If this article comes across a bit like a rant, that’s because it is. What I’m going to write about has been on my mind for about a year now, and it’s finally hit the boiling point.
When I bought my first hi‑fi system in 1980, I was 16 years old. I didn’t have much money. I didn’t have a career yet. But what I did have was exposure—to excitement, enthusiasm, and belief in what audio products could do at every price level. I also bought a lot of records, so I needed something to play them on, just like my friends did. A hi‑fi system was a status symbol among young people, not unlike a fully tricked-out gaming computer is today, something that can now be considered a financial competitor to hi‑fi for young people looking to spend their money.
That matters, because the contemporary hi‑fi industry seems to have forgotten how important appealing to a broad swath of consumers is—particularly when it comes to equipment the majority of the population can afford.
Back then
Back in 1980, magazines and salespeople didn’t reserve their passion for the most expensive equipment. There was real excitement around affordable gear—products that even teenagers could realistically aspire to acquire, and did. Components priced in the hundreds of dollars were written about seriously in audio magazines of that time. They were praised and often recommended so strongly that readers became inspired to seek them out. Whether those reviews were as credible as they seemed at the time now makes me wonder—but what I don’t wonder about is the excitement they generated.
Iconic 1980s-era Naim Audio ad
Marketing of that era didn’t treat budget buyers as an afterthought; it treated them as current and future enthusiasts. The marketers of all products sought to appeal to seemingly all buyers, not a select few.
Retail salespeople got it, too. I shopped at several hi‑fi stores for my first system and was always treated with respect, probably because they understood that even young people can afford stereos if they have jobs and/or parents willing to help them out.
And that approach worked.
I wanted a hi‑fi system—not sometime in the future, but right away—and I got it. The enthusiasm was contagious. I was drawn to specific products because people spoke about them with conviction and clarity. As a result, I bought a pair of PSB New Avanté loudspeakers, an NAD 3140 integrated amplifier, and a Bang & Olufsen Beogram 1700 turntable. None of these were ultra-expensive—the whole setup priced out at about CA$1200 (the Canadian dollar was only valued slightly under the US dollar in 1980)—but they were positioned as smart, musically satisfying, high-quality hi‑fi products. That positioning mattered, because I didn’t feel like I was buying inexpensive products; I felt like I was buying good ones.
A recently spotted Bang & Olufsen Beogram 1700 (in rough shape)
Adjusted for inflation, that $1200 system would cost in the neighborhood of CA$4700 today. That’s not a trivial amount of money—but it’s also not absurd. It’s the kind of sum people routinely spend on other leisure pursuits. In hi‑fi terms, that should still represent a serious, attainable, and musically complete system.
What’s more, there are those who have made the argument that entry-level hi‑fi, like most electronics, hasn’t been subjected to the same inflationary pressures as other products. What they mean is that today you can buy a hi‑fi system comparable to the one I bought in 1980 for about the same amount in nominal dollars, or only a bit more. In other words, affordable hi‑fi is more affordable than ever—it’s just not promoted the same.
The upper end at that time
Of course, there were products I couldn’t afford. Thousands of dollars was out of reach for a 16-year-old. But here’s the crucial difference from today: the very best equipment of the time wasn’t restricted to the ultra-wealthy. You didn’t need to be part of the one percent. You just needed a good job.
The turntable I truly wanted was the Oracle Delphi, which was new at the time and looked like a work of art (it still does today). The Delphi was beyond my reach, but not absurdly so. If I had somehow come up with an extra $1000, I could have bought it. Think about that for a second—a 16-year-old kid could have owned the turntable of his dreams.
The original Oracle Delphi is featured as an exhibit at Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec
My father worked as a branch manager for a large bank, so he had a good income. Not lavish, but higher than average. If he had wanted to buy the best stereo system offered in the stores I was perusing, he probably could have. He simply might have had to squirrel away the cash by putting another year or two on his car before he traded it in for a new one. Nowadays a person in his situation couldn’t dream about buying an upper-end hi‑fi system even if their income were doubled (more on that below).
Let’s compare the reality back then with what the hi‑fi industry looks like today.
Things today
Nowadays, there is remarkably little marketing energy devoted to entry-level or budget-conscious buyers. And what exists is often inept. I’ve met countless marketers who think the fact that they “come from outside the industry” is a badge of honor. To me, it usually means they don’t understand the market they’re selling to.
That’s not to say hi‑fi marketers shouldn’t be thinking outside of the box, but many of these people seem to believe that depicting young people smiling and laughing while listening to music is enough to convince someone to spend a couple of thousand dollars on a hi‑fi system. It isn’t. Worse, it ignores the fact that many potential newcomers don’t yet understand the category and will need education before they can be convinced.
A Kenwood ad from the 1970s
For example, over the last two years I’ve been telling anyone who will listen that many consumers today don’t know what “the stuff in the middle” of a hi‑fi system is, meaning amplifiers and preamplifiers and what have you. They understand what speakers are, because they make the sound. If they spin vinyl, they know what a turntable is, because how else would you play a record?
But streaming? You can use your phone for that, so the idea of a digital source is confusing. And consumers wonder why speakers can’t just have the amps built in, like active and powered speakers do. A while ago Dennis Burger listened to my summary of this problem, and found it so thought-provoking that he wrote an article about it on SoundStage! Access in December 2024.
As a result of this knowledge gap, there are very few products that genuinely capture attention at the lower end of the price scale—not because good products don’t exist, but because no one is bothering to champion them or clearly communicate their benefits.
WiiM Ultra
Before writing this, I asked several fellow writers to name recent affordable products that generated genuine excitement. The only example anyone could come up with quickly was the WiiM Ultra streaming preamplifier. At US$329, it’s a legitimate giant killer—a product that delivers far more than its price suggests. Ironically, its success didn’t come from inspired marketing. From what I can tell, awareness of the WiiM Ultra spread through word of mouth, reviews, and online forums. The product created the excitement; the company simply benefited from it.
Surprisingly though, a lack of promotion and excitement may not even be the biggest problem facing hi‑fi today. Price escalation and the resultant focus on it is.
The upper end now
These days, we routinely see amplifiers, loudspeakers, and source components priced in the high tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars. Complete systems exceeding one million dollars are no longer rare. Systems priced under half a million dollars are often described—without irony—as “affordable.”
These are not aspirational products in any meaningful sense. They are not stepping stones. They are not invitations. They are declarations that hi‑fi is no longer meant for normal people. My father, with his decent salary, couldn’t have afforded a system costing close to that—or even dreamed of such a setup.
As a result, is it any wonder that fewer people are gravitating toward hi‑fi? That younger buyers are spending their money elsewhere? That audio systems are increasingly viewed as elitist curiosities rather than something to aspire to?
Over $1,000,000 in Munich at High End 2025
The problem isn’t that lower-priced products don’t exist. It’s that these products are barely marketed, poorly explained, and rarely celebrated. There is little effort to tell consumers why something matters, why it’s special, or why it represents intelligent value rather than compromise.
The audio press is not entirely innocent in this, either—and that includes us at the SoundStage! Network.
I see many publications falling prey to covering pretty much nothing but extremely high-priced equipment. Over our 30 years in business, we’ve had writers and even senior editors who lost sight of what the average person can realistically afford and instead followed products into the pricing stratosphere. That happens easily, especially when access to extraordinary—and extraordinarily expensive—equipment becomes routine.
Recognizing that risk is one reason we built the SoundStage! Network the way we did. Different aspects of audio require different editorial lenses.
The responsibility for reporting on genuinely affordable gear lives primarily at SoundStage! Access, led by senior editor Dennis Burger, who keeps his eyes firmly on the ball and his focus on real-world value. And for feature-rich but simplified hi‑fi—complete systems that are still quite attainable and have far fewer boxes—that role belongs to SoundStage! Simplifi, now headed by AJ Wykes, who has kept the site true to its original intent.
Meanwhile, many listeners today experience music very differently than they did decades ago. Headphones normalized spending hundreds of dollars on personal audio. Streaming made music frictionless. Active loudspeakers and simplified systems meet people where they are. None of that diminishes the importance of good sound—it simply changes how it’s delivered.
The failure isn’t in those listening habits. The failure is in how poorly the hi‑fi industry translates sound quality, emotional engagement, and musical satisfaction into language that resonates with the majority of modern listeners.
As my chief videographer, Chris Chitaroni, recently said to me, “There’s such bad marketing across the industry—can you imagine how much success a company might have if someone did it well?” He’s right. And the fact that this even needs to be said should concern manufacturers deeply.
Today’s warning for tomorrow
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: the hi‑fi industry is increasingly appealing to a very small pool of buyers—many of them extremely wealthy and many of them aging. These customers matter, but they are not a growth strategy.
People age out. People die. And without a steady influx of younger, less wealthy—but no less passionate—listeners being inspired to delve into hi‑fi, the industry will continue to shrink into irrelevance.
This is not a call to abandon high-end hi‑fi. It is a call to help save it. If you don’t excite the people on the ground, there will be no one left to climb the ladder.
These are my thoughts at present—some fully formed, others still evolving. I’ll return to this subject over the coming year, because it’s important and because it isn’t simple. I also want to hear from readers. If you disagree, say so. If you see solutions I’ve missed, share them.
The hi‑fi industry needs to wake up. And January 1, 2026, is a good time to start.
. . . Doug Schneider
das@soundstage.com
