When Was the “Golden Age” of Audio Hi-Fi?

Over a span of more than 60 years, the hobby of audio has been a fascination for millions of people. It’s gone by several names over the years—hi-fi, stereo, audio, home theater—but however it’s known, the interest and pursuit of high-quality reproduced sound in the home has long been an enduring interest for a very large number of people. Is there one time period that can be said to be audio’s “Golden Age?” Does any particular era stand out from the rest?

Like any enthusiast interest that spans the decades, ardent aficionados are quick to proclaim that their era was the best, that the equipment from their time was the most well-made or adhered to the tenets of the hobby the closest or had company heads who were more concerned with advancing the state of the art than anything else and were therefore the least distracted by the destructive influences of greed and market-driven profit motives.

In reality, every era of audio has its charms, its undeniable appeal. Who’s to say that one time period is “superior” to another? While the simplicity and innocence of earlier times does have its specific attractions, the flat-out excellence and realism of modern audio equipment takes the experience to a whole different level.

I am of “the age” where I have lived through and experienced each of these major audio time periods:

• I lived through the transition from mono to stereo, from low-powered high-distortion tubes to early unreliable solid-state germanium transistors to later mainstream solid state with its bullet-proof silicon transistor reliability.

• I went through the transition from high tracking pressure early stereo cartridges to the last-generation Shure Type V MR cartridges with their almost CD-like delicacy and detail combined with that classic analog warmth.

• I went from two-channel audio to quadraphonic audio to early AV sound when we fed a 2-channel Hi-Fi VCR’s 20-20kHz audio outputs into our stereo systems.

• I experienced first-hand those terrible, shoddily-built first-generation Sony and Pioneer “5-channel” Pro Logic home theater receivers and then those excellent early 2000’s mid-priced receivers from Marantz and Denon and those phenomenal high-end “super receivers” like the Denon AVR-5805. (this is still the favorite AV receiver of ALL time by Gene himself)
  

• All the while during the emergence of great home theater, I observed (and still own and use daily) great high-end 2-channel electronics from the likes of Adcom, Parasound, Anthem and NAD.

And speakers? The first speakers I grew up with were 15-inch “triaxial” British Goodmans in custom floorstanding enclosures, then small bookshelf AR-4x’s. As a professional in the speaker business, I’ve heard, evaluated, dissected, enjoyed, marveled at, developed, marketed and sold every manner of speaker you can imagine for the last 30+ years. Seen them all, heard them all from the 60’s through today. So I have a good vantage point. I like every time period of audio. Let me give you a quick first-hand recap of each era as I see it.

The 1960’s

As I intimated above, I’m going to tell you a great tale of 1960’s speaker discovery and enlightenment. This was my eye-opener. I think I'm about 15-20 years older than Gene DellaSala, President of Audioholics, so my 'early audio' influences are from the audio era before his. My dad was super into his "hi-fi" from the 50's and he went from mono 1-ch to stereo 2-channel in 1960. It was a really big deal. Now, everything would be two channels, not one. Left, right and a phantom “center” channel. Imaging. Left-right panning. Three-dimensionality. Depth. Two channels opened up the concept of the lifelike soundstage in home listening, in a way that single-channel (mono) systems never could.

In my father's first stereo system, he had Allied Radio Knight kits tube separates, a Garrard RC-88 turntable and these 15" 3-way British Goodmans speakers--a 15" paper-cone woofer with an accordion-pleat cloth surround, a whizzer-cone mid with what they euphemistically called a "mechanical crossover" (that was just a vague description of where the whizzer cone's mid output began to dominate over the 15" driver's mid output) and an actual electrical crossover to a small horn tweeter.

1950’s-early 60’s staples: Full-range speaker with whizzer, infinite-baffle co-ax

This was a 'tri-axial' speaker. Raw, no enclosure. But Lafayette Radio (a national chain similar to Radio Shack that sold parts, accessories, their own ‘house brand’ stereo components along with national brands) offered a 36" floorstanding enclosure designed for raw 15" speakers. Remember, a lot of audio in those days was "roll your own." So I went with my dad and he bought those enclosures and put the Goodmans in them.

Those were the very first real 'hi-fi' speakers I heard. I thought they were the most amazing things I’d ever heard. Hey, I was just a kid. He kept them for 9 years, until 1969, when my mother finally said, "Out! I want those big ugly boxes out of my house!"

Luckily by the late 1960's, there was finally some real audio equipment. AR (Acoustic Research) was making great speakers and they'd just come out with their ground-breaking AR-4x 8" 2-way bookshelf speaker. It was $57 ea., a small 19" x 10" x 9" cabinet that would actually fit on a bookshelf. An 8" woofer in a sealed acoustic suspension enclosure and a 2 1/2" cone tweeter, both drivers designed and manufactured at AR's factory in Cambridge MA. Julian Hirsch of Stereo Review magazine reviewed it and said, "We have never encountered a frequency response like this....we know of no competitively-priced speaker that can compare with it."  He measured something like +/- 3dB on axis from 50-ish to 15kHz. Quite excellent for the late 1960s and $57.

But here's the "influence" part: My dad brings the 4x's home. Before he gives the Goodmans away to my older cousin's friend, we do an A-B in our den: the huge 15" Goodmans against the little 8" ARs.

The ARs stomped them, top to bottom, every which way from Sunday. Deeper, tighter bass. More extended highs and overall, just a far, far more modern, less colored sound.

I was awestruck, dumbfounded. How could that sound come out of those little boxes? Talk about influence! I was 15 at the time and that's when I realized that I wanted to know all I could possibly know about speakers and hi-fi.

Little did I know at the time that it would become my lifetime career for 50 years or so.

Hi Fi in the 60’s could be characterized as a middle-aged male hobby: The WWII vet with a modest house in the suburbs, a wife and two young children. A used Chevy and Studebaker in the driveway. Home music systems took their place alongside television as the staples of home entertainment electronics. Most of the electronics in the early part of the decade were separates—pre-amp, power amp and tuner—because they were tubes and receivers (all three components on a single chassis sharing a common power supply) were not yet practical or commonplace.

But by the late ‘60’s, the stereo systems were shaping up to be reasonably close to the equipment we feel comfortable with today. Speakers became increasingly refined and much improved in their sound and overall performance. The AR-3a bookshelf speaker of 1968 had a solid, convincing low-end of -3dB at 35Hz with well under 5% THD at a 90 dB SPL level—performance that is still quite good for a speaker whose enclosure was barely more than 1.5 cu. ft. in volume. Its frequency response varied by less than +/- 2 dB between 500 and 10kHz (according to Stereo Review magazine and their admittedly rough measurement techniques at the time) and its dispersion was so good from its dome mid-range and tweeter that it was down less than 5 dB at 60˚ off axis at 15kHz. This kind of dispersion is unheard of and absolutely unequalled by any single-tweeter forward-facing modern speaker. They sound good, even today. Pretty darn good. I know—I have a pair in a secondary system.

Now, to be clear about things—the 3a of 1968 had a lot of problems by today’s standards:

• The tweeter wasn’t ferro-fluid cooled (an invention that AR introduced to the industry in 1975), so despite its great off-axis dispersion, it was down in level about 5 dB relative to the woofer, giving rise to AR’s characteristic 1960’s-70’s “reticent sound.”

• There were a lot of cabinet diffraction issues and driver-placement issues. The 3a’s near-field response was, as one reviewer put it, “a cacophony of phase cancellations and driver interference.” In fairness to AR, the 3a was designed to deliver a smooth far-field power response, since that was what AR felt determined listening quality—the response at the listening position, 8-10 feet away from the speakers, not the sound one meter away on axis. That was their thinking in 1968, so that’s how and why the 3a was designed. AR themselves corrected all of the 3a’s issues with 1978’s AR9, the industry’s first speaker to have vertically-aligned drivers (a practice since copied by every single loudspeaker manufacturer), and close attention to cabinet diffraction and woofer/room interaction.

• The 3a’s tweeter was made of a hard paper. Hard tweeters maintain better dispersion than soft tweeters because their domes maintain their shape better at higher frequencies than soft tweeters. When I was at Boston Acoustics, this was evident once again. Our 1” “Kortec” tweeter (cloth) had markedly poorer dispersion in the upper octave than our 1” Lynnfield aluminum tweeter, despite the fact that both tweeters were identical—identical (dimensions, faceplate, motor structure, everything)—except for the dome material. There may indeed be other issues at play, resonances etc., that make soft tweeters better in some respects, but AR’s own curves show that their own hard ¾” tweeter had better dispersion than their own ¾” soft tweeter. All of these were AR designs, so it’s not like they were criticizing someone else’s tweeter. Nonetheless, despite the slightly inferior dispersion, AR went to a soft ¾” tweeter in all their speakers following the 3a, since construction of the soft tweeter and its surround lent itself better to ferro-fluid cooling and the resonance-absorbing quality of the cloth diaphragm was a desirable quality.

So to sum up: The 3a was an excellent speaker in 1968 and is still enjoyable to listen to today. But in no way whatsoever am I representing that it is the overall equal of a modern speaker. Let’s be unequivocally clear about that.

But speakers like the late ‘60’s ARs (and the KLH’s like the 5, 6 and 17) with their tight bass and pretty accurate, fairly uncolored mids and highs were the exceptions, not the rule. There are precious few speakers from the 60’s that anyone would want to listen to on a serious, day-in/day-out basis today. Those floor-standing University speakers with their 60’s-style furniture legs? They sound exactly like they look like they sound.

 

Acoustic Research AR-3a—1968

University Sound speaker with “Sphericon” tweeter—1963

Ditto the electronics. Direct-coupled solid-state output sections had not yet been devised (that wouldn’t happen until the early 1970’s), so amplifiers and receivers that could output full, low-distortion power at 20Hz were far and few between. Deep, clean, pounding high-SPL bass was not with us in 1966. And until Pioneer introduced the Phase-Locked Loop FM tuner around 1973, FM reception—especially in stereo—was often a noisy, staticky affair, where stations would drift in and out and the sound would never be mistaken for “high fidelity.”  Sure, a fully-functioning piece of stereo electronics from that decade is nostalgic fun, but it’s more fond memory and appreciation for its “Made in the USA” heritage than it is true high-performance audio.

  

Knight Kit tube components—1960

 

Pioneer TX-9100 Tuner with Phase-Lock Loop—1973

The 1970’s-1980’s

This was a never-before-experienced time in American culture. After the end of World War II in 1945, the country had what came to be known as the Baby Boom from 1946-1964. Returning service people settled down, got married and started families. The economy boomed, suburbs sprang up as new residential developments were built in response to the huge, growing demand for housing, and the auto industry flourished again after taking the better part of four years off from 1941 to 1945 to produce tanks and aircraft.

The Baby Boomers came of age starting in the mid 1960’s, extending to the early 1980’s. But it was really in the 1970’s when the market impact of the Boomers was felt the most. They stormed onto college campuses in huge numbers, by the millions. And since there was no Internet or cell phones or laptops or iPods or ear buds or texting or You Tube or Twitter or Instagram then, audio was pretty much it—the only electronic entertainment equipment for kids to spend their money on. College kids went to lots and lots of live concerts and they bought millions of vinyl LPs—and they needed the equipment to play them on. Everything in analog audio was great then--the speakers, the turntables, the cartridges, the cassette decks. It was a grand time in audio. Even Radio Shack gear was 20-20kHz rated at great, low levels of distortion (page 26). Everything was really good, especially after the FTC power ruling in 1974.

Editorial Note: The 1974 FTC power ruling

The 1974 FTC Power Ratings mandate: As stereo grew in popularity by leaps and bounds through the 1960’s, the electronics manufacturers began to inflate and exaggerate their amplifier power ratings in a blatant attempt to win the attention of prospective new customers. Things got so bad (30 watt-per-channel RMS amplifiers were being advertised as having “240 watts of total system musical peak power!”) that by 1974, the Federal Government had to step in with amplifier rating guidelines to ensure that the manufacturers rated their equipment honestly.

One of the new guidelines was a 1/3-power “pre-conditioning” requirement, which stated that amplifiers had to be run at 1/3-power at 1000Hz for an hour before the power output and distortion measurements could be made. The rational, presumably, was that an amp that was properly “warmed up” would give more accurately-representative results than an amp that was measured “cold.”

The problem was this: the 1/3-power test made a class AB amplifier (which virtually all the amps were at that time) run very hot—especially at 4 ohms. Manufacturers found that they had to either modify existing equipment to increase the heatsinking or downgrade their power ratings so they’d run cooler at a lower power level. The very popular Dynaco SCA-80 integrated amplifier, for example, was downgraded from 40 watts RMS/channel to 30 watts after 1974.

For new equipment, the answer was simple: Simply don’t rate the amplifier into a 4-ohm load, since a 4-ohm load required too much expensive, heavy heatsinking, a beefy power supply and heavy-duty output transistors. Things were very competitive in the stereo biz and every dollar counted. If a manufacturer could save $10-20 by using less of that costly die-cast aluminum heatsinking, a less beefy power supply and cheaper, less robust output devices, that could easily translate into a retail price that was $50-100 lower. In a cutthroat market, there’s a world of difference between a receiver priced at $279 when your biggest marketplace rival is $369.00

In the 1970’s, amps and receivers could handle 4-ohm loads. There were some really great lower-priced units that were pretty gutsy. The Sherwood S-7100A could deliver 20-25 watts per channel into 4 ohms all day long and the entry-level Pioneer SX 424 and 525 were also quite comfortable with 4-ohm speakers. A very popular 4-ohm “budget” speaker in those days was the Smaller Advent Loudspeaker. “Small Advents,” as they were called, were deliberately designed to be 4-ohm speakers. Advent wanted the Smaller Advent to have essentially the same excellent bass response and deep extension (-3dB in the mid-40’s Hz) as the Large Advent. In order to achieve this, they needed a woofer with more mass (they mass-loaded the center of the woofer, under the dustcap), for a lower resonance to offset the smaller volume of air in its compact cabinet. It worked just fine, but at a severe penalty in sensitivity—the Small Advent needed a lot of power to drive to reasonably-loud levels. To offset that, Advent made it a 4-ohm speaker, so it would draw more power out of its companion receiver and “seem” just as loud for any given volume control setting as a bigger 8-ohm speaker.

 

Sherwood S-7100A receiver—1972

This was clever engineering and marketing on Advent’s part, made possible only because modestly-priced receivers and integrated amplifiers existed at that time that could handle 4-ohm loads. There were thousands of Small Advents and Sherwood receivers happily signing away in dorm rooms all over the country in the 1970’s. Today’s inexpensive, entry-level electronics generally caution against using 4-ohm speakers. It’s usually not until you get into the middle-range models that low-impedance loads are acceptable (and then often only 6-ohm). But in the 1970’s, 4-ohm loads were perfectly acceptable for inexpensive electronics.

As the stereo market exploded in size among the college-aged consumer in the ‘‘70s, receivers became the dominant electronic component, supplanting the separate preamp/power amp configuration that was most popular among the middle-aged audio enthusiasts who comprised the majority of the market in the ‘50s thru mid-‘60s. Advances in electronic componentry, such as the widespread availability and low cost of reliable silicon transistors, made the design and manufacture of receivers feasible and popular. By combining three components—the power amplifier, preamplifier and tuner—onto a single chassis, using a single main power supply and only one cabinet, the manufacturer’s cost of production, shipping and warehousing plummeted.

Vintage Pioneer SX-727 Receiver

Retail pricing could thus be lowered dramatically, and all this technological advancement fortuitously coincided with the emergence of the biggest population group in the country’s history (the Baby Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964) and a sustained economic strong period that lasted almost uninterrupted for decades, from the late ‘40s right through the ‘70s.

There were record stores everywhere and in areas with strong concentrations of college-aged kids—like Boston, NY, Chicago, Los Angeles, etc.—it seemed like there was a stereo store on every street corner. Indeed, as a college kid in Boston in the mid-70’s, I remember there were no less than four stereo stores (and at least as many record stores) in Harvard Square, a trendy retail/dining section of Cambridge not bigger than a mile by a mile. I spent many a Saturday buying jazz albums and going from store to store, looking at all the new gear and bugging the salespeople.

Amplifiers really hit their stride in the 1970’s. Full-bandwidth 20-20khz power at extremely low distortion became commonplace. Whether it was the modest amplifier section in a mid-priced receiver like the Kenwood KR-5400 (35 watts/ch RMS from 20-20kHz at <0.5% THD) from 1974 or the Pioneer Spec 2 power amplifier from 1976 rated at 250 watts/ch 20-20kHz at <0.1% THD, amps in the 1970’s delivered the goods. Remember the receiver "power wars" that produced 150-200+ WPC, 20-20k, <.05% THD from Pioneer, Kenwood, Technics, Sansui and the others? Integrated amplifiers, too, hit their marketplace peak in the 1970’s. Pioneer, Kenwood and Sansui were the leaders in integrated amps with robust, full-featured, great-looking units that sounded great and operated flawlessly. I am actually using a 1972-vintage Kenwood KA-7002 in one of my systems now. It’s 48 years old and sounds great.

The decade of the 1970’s was unquestionably the Age of the Receiver. And what a Golden Age it was. Every year, major manufacturers like Pioneer, Kenwood, Sony, Sansui, JVC, Marantz and Sherwood introduced new and better models, with more features, more power, and lower prices. With there seeming to be no end to the growth and success of the audio market, manufacturers flourished and consumers benefitted from better and better gear at lower and lower prices.

Editorial Note: The Irrational Hysteria for Vintage Audio

Vintage 1960’s and 1970's audio gear in good shape, if properly refurbished with a meticulous eye towards preserving “originality,” commands insane prices these days. Classic speakers—especially the AR-1, AR-3, AR-3a and AR-LST from Acoustic Research and older KLH models like the 5, 6, 12 and 23—routinely sell for well over $1000-$2000 a pair. Sometimes more. These old speakers seem to be especially sought-after by collectors in the Far East and some of the prices have been truly stratospheric, beyond any sense of rationality. The preferred condition is original, unopened, with original drivers and grille cloth. There are many hobbyist sites like Classic Speaker Pages.net where aficionados and collectors swap info, buy, sell and assist each other with refurbishing the old speakers back to “like new” functionality, all with an eye to preserving as much of the original look and performance of these speakers as possible.

Another site, Classic Audio , specializes in refurbishing vintage electronic gear back to “like new” operating condition and even furnishes documentation showing that the unit has met or exceeded all of its original specs. These pieces sell for far more than their original list price, but they sell out in the blink of an eye.  

At least a case can be made for, say, a 1978-vintage Pioneer SX-1050 receiver. It’s a beautiful piece, built like a tank, has a superb FM section, a great pre-amp with wonderfully versatile tone controls and puts out 120 ultra-clean (.1% THD, 20-20kHz) watts RMS per channel (more, quite comfortably, into 4 ohms). It still sounds quite excellent today. Quite excellent.

Vintage Marantz and McIntosh separates also sell for astonishingly exorbitant prices (I just saw a Marantz 7T pre-amp sell for $2000 on a popular refurb site), but as with mainstream 70’s Pioneer/Kenwood/Sansui/Marantz receivers and integrated amps, at least a case can be made that these items will still actually sound good in addition to their nostalgic appeal.

But while a circa 1968 KLH5 12-inch 3-way loudspeaker may have a certain emotional appeal and an old-world craftsmanship appearance with its beautiful wood-veneer picture-frame baffle cabinet, it’ll sound like, well, a 1968 loudspeaker. Good bass, with colored, slightly veiled mids and somewhat opaque, indistinct highs. But….52 years from now, an SVS Pinnacle tower or RBH SV-61R bookshelf—incomparably superior speakers—will long since be forgotten. Such is the inexplicable, but very real draw of vintage 1960’s-1970’s audio gear.

However, as good as the 1970’s were for audio, the 1980’s might have been even better. Very early in the decade (1982) Sony introduced the first CD player, Panasonic/Technics and others followed suit very quickly. Ok, maybe the very first CDs sounded a little harsh until recording/re-mastering engineers got their digital sea legs beneath them and learned how to best take advantage of the new medium without over-emphasizing the highs. But nonetheless, [see 10 biggest successes], the CD’s importance in the history of consumer electronics can’t really be overstated. Its introduction was the watershed moment, the pivot point, the line of demarcation as to how program material was produced and delivered to the listener.

Before the CD, everything was analog, Records, tapes, radio broadcasts—they were all analog formats. The CD launched the digital age and once that occurred, software production and delivery changed forever. Background noise, pops, clicks, static, hiss, restricted dynamic range, limited bass extension and all manner of other, shall we say, “distractions” were effectively reduced to the point of insignificance.

The First: Sony CDP-101 Compact Disc Player—1982

The CD was an instant smash success. The buying public recognized its attributes right away and sales of both CD players and the discs themselves simply took off. In so many ways, the CD was the ideal transition from the LP, the perfect way for consumers to be comfortable moving from one format to another. The CD resembled the LP—it was circular, the playback device spun the disc (somewhat similar to a turntable spinning an LP, thus easy to conceptualize) and it was removed from its “jacket” and placed in the player (again, similar to the LP). It even carried the same caution, in that the user should refrain from touching the playing surface of the disc, much like you weren’t supposed to put your greasy fingers on the LP’s grooves. It had cover art, liner notes with personnel and lyrics, everything the LP customer was comfortable with. A very easy switch from the turntable and vinyl LPs.

Speakers too, reached heights of engineering excellence combined with aesthetic refinement and beauty that had never been approached before. Speakers from top-level manufacturers sounded great and looked great. Polks, JBLs, ARs and many others were truly superb and are still quite excellent even by today’s standards.

And how much better could electronics have gotten? By the 1980’s, there was a widespread recognition that, yes, amplifiers could indeed sound different from each other, regardless of what the specs said. There was a far better understanding of how amplifiers interacted with speakers, reactive and resistive loads, and we now fully understood “hard clipping” and the importance of spectral analysis of the distortion products. Receivers like the Yamaha CR-1020 exemplified the beautiful-looking, smooth-operating, silky-sounding components that were readily available from the “good” manufacturers. No highly-regarded component from the 1980’s need make any apologies today whatsoever.

When you think about it, the 1980’s were the last decade where everything in general American society and culture was essentially the same as it had been for decades before. Sure, there were incremental changes like cable TV rivaling over-the-air broadcasts and cordless phones becoming mainstream and freeing the average person from being tethered to a 6-foot wall cable, but the huge, structural changes in communications and information delivery hadn’t yet occurred. Even the basic world order was unchanged from the 1950’s: For example, the Soviet Union was still our biggest international rival, there was still an East Germany and a West Germany (just like there had been since 1945) and America’s space program still captured the public’s imagination with the Space Shuttle, just like the first satellites did in the late 1950’s. (Today, the space program is totally invisible to most people.)  

In the ‘80’s, there was still no Internet or cell phones or laptops or iPods or ear buds or texting or You Tube or Twitter or Instagram or Zoom. In actuality, from an information/entertainment delivery standpoint and world political structural angle, the 1980’s were very much like the 1950’s, except that the cars were sleeker and audio gear was a lot better. But aside from the possibility of a CD player replacing a turntable, a “stereo system” was still comprised of some electronics, a source device (or two, with a tape machine) and a pair of speakers.

Conventional 2-channel audio for the masses, still a widespread hobby with a large retail presence, may have hit its peak in the 1980’s. If someone argued that the 80’s were the “Golden Age of Audio,” I’d be hard-pressed to disagree.

Editoral Note:The Emergence of Personal Audio
Although this is an article primarily about home audio and how it has progressed through the past six decades or so, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the huge cultural impact of the original Sony Walkman [see: 10 Biggest AV Successes]. The Walkman (originally to be called “Soundabout!”) made its debut in the late 1980’s and immediately transformed the entire notion of transportable audio.

No longer did people have to contend with bulky, intrusive boom boxes or make do with low-fidelity battery-powered AM/FM radios. The Walkman afforded people the ability to play their cassette tapes (either commercial pre-recorded tapes or the ones they made on their own high-quality home cassette recorder) through good-quality lightweight headphones and enjoy true high-fidelity music on the go. Today, such an experience is commonplace, but in 1987, the Sony Walkman revolutionized the way people enjoyed their music. It was a cultural pivot point.

When Was the “Golden Age” of Audio? - 1990's to Present Day

The 1990’s-Early 2000’s

If technology and culture in the 1980’s was structurally very similar to that in the 1950’s and 60’s, then the 1990’s changed everything. Changed it in a big way, very fast and very permanently. For one thing, the Internet stormed onto the scene. The majority of the middle-class was now “online.” Maybe they were online with dial-up modems using AOL e-mails, but they were online. People communicated by e-mail. It was a paradigm shift in the speed and ability with which people were able to stay in contact.

Cell phones, too, hit their stride. They may have been clunky Samsungs or primitive flip-phones, but they were cell phones. People were calling and talking from their cars, while walking the dog, while shopping.

Personal computers became a standard household possession. Public school kids in the ‘90’s had computers and printers in their houses. They could surf the web, do research and print documents. Parents could find out the “invoice price” of new cars. (Ooooo…..) Wite-Out correction fluid—a staple for high school and college students in the previous decades—became a thing of the past.

These three developments—the Internet, the cell phone and the home computer—arguably changed peoples’ lives more from the 90’s onwards than any other technological advances in the prior 50-100 years.

I remember being at CES in 1998 while I was with Boston Acoustics. We were showing a new prototype speaker that we wanted to keep pretty secret and we had it in a back room (not on display in the main booth area), showing it only to select dealers. The next day full color pics and specs of it were online. The next day. Communications at the speed of the Internet had arrived. It was a new universe. The separation (heck, more like a chasm) between the 1980’s and the 1990’s could not have been greater.

So viewed in the context of this new technological landscape, 2-channel audio as a major area of interest and consumer discretionary spending began to fade into the background. “Stereo” as a hobby didn’t disappear but it certainly diminished to a very large extent.

Home Theater to the Rescue

But just when it seemed like 2-channel audio was going to disappear and the “audio business” was going to go the way of the horse and buggy, a great thing happened: The VCR was invented and it saved the audio business. Yes, the VCR saved the audio business because the VCR gave rise to the emergence of an incredibly important development in audio history: Home Theater.

Here’s how it came about:

In 1976, Sony introduced their Betamax, the first home video recorder. Finally, people could record TV programs and play them back later at their convenience. No more rushing home to catch the program on TV. JVC and Panasonic (Matsushita) countered with their VHS system a year or so later and VHS eventually won the marketplace struggle over Beta in the first of many “competing format” wars that have continuously plagued the consumer electronics business over the last 40 or 50 years.

1980s-era Panasonic VCR and VHS tape

VCRs are really a technical marvel and an amazing example of clever engineering in the analog age. Compared to recording visual programming like TV, audio recording is simple. The highest audible frequencies in music or speech are around 15,000 Hertz. Women and children can probably hear up to 20,000 Hz. Your grandfather can’t get much past 4000 Hz, which is why he’s always saying, “What? What’d ya say?”

But visual frequencies are much, much higher than audible frequencies. The highest visual frequencies they human eye can perceive in the visible light spectrum are about 700 THz. Such small high-frequency wavelengths were thought to be absolutely impossible to record with an analog system.

The VCR is an analog device. So how do VCRs have enough bandwidth to record it? What’s the trick?

Pretty clever. Someone really had their thinking cap on that day, that’s for sure.

Tape speed is the key. In an analog audio tape recorder, a tape speed of 7 ½ or 15 inches per second is fast enough to capture the full 20kHz audio spectrum without any reduction or attenuation of the highest frequencies. Even a cassette recorder’s tape speed of 1 7/8 inches per second is sufficient to record up to around 14-15kHz with very good fidelity. Certainly good enough for semi-critical listening, such as background music at home or listening in the car.

In a video tape recorder, some engineer came up with the idea to put the recording heads on a spinning wheel, spinning at 1000’s of RPMs. The combination of the tape moving past these recording heads spinning at incredibly fast speed results in an effective “tape speed” that is so high—so many thousands of “Inches per second” (not merely 7 or 15 as in an audio tape recorder), that a VCR can now easily record those very high visual frequencies.

It was so clever. Such good, common-sense engineering. And thus, the Era of Home Video Recording was born. Now people could time-shift their TV to record their favorite programs for later viewing and rent movies to watch at home.

But put 2 + 2 together: If a VCR can record ultra-high visual frequencies correctly (in the MHz range, not kHz!), what do you think it can do with those simple audio/music frequencies that only go up to 20,000 Hz (20kHz)?

Yes! A VCR can record any audio signal better than the best master recording studio tape decks can. Those were only 15 inches per second (IPS). A VCR is 1000’s of IPS.

So pretty soon people were connecting the Audio Outputs of their VCRs to their stereo systems to play the audio soundtracks of their rented movies. They sounded great, really great: You’d see the picture on your nice 27” Sony Trinitron TV and you’d hear the dialogue and soundtrack through your killer stereo system. This was the first incarnation of Home Theater.

Then another engineering milestone took place, one that in conjunction with the Hi-Fi VCR, marked yet another turning point in the history of home A/V evolution. In the early 1990’s, the folks at Dolby Laboratories figured out how to extract some additional signal content off of stereo VHS movie tapes. There were some “hidden” signals that they could manipulate and turn into the so-called “surround” and “center” channels of a home theater system. They sold this circuitry to Sony, Denon, Pioneer, etc., and before you knew it, all the receiver manufacturers were putting this new Dolby Surround circuitry (later, Dolby Pro Logic) into their receivers.

Early 1990’s Technics Multi-Channel Pro Logic Surround Sound receiver

The customer hooked their VCR’s audio outputs into their surround receiver, put a speaker on top of their TV, two additional surround speakers in the rear of the room, and voilà! Surround Sound movies in your home. 

There were movie rental places springing up all over the map. Blockbuster was born and thrived. Renting a movie on the way home from work on a Friday night became a 1990’s American ritual. And most of those were played on a hi-fi VCR surround system.

Early 1990’s VHS tape with surround sound encoding

Just as it seemed like 2-channel home audio was on the way out, like it was a favored pastime from another era, the age of Home Theater gave the audio business a shot in the arm. More like a jet-assisted take-off with afterburners! Home audio had a new lease on life, a new mission, a new reason to appeal to an entirely new generation of consumers. Homes all over the country started to have dedicated “theater rooms.”  Basements were being remodeled in record numbers. Furniture makers came out with “theater seating.” Homebuilders offered theater rooms in new construction.

Speaker manufacturers introduced all manner of center channel and ambient surround speakers in response to the demand for specialized models. The speaker business was good—what used to be a 2-unit sale per system was now a 5-speaker sale. And a new kind of speaker component—the powered subwoofer—became a mainstay of these new theater systems.

Home theater was really strong for about 15 years or so, right up until the big economic downturn of 2008. That really put the kibosh on the housing and employment market and the home theater boom that characterized those wild 90’s and early 2000’s gave way to subdued social reluctance. Many major electronics retailers, like Tweeter Etc, Hi Fi Buys and others, went out of business during this time. A grand period in audio retailing was gone forever.

Around 2010 Through Today

Pure audio is a pretty lonely hobby these days. There remains very little brick-and-mortar retail for display and demonstration. Even brands that used to sell their products only through so-called “authorized retailers” now sell direct to the end user right from their website. 

I’m very good friends with one of the engineers I worked with at Atlantic Technology. Jason was in his mid-20’s when I met him, green, wet behind the ears but as enthusiastic and as “into it” as anyone could possibly be. He was ex-Army and all the soldiers he served with had great stereo systems that they’d purchased through the Army’s exchanges. He was super interested in music, gear and he was an EE. Just the right combination. As Jason grew into his position at Atlantic he absorbed info and experience like a sponge from his own discoveries and from our head engineer (whose personal history stretched back to the “old days” doing things the “right way”), constantly peppering him with questions and “show me’s.” Jason also worked his butt off, taking additional courses on his own.

By time I left Atlantic in 2012, Jason had blossomed into one of the flat-out best speaker engineers I’ve ever known (and I’ve known a lot!). Not just crossover design and voicing, but driver design, cabinet construction and bracing methods (he’s investigated the causes and audibility of cabinet vibration and he’s invented the most novel and effective methods of bracing/vibration suppression I’ve ever seen) and installation/system setup. Quite the well-rounded individual. We meet for dinner on a fairly regular basis and talk audio, every manner of audio. It’s great fun, but that degree of interest in pure hobbyist audio is definitely a rarity these days among people Jason’s age.

The enthusiast magazines have also really fallen by the wayside: Stereophile magazine used to be a 300-page monthly affair. Now it’s barely over 150 pages. Sound & Vision is still around, but it seems irrelevant, like no one is paying attention anymore.

The importance of separate audio components (electronics, speakers, source units) makes a difference only to what appears to be the most die-hard home theater or 2-channel audio aficionado, that segment of the market that has always owned a “component” audio or home theater system. Brand new component audio enthusiasts don’t seem to be being created any longer. The under-30-ish crowd doesn’t even think in terms of acquiring separate audio gear. To them, “audio” is not something separate and apart from everything else; instead, the notion of “audio” is not thought of at all. It’s simply, automatically part of something else. Alexa comes with its own little speaker and amplification built-in. The thought of “customizing” it and replacing its audio portion with something different is not even a fleeting consideration.

Which is a shame, when you think of it. Good audio is easily discerned by anyone, even so-called novices. I have a really good 2-channel audio system: Big tower 4-way speakers with multiple 12-inch woofers, 400 watts RMS per side, a really SOTA CD player, acoustically-treated walls, and the room itself has nearly ideal dimensions that do not impart annoying resonances on the sound. It’s a great system in a great-sounding room.

I have a very wide range of good music on CD: jazz, classical, popular, rock, rap, you name it. Invariably, guests will ask to hear my system. I say, “What kind of music do you like?” If it’s someone older than, say 40-50, they’ll usually pick some classic rock/pop (maybe like Steely Dan or EWF or Michael Jackson, something like that) and I’ll pop in a disc and hit ‘play.’

That crashing sound you hear is the sound of their jaw hitting the floor. Truly great audio has a stunning effect on people, because they never knew that that kind of sound was possible, that that kind of experience could be had.

That experience is what’s missing from the vast majority of today’s audio. It makes noise, it delivers dialogue, weather, a recognizable tune, familiar lyrics. But regular audio today does not deliver an experience. Regardless of the delivery format, most people these days don’t even think about sound quality, other than the very basics of it being clearly discernable and free from gross obvious distortions.

Smart speakers—2019

Sometimes, there is a very minor “step-up” in sound quality—people may opt for a basic soundbar-type add-on when purchasing a new flat screen television (maybe even with a small shoebox-sized subwoofer, perhaps wireless)—but for the most part, younger electronics customers are not assembling full-fledged component home theater systems.

Vizio Soundbar

Today Should be the Golden Age of Audio

That’s really too bad. If ever there was a “golden age” of audio, this is it. Right now. Today! The sheer excellence and ultra-high performance of today’s best components is almost beyond belief. For those enthusiasts who have the knowledge, interest, skill and wherewithal to assemble and set up a really good dedicated theater or music system in their home, their diligence is more than richly rewarded.

Speakers like the current offerings from companies like Revel, Legacy and RBH Sound deliver a wide-range, effortless audio performance the likes of which would seem like utter science fiction to designers from the 1960’s or 70’s. One can’t even contemplate comparing a JBL Century 100 from 1973 to a modern mid- to high-end speaker.

Modern theater electronics with their multi-channel object-based Dolby Atmos, DTS:X and Auro-3D decoding/spacial systems deliver a lifelike three-dimensional soundscape that, combined with today’s large-screen high-definition video, makes for a truly convincing, immersive experience. Anthem, Emotiva, the better Denons, Marantzs, Parasounds, Outlaws and the like are amplifiers that stand above the very best from any era. There is no way to even begin to say that a Phase Linear 400 from 1974 is on the same level as a Parasound Halo JC5.

What is beyond “Golden?” Platinum? Diamond? From a pure performance, build, UI and aesthetic standpoint, today’s better audio equipment—not even the very best, just the ‘better’ models—are so far ahead of anything that has come before that the current era, right now, has as strong a claim on the title of “Golden Era of Audio” as any time period from the past.

Modern speakers and electronics from RBH (SVTR tower), Denon (X8500 13.2 HT multi-format receiver) and Anthem (super high-performance 2-ch integrated STR amplifier)

There are two things that prevent the modern era from claiming the prize outright:

1. Lack of nostalgia for the current goods. It’s highly doubtful, as I mentioned earlier, that anyone 50 years from now will be Jonesin’ for an RBH SV-6500R tower, and
2. The almost total absence of widespread marketplace demand for today’s component audio products. High-performance component audio is a niche product, appealing to an ever-dwindling narrow slice of the market. I followed in my Dad’s footsteps in liking and wanting a component stereo system. No one, however, is following me. That’s not what they want. They want other stuff.

Conclusion: Which Era Wins?

So there you have it. Decide for yourself. Every era has its appeal and undeniable charms. Beautiful, old-world craftsmanship, made in the USA? Amazing, rugged construction, bulletproof into low impedance loads? The almost perfect melding of great sound and beautiful looks, approaching ‘absolute’ in terms of low distortion and accurate reproduction? Incredible, lifelike performance, unquestionably “better” than live concerts or movie theaters in terms of wide frequency range and intelligibility?

I think every era is a great era, because for me, they’re all “mine.” Most people have a hard time fully appreciating the attractions and emotional appeal of time periods before their own. I’d venture a guess and say that most 40-ish and younger audiophiles today view 1970’s audio with a mixture of unserious amusement and dismissal. I’d further guess that most audiophiles above, say, 60-65 look at today’s 13.2 or 7.4 systems as flashy and gimmicky, with the emphasis on bells and whistles instead of on the tonally accurate reproduction of real music as played on real instruments.

Both groups are right and both groups are wrong. The legitimate appeal of home audio has lasted for more than 60 years, and deservedly so. Very few technical equipment-based hobbies can say the same. It’s one long golden era, in my view, and I hope it lasts forever.