Quote Originally Posted by squeegy200
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See article from Rolling Stone
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/sto...fidelity/print
"The loudness war" has been the occassional topic of conversation for years. Fortunately it doesn't affect classical recordings that I mainly listen to, at all.

It's true that the average slack-jawed yokel is not much interested in sound quality. But I question whether he ever really was. The heyday of hi-fi was the '70s and early '80s when advertising was stoking public interest and having a stereo was a status symbol. Think about it: what was missing in those days? Answer: home video equipment. The great unwashed lost interest in hi-fi once VCRs hit the scene. Hi-fi per se was at the same time displaced by portable equipment for which sound quality almost irrelevant.

But high fidelity isn't dead, it is just resticted to more dedicated aficionados. The fact is that there is more high quality equipment available today than ever before.