I thought this thread would be interesting in a nostalghic form to discuss the dying age of the stereo shop. I am sure more people that visit this shop are quite familiar with those days and perhaps have seen the track history over the past few decades as the decline of them has become insane.

This is not something just in the audio world alone as we are all familiar with plenty of ma and pa shops closing so that a new MEGASTORE OF YOUR NAME CHOICE can move in. We take convenience over product knowledge and a better bottom line than overall service. The internet is sending a crushing blow to many of these various outlets, but what about the stereo shop? By stereo shop I mean mid-high end audio equipment and such. Are the local Best Buy and Circuit Cities pulling all the demand? Are people doing more research and buying online and if that is the case how do you justify buying online when it comes to something like audio or video that you need to test prior to purchase. I certainly don't know too many people that would buy a car online without test driving it.

So, how can we unite and keep people knowledgable and also help the local stores that specialize in these areas? I live near Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, which is not a huge city, nor is it small, yet there are only 3 stereo shops in the nearby region of probably 40-80 mile radius. These places are not exactly BOOMING either. Some of them have even had to go into various other methods for generating business, such as installation and going from just a stereo shop into a full blown home theater store.

Can we really blame those darn consumers? Quite frankly it used to upset me when I would run into people that lacked the knowledge when it came to certain aspects of the medium, but then I realized why that was an issue. 30 years ago or so...there was vinyl and everyone knew what it was and what it did. They didn't really have to study up on it or read articles to know anything about it. Even 15-20 years ago the same went for VHS. WIth the short exception of Beta, VHS was the one and only format that people knew and once again they didn't have to know much about it or how to use it. There wasn't 'qaulity' disputes and people suffered through bad VHS with the expectation that what they were getting wasn't theater quality. Fast forward to today. Literally people need to read a book in order to know all the INs and OUTs to the formats.

SACD, DVD-A, Progessive Scan, HDMI, interlaced, anamorphic, DTS, Dolby, PCM stereo, MLP, the list goes on of dictionary-worthy terms and 'insider' talk. Because of this...the consumer is completely in the minority when it comes to knowledge and thus a few things happen. First, employee B working for $6/hour at MEGASTORE OF YOUR NAME CHOICE tells our consumer in this case as much as he knows about this, that, and the other thing, but really his knowledge is limited because he only knows the few things that he was taught on the job, which is a bit better than his hamburger flippin' job he had before. He is out to make the sale regardless of what he needs to tell the shopper and he isn't concerned if that information is even remotely correct. Customer B takes his word for it and makes the purchase once again out of convenience and price point, yet never wonders if all of his hard earned cash really went towards what he should or could have had. Not only that, but he has just eliminated himself from the technical know-how that is required and because of his bypass he inevitably puts his full trust in someone or something that is really not experienced or even remotely capable of fulfilling that gap.

It's not the fault that lack of information is being spread around the campfire and the studios and the development behihnd the technology is lacking. Maybe if they spent more money on educating people rather than roping them in for sales then more people would demand better quality and have high expectations.

How many people if you asked on the street would have any clue what Blu-ray is? Even if they know the term...how many know what it does? More importantly if they do know the answer to both of those...do they even care? It's insane to have format wars before we even have format full development.

Anyone else have some venting to do?