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Re: Good points, Bruce

It strikes me that one of the drivers for decent stereo in the lat 1960s and 1970s among 20-somethings was that a lot of album-oriented-rock really required some pretty good playback equipment to be appreciated. Whether or not you consider a lot of the stuff from the time to be over-produced or not, it certainly suffered from being squeezed through some low-rent 4" paper speakers.

Something that strikes me now is that for 40 years now pop music has consisted, more or less, of a few singers, a few electric guitars, an electric bass and a drum kit.

Let's take a quick look at all the instruments from the previous 40 years (i.e. from 1927 to 1967) that pop music has thrown on the trash heap:

trumpet/coronet
trombone
saxophone
clarinet
acoustic piano

Pop music isn't written for these instruments anymore.

And yet, I believe, the accurate reproduction of these instruments is more difficult than the accurate reproduction of any kind of electric guitar or electric bass.

So, my point is that what people listen to doesn't demand the kind of fidelity that audiophile equipment delivers. Yes, it sounds better on audiophile equipment (assuming that equipment is capable of ear-splitting loudness) but the incremental improvement isn't that great.

On the other hand, I suspect an MP3 of even a jazz trio would sound pretty poor; and an MP3 of the Duke Ellington Orchestra would sound positively nasty. Indeed, RBCD has a tough time reproducing brass instruments played loud without causing ear bleed.

So, the music that people listen to drives the demand for hifi playback, too.

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