Despite high fidelity audio makers trying to make their
presence felt in every Las Vegas CES show since it began, does the “concept” of
sound quality still matter?
By: Ringo Bones
The 1992 CES was probably my first thoroughly toured CES
show where I first learned the ropes on how hi-fi and high end audio
manufacturers make their presence both felt and known in these kinds of
exposition environments. When I was fortunate enough to return back in 1997, it
seems like hi-fi and high-end audio exhibitors were rather dramatically
eclipsed by new personal computer and personal computer related products aimed
at the first-time consumer. With the concept of high fidelity audio / sound
quality or the factual representation of it no longer registering in the
consciousness radars of the mainstream press like the BBC or CNN, does hi-fi
and/or the factual representation of sound quality still matter in the annual
CES Show in Las Vegas, Nevada?
It might be a tad ungrateful for me to blame PC makers – or
current portable internet capable smartphone, tablet computers and what have
you manufacturers – for pushing hi-fi audio into the obscurity corner at every
annual CES Show after 1997 because most of my “willingly wasteful hi-fi budget”
was made via on-line trading during the Clinton Administration. And it was only
possible via both the 1990s era internet and the desktop personal computers of
the day.
But the truth is high fidelity audio and high end audio had
been a shrinking violet in every annual CES Show way well before George Dubya
Bush screwed the Clinton era economic expansion that created Google and gave
the late, great Steve Jobs of Apple very much to invent whatever he pleases
back in the 1990s. Ever since IBM made desktop personal computers got priced
within the threshold of affordability of every American public high-school’s
allotted Federal educational budget, parents across America suddenly got the
impression that a 1,500 US dollar mid to late 1980s era desktop personal
computer is more useful than a 900 US dollar second-hand hi-fi composed of a
still-functioning Fisher 500-C receiver, a pair of Acoustic research AR 3a
loudspeakers and a Garrard turntable and a bunch of Beethoven and Mozart Classical
LPs.
