Do your kids like music/hi-fi

[Vinyleyes]

I'm moved to ask this question after reading reading through the monster thread on HIFi+ demise..... and the way the thread meandered wonderfully OT and into the realms of was HiFi still alive and what we could do to help.
I think it is safe to say that all of us here are keen to listen to our music through the best system that our ingenuity, pocket and ears can put together .. and almost all of us surely are not strangers to sitting back and spending time SOLELY listening to music, whether alone or in the company of friends/family.
Therefore what actually encourages young people to become interested in spending time and money on a decent hifi system .. and are there really less and less of the young who are interested to do this. I am not so sure it is quite that simple.

When I was a teenager my group of friends would eagerly await the new Floyd/Zep/Grateful Dead/Allman Bros .. etcetc release and then would immediately congregate at the house of whosever parents were out .. or whoever had the best record player .. and we would with the help of whatever recreational aids we could find .... sit, sprawl and lay around and listen to the WHOLE of the album.
We would then eagerly lay it bare in discussion + comparison to previous offerings from the artiste .. and we were merciless haha! ... Incredible though were the number of times where repeated listenings would improve one's first perception of the album ... .. All well and good ...

Moving on to the present day .... Nearly 3 years ago I pulled all my vinyl and hifi sysytem from under the stairs, brushed it off and plugged it in ... The sound immediately was superb and I could not understand why I had not listened to it for more than 10 years ...
I got hold of my then 15 yr old son and sat him in front of it and played Tubular Bells ( which he had never heard ) .. and then Led Zepp 11 at rude volume ... After explaining how it was almost like a ritual to settle back for just a few minutes and listen to the whole side his jaw slowly dropped as he realised he had never known music replay could sound so good in the home ... ( I am blessed in having a son who appreciates Hendrix and is also now a musician with his own band) ... He quickly told his mates and I regularly held vinyl listening sessions for them round at my place.
The fact is though ... when I was their age ... we were a group of very similar size and the rest of our schoolmates thought we were all nuts .. they might buy a northern soul single ... but money on hifi and albums .. NO way!
And that situation is the same now .... there is my son's group of musicians and music lovers .. and they will actually buy vinyl albums as well as ripping the normal MP3,s .. if they like something they will buy it properly ... BUT .... they also are very much in the minority and the vast majority of other kids would not spend their money that way .. let alone devote an evening at someones house simply to LISTEN to music.

So I postulate that the percentage of people that will buy good recordings of music and spend sizeable amounts on hifi is directly related to the amount of people that will actually sit down and LISTEN solely to music. That group is a very small one ... more kids now have disposable income than they ever did in my time but they have so much more to spend it on .. and unless they love music they will not spend it this way.

I do not think any amount of advertising can change this ... a person either has music in their life ... or ,,, not withstanding teen peer pressure ,, they will say they like it and maybe go to gigs for the night out .. but stick to MP3's and the like. The tales of people who get to gigs now and stand there recording it instead of becoming part of the experience are particularly sad .. and that's not just the kids haha!

We are all music lovers .. so how many of our own teenage kids actually SIT and listen to music .. even if they say they like it .. and what would you do to make it easier to expose them to affordable hifi other than holding wild demoing parties in your living room for 7 or 8 late teens ... :mental:
( Great fun BTW ,,, :cool:)

[flatpopely]

So I postulate that the percentage of people that will buy good recordings of music and spend sizeable amounts on hifi is directly related to the amount of people that will actually sit down and LISTEN solely to music. That group is a very small one ... more kids now have disposable income than they ever did in my time but they have so much more to spend it on .. and unless they love music they will not spend it this way.



This is a very good point and one that I 100% agree with but it's not just restricted to kids.

I got my love of music from my Dad who every Sunday used to put aside 2 hours to sit down and do nothing but listen to music. I still sit down and really listen to music about 5 hours per week, it used to be 2 hours per day before the Tasmanian Devil (Abigail 3 year old) arrived.

All my colleagues at work claim to love music but I ask them do they ever sit down and listen at home exclusively listen to music, none of them do so, my friends neither. For them the home cinema or iPod dock is more than good enough and TBH for the amount they concentrate and listen to music it really is as they are not too shabby on the whole as for 99.999% of the time its background noise, not saying they don't enjoy music they just don't love it.
I can come out of the end of an hour of immersive listening an emotional wreck and for me that's what its about.

It's a banned subject at work now when we go out as my passion for music tends to get a bit 'tired and emotional' after a few beers........

Just my tuppence worth.

[lurcher]

I guess its hard to say just how representive the last 30 years of my music listening is. After the first couple of years at uni listening to music in groups as described and why employing recreational chemicals (the chemicals may in themself mean the group of people were not a random selection of the population) the next 15 years was spent either trying to be a musician, hanging out with musicians and running a pub that had a lot of live music. There was a 5 year lull, where less music was less common, after those 5 years I realised what I was missing and got back into HiFi and a couple of years later into playing again. But after the lull, I have lost touch with a lot of the "spend a hour listening to a recording then talk about it" folks I knew, and I have slowly started to find new folks who do that mainly through DIY hifi. Difference now is they are not local so its only on special events that we get together.

So what I think I am saying is that when I think, its not the same now as it was, the kids are less into music now, it maybe the case that it wasn't like that then either, its just I was in a odd group of people that coloured my view of what was normal.

But my kids are into music, but I think for them its part of the overall art/media/gaming environment that then are surrounded with. The most obvious one that has a interest in music is Charlie(ette) who is 15 and she is into Korean and Japanese pop music, which gets very odd once you discover vocaloid.

[chelsea]

Music yes.
Hi fi no.

[magiccarpetride]

I'm moved to ask this question after reading reading through the monster thread on HIFi+ demise..... and the way the thread meandered wonderfully OT and into the realms of was HiFi still alive and what we could do to help.
I think it is safe to say that all of us here are keen to listen to our music through the best system that our ingenuity, pocket and ears can put together .. and almost all of us surely are not strangers to sitting back and spending time SOLELY listening to music, whether alone or in the company of friends/family.
Therefore what actually encourages young people to become interested in spending time and money on a decent hifi system .. and are there really less and less of the young who are interested to do this. I am not so sure it is quite that simple.

When I was a teenager my group of friends would eagerly await the new Floyd/Zep/Grateful Dead/Allman Bros .. etcetc release and then would immediately congregate at the house of whosever parents were out .. or whoever had the best record player .. and we would with the help of whatever recreational aids we could find .... sit, sprawl and lay around and listen to the WHOLE of the album.
We would then eagerly lay it bare in discussion + comparison to previous offerings from the artiste .. and we were merciless haha! ... Incredible though were the number of times where repeated listenings would improve one's first perception of the album ... .. All well and good ...

Moving on to the present day .... Nearly 3 years ago I pulled all my vinyl and hifi sysytem from under the stairs, brushed it off and plugged it in ... The sound immediately was superb and I could not understand why I had not listened to it for more than 10 years ...
I got hold of my then 15 yr old son and sat him in front of it and played Tubular Bells ( which he had never heard ) .. and then Led Zepp 11 at rude volume ... After explaining how it was almost like a ritual to settle back for just a few minutes and listen to the whole side his jaw slowly dropped as he realised he had never known music replay could sound so good in the home ... ( I am blessed in having a son who appreciates Hendrix and is also now a musician with his own band) ... He quickly told his mates and I regularly held vinyl listening sessions for them round at my place.
The fact is though ... when I was their age ... we were a group of very similar size and the rest of our schoolmates thought we were all nuts .. they might buy a northern soul single ... but money on hifi and albums .. NO way!
And that situation is the same now .... there is my son's group of musicians and music lovers .. and they will actually buy vinyl albums as well as ripping the normal MP3,s .. if they like something they will buy it properly ... BUT .... they also are very much in the minority and the vast majority of other kids would not spend their money that way .. let alone devote an evening at someones house simply to LISTEN to music.

So I postulate that the percentage of people that will buy good recordings of music and spend sizeable amounts on hifi is directly related to the amount of people that will actually sit down and LISTEN solely to music. That group is a very small one ... more kids now have disposable income than they ever did in my time but they have so much more to spend it on .. and unless they love music they will not spend it this way.

I do not think any amount of advertising can change this ... a person either has music in their life ... or ,,, not withstanding teen peer pressure ,, they will say they like it and maybe go to gigs for the night out .. but stick to MP3's and the like. The tales of people who get to gigs now and stand there recording it instead of becoming part of the experience are particularly sad .. and that's not just the kids haha!

We are all music lovers .. so how many of our own teenage kids actually SIT and listen to music .. even if they say they like it .. and what would you do to make it easier to expose them to affordable hifi other than holding wild demoing parties in your living room for 7 or 8 late teens ... :mental:
( Great fun BTW ,,, :cool:)

My daughter, who loves music, thinks that my obsession with hi fi is just mental. She's convinced that it's all in my head, and that there are no audible differences that matter between different sound systems.

[Neil McCauley]

Music yes.
Hi fi no.

+1

Worse yet, they do indeed hear the difference and readily appreciate the difference is an improvement. But they don't care enough!

One bought a BMW M3 and the other a TVR Chimera. No way would they spend spare cash on what they consider an irrelevance. Ho hummmmmm


--------------------

[John]

Unfortantly generally listening to music on my system has been a more isolated experience, going to a gig a social experience. Even my friends who love going to gigs think I am a bit crazy and are usually quite happy to hear music from their Ipod

[griffo104]

+1

Worse yet, they do indeed hear the difference and readily appreciate the difference is an improvement. But they don't care enough!

One bought a BMW M3 and the other a TVR Chimera. No way would they spend spare cash on what they consider an irrelevance. Ho hummmmmm


--------------------

I agree with this. My other half's kids love their music and will admit my hifi is far better than what they listen on but they don't care.

they think my rows of records are just plain daft when you can have all your albums in the palm of your hand.

I think the idea of getting up and changing sides is some hat alien to them as well.

My other half's nephew however, he's 13, loved the records and was asking about why I was brushing them before playing and then clamping them down so may be a seed of something may have been planted there.

Most to be honest are put off by the size of it and the fact it has be placed properly in a room, they think of have some specialised version of OCD.

[Ali Tait]

My 18 year old daughter is very much into music, and indeed has been with me twice to Glastonbury. Her phone is crammed full of music, to which she listens constantly while travelling etc.

She thinks I'm a bit "mental", having all these boxes lying around, though she happily relieved me of my old pair of B&W P5's, which she has hooked up to a cheap mini system type thing in her bedroom.She has her telly hooked up to it too.

So I'd say the same really- Music yes, Hi-fi no.

[Macca]

She thinks I'm a bit "mental", having all these boxes lying around, though she happily relieved me of my old pair of B&W P5's, which she has hooked up to a cheap mini system type thing in her bedroom.She has her telly hooked up to it too.

.

Hooking up the telly is the first step on a slippery slope...

[Ali Tait]

Aye! :lol:

[Gromit]

Our kids don't get much choice. :)

Was doing some score preparation the other night, when Emma (11 months old) decided she'd like to have a go...

http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e320/Gromit011/IMG_6094.jpg

http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e320/Gromit011/IMG_6095.jpg

[Andy]

Aw, that's probably one of the cutest pictures I've ever seen, she looks adorable. Dont tell me it's you working on the score, the truth is she'd been composing for the last few hours. Middle name Amadeus? :)

imho the music has to come first, that really is the most important. The hi fi is secondary, though still very important. My oldest daughter is 21 and loves music, but at the moment can usually only afford pc-sourced stuff. She listens to alot on the move though, so mp3's are ok for that. She does lust after a decent hi fi setup but cos she essentially lives in one small room, she wont get one until her and her friends move out into a bigger better house. Then she has her sights set on a vinyl setup "real kit for listening to real music" as she says.
Personally I've tried not to influence her one way or the other, but I was well chuffed when she bought herself her first vinyl album a year or so ago. Without any real (concious) prompting from me she's come to her own conclusion that vinyl sounds better.
Cant say I disagree:lol:

[hifinutt]

yes i took my teen to my last demo of speakers and he gave some great feedback

just recently i played my dac straight to the power amps and immediately he could hear the difference without a pre amp and demanded back the pre amp

he is fascinated by all the wires etc and even helped me install an earth spike under the living room [2 metres depth now ]

[aquapiranha]

My son loves music, maybe not everything I listen to of course!
He does appreciate good music though and lies quite a few bands I enjoy like Villagers, King Crimson and that kind of thing. However, I made a point of not trying to 'indoctrinate' him with the music thst I like, rather I would want him to find his own preference, even if I did not approve. I don't like the way some parents try to force their music down their kids throats, as if they have a right to make them like what they do.

[MartinT]

Similar to you, Brian, my son loves music and hi-fi and is the lead guitarist and songwriter in his own band. I recently passed down my old IPL S5TL speakers and a Cambridge amp to him and he is pleased to be able to play music from his PC through a proper system. His mates rather like it, too.

He listens to my system and tells me it is too clean for his music, but then he is used to creating one helluva noise in the studio and using all kinds of sound effects to get the sound that matches their gig sound. However, if I put on Hendrix he is in seventh heaven :)

[Vinyleyes]

Similar to you, Brian, my son loves music and hi-fi and is the lead guitarist and songwriter in his own band. I recently passed down my old IPL S5TL speakers and a Cambridge amp to him and he is pleased to be able to play music from his PC through a proper system. His mates rather like it, too.

He listens to my system and tells me it is too clean for his music, but then he is used to creating one helluva noise in the studio and using all kinds of sound effects to get the sound that matches their gig sound. However, if I put on Hendrix he is in seventh heaven :)

We are indeed blessed with our offspring Martin . :lolsign: ...... You know I often think how far my bonds of paternal love would have been stretched if I had had a son who grew up wanting to listen to Michael Jackson or something ...... and who thought Coldplay were a good band .. :eek:

[MartinT]

Oh, I've been through the heartache, but it was about my son leaving home at 17. However, he is 19 now and we are on far better terms and enjoy meeting up to chat about music, girlfriends and life in general :)

[Vinyleyes]

Oh, I've been through the heartache, but it was about my son leaving home at 17. However, he is 19 now and we are on far better terms and enjoy meeting up to chat about music, girlfriends and life in general :)

That's cool you made things good again .. Music really helped me stay on the same wavelength ,, I took him to his first festivals when he was 15 and we found we shared a lot of likes and dislikes. Since then we have done South America together with guitars .. jamming together on the road.

BUT ... all that is now in jeopardy as he told me on the phone the other day that he had TRASHED the needle of my Lyra Argo .. :steam: .....

There's always a silver lining though ..........

I never liked that damn cartridge anyway .. and now I got no option except to replace it .. :lolsign: ... :doh:

[MartinT]

BUT ... all that is now in jeopardy as he told me on the phone the other day that he had TRASHED the needle of my Lyra Argo .. :steam: .....

:lolsign:

Mine trashed both tweeters in my Ushers. I was not amused, and it took the distributor weeks to get a matched pair from Taiwan.

As you say, it's all part of the rich tapestry of having children.

[Themis]

My son prefers 320AAC to 128MP3. It's a good start ! :cool:

My daughter doesn't care, but, after all, most girls don't care about anything else but the looks of hifi... so, she's just average ! :lolsign: