01-31-2017, 01:57 PM
The audiophile ethos was for someone with a generous budget easy enough to understand: if one could hear the difference then one might as well pay the difference for a difference in sound quality. People might also buy it as a status symbol. A loud, colorful work like Bruckner's Fourth Symphony would justify both delicacy of sound reproduction and a very deep bass. Of course if you lived in an apartment with thin walls and had the potential for a hostile audience in the next apartment, someone might knock on your door and tell you "Turn off that Nazi music*!", then maybe you could not get away with music so powerful and loud, and needing a full hour to appreciate.
More people living in apartments implies more people having to make compromises on what they listen to, at what time, and at what volume. So perhaps the revival of vinyl is very much an elite phenomenon, something restricted to well-educated people (classical music remains a habit for people high in social-economic status, but folk and jazz are going that way, too) who still live in single-family housing. That said, audiophile sound was never for the budget-conscious then, and it is not now. It took three things: cost of the equipment and the material, adequate space (itself costly except in rural areas), and a genuine appreciation of music.
*I understand that classical music is very popular in Israel.
More people living in apartments implies more people having to make compromises on what they listen to, at what time, and at what volume. So perhaps the revival of vinyl is very much an elite phenomenon, something restricted to well-educated people (classical music remains a habit for people high in social-economic status, but folk and jazz are going that way, too) who still live in single-family housing. That said, audiophile sound was never for the budget-conscious then, and it is not now. It took three things: cost of the equipment and the material, adequate space (itself costly except in rural areas), and a genuine appreciation of music.
*I understand that classical music is very popular in Israel.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.