understand it, there is an emerging market separate in many ways to what has been the declining norm.

Perhaps the ‘new breed’ will not join the draining ‘cup’ of audiophiles. Perhaps they are making a cup of their own? What will that look like? Will it be sustainable? Only time can answer that.

[MJ2]

Fascinating and sorta hopeful, too.

[crimsondonkey]

I like what you’ve shared as examples, but then I would do.

It all still looks very very niche to me.

[stu]

A whole generation has never heard a good system.
In my youth I lived in a small town on the outskirts of London,yet it had two excellent hi fi shops where youngsters could dribble at the window of stuff they couldn’t afford.
One was all British,with quad,Neal,Michell,Rogers etc.

The other was stacked floor to ceiling with Japanese hifi.
Plymouth now with 250,000 population hasn’t had a dedicated hifi shop in about a decade.Richer sounds is the only survivor,so unless you trek hundreds of miles to a show, will unlikely be exposed to “proper” hi fi which is a shame.

Of course many won’t care,but it would be a shame if the whole industry is lost to streaming and headphones.

[Ruprecht]

Agreed…But new stimulus / interest in audio is new interest which is considerably better than fading interest or no interest. The so called contemporary boom in vinyl sales is turning nothing like what the industry used to, it’s niche and maybe that will be where it stays. Truth be told it was dead on it’s ass outside of a very hardcore mini audience. Perhaps audio will take a similar trajectory???

The late 80’s through to the mid 90’s saw a lot of people get into vinyl as DJ’s many of these bods are sniffing around audio equipment too - I am not arguing for a golden era of audio, that has been and gone and for many of the reasons listed above there are too many financial and ‘other’ distractions in home entertainment for that to happen again. What has been happening over the last few years is new growth and not insignificant ‘if’ the roots continue to spread ‘cool’ around.

[MonitorGold10]

@stu

A whole generation has never heard a good system.

Yes; this. I have held a number of Music Evenings and some younger family members have been really interested in how different music sounds.

Younger neighbours too. When one in their mid twenties played some pop music- Justin Bieber- she was genuinely enjoying the experience.

Perhaps more of us need to hold Music Evenings to pass the joy on?

Actually, neighbours have been asking me when the next one is. Better pull my fucking finger out!

[Mrs_Maureen_OPinion]

From one POV I wouldn’t be too woeful about the future of hifi, just so long as people keep getting into music, the demand to hear it at home on something better than tizzboom sources will always evolve.

I am - by a matter of days - a baby boomer, supposedly the most privileged generation, but thanks to an unceasing chain of poor life choices, I couldn’t even consider purchasing a hifi system until I was nearly forty.

I genuinely wondered, back in 2003, if hifi was even still A Thing, and was pleased to discover that it was. Even 21 years ago hifi was effectively invisible to your average person - that doesn’t mean people won’t find it for themselves - we live in an easily searchable World now.

And so long as people go-on enjoying music, some of them at least are going to want to hear it sound as good as possible.

[Gyroscope]

@Mrs_Maureen_OPinion

And so long as people go-on enjoying music

This. I’m not really a hifi guy, just a music guy.

Hence hanging out on a “not really hifi forum”.

[Mnky]

I’m going to have a look at this place next time I’m in that London…

https://spiritland.com/location/spiritland-kings-cross/

[BobC]

I think it’s incorrect to say that this generation have never known hifi, its as if previous generations did. Hate to break it to you, but hifi has always been niche. Even where they’re were volume sales you still had to go to a specialist shop and men were the target audience.

Most people made do with radiograms, all in one amps and tts and jap stacks into the 70s. What they did have was a shared experience and it is this,i think, that attracts people to the music cafes etc.

It was my generation that ended that shared experience with our uptake of the Walkman, the rest just made the hardware smaller over time and easier and cheaper to aquire.

Of course we did keep a modicum of that shared experience in pub juke boxes, but generally we made it ok to be self absorbed.

[MVAgusta]

I detest the ageing process and being an old bastard in general
But reading posts like this brings home the reality the younger generation face on a day to day basis.

[crimsondonkey]

I recall the first time I went to a hifi show (Scalford as a punter before as an exhibitor). When I came back Hel saw the look on my face and thought I’d had an accident or something serious had happened.

“Um, I didn’t expect everyone to be so fucking old…”

It was a real shock to the system to see what looked like a care home that someone had tipped a lot of hifi gear into.

Room after room of old fucks sat there staring blankly between the speakers, clinging on to mortality, some muttering about infinitesimal differences that could truly not be heard and certainly not by these stone deaf coffin dodgers.

Hel’s cheery attempt at lifting my mood went something like - “well, that will be you soon…”

[Gyroscope]

@crimsondonkey

stone deaf coffin dodgers

[Ruprecht]

Perhaps what is going on with the ‘new breed’ isn’t for us? Perhaps we shouldn’t understand it as a ‘scene’. Form a sound perspective yes but in many other ways the associated ‘Fashion / culture’ isn’t meant to be for: 50 / 60 / 70+ somethings. They want a ‘cup’ of their own.

[crimsondonkey]

Agree which is why the mass consumption of music by the younger generations is via their phones and streaming/ Youtube etc where music is seen as ‘free’, and ownership of physical product is not necessarily as valued as it once was (or had to be).

Anything beyond free then has to provide quite a premium in experience to motivate paying something for it.

So maybe higher quality reproduction will also not be owned, rather it will be viewed as a premium ‘experience’ to visit somewhere rather than desired as a material thing in the home. Still sounds very niche, maybe it always was. Doesn’t bode well for a higher end hifi industry to be squeezed out of domestic situations and into supplying equipment for what would still be a relatively small number of venues that could offer this?

[Rensselaer]

Also Brilliant Corners in London (brilliantcornerslondon.co.uk), which started out playing analogue records…but turned into DJ’s playing digital tracks (except Sundays, where for a fee one can reserve a seat to listen to an analogue record like deja’ vu.

People in the UK tend not to have the space for vintage Altec, JVC or Tannoy speakers (which sound best with SET’s), nor the jazz record collections covering the “golden years” of vinyl. Limited living space was the reason for the development of the Japanese Jazz Kissa. Someone with a love of old jazz, SET’s and Horns, could build a bar and set up his hi fi to entertain his friends in a small rented commercial space. See: Tokyo Jazz Kissa: 15 Jazz Bars founded in the 1960s and 1970s | In Sheeps Clothing

There isn’t the turnover to support a business per se, just enough to pay the bills and make the renter, and his friends, happy to have a cool hang-out.

The potential for profit is why I suggested a wine retailer as a partner. Jim suggested Majestic Wines here in Norwich and they might be worth approaching. Majestic currently has a retail shop where people can park their cars outside and taste some wine, get the sales patter, etc. then buy some there or from their website.

My idea is a city-centre comfy listening bar where you use a debit card to sample the different wines of the day from the dispensers on the wall. The Majestic rep. handles the debit cards and issues a list of the available wines with space for tasting notes and the web-site for orders on the bottom. A sub-contractor provides food if wanted, and maintains the building/kitchen/dish washing. I would trial my equipment with a thought of selling everything if it works (I am getting older, no kids, nephews don’t relate to the music and, as said, the dealer vultures are circling).

[Rensselaer]

Not too much business at this one, but the Altec speakers sure sound good.

- YouTube

[Rensselaer]

Or here:

ジャズ喫茶ちぐさ｜Jazz Cafe CHIGUSA

[Rensselaer]

Here is a place in Manchester (Salut) that uses wine dispensers and offers food, what they need is the extra “Kissa” approach.

[Ruprecht]

If we are talking about fashion / trends etc, I’m not sure Premium experience is what younger people really are paying for (Or receiving in a physical sense). $1000 trainers are nothing to a startlingly large audience world wide. Here we are talking about bits of rubber and leather - What they are paying for is rarity and cultural symbols in short ‘cool status’.

This motivation is similar for attendees of many ‘listening happenings’ - See what ‘In Sheeps clothing’ is doing with listening events, they are deemed ‘cool’.

I’m not sure hypebeast and all the other channels these cool kids subscribe to are in any way aimed at our demographic. Curious Devon got the front page over there though titled: "Speaker sculptor’…

(Boomers + their offspring are the anti Christ, as it should be, youth-quakes by definition rebel.)

The ear bud generation have started to tune in as / when they experience the hottest bar / celebrity / club / influencer has a horn analogue rig. Some go on to earn and buy into it - Just as it was for many here come to perceive audio as cool, worthy and interesting.

Perception of cool is all.

Outside of our echo chamber this is happening right now. The people spending £1000+ on spiritual Jazz records currently are mostly young fashionista types - The genre has probably tripled in value over the last 10 years due to ‘The new breed’. These are not sentimental crusty old guys with hygene issues re buying their youth. These kids weren’t born when this music was made - They are a different tribe all together. It may be difficult to see from our settled lives or the bubble that surrounds us but peeping over the fence a little I get the feeling a scene is forming and that is kind of ‘cool’.