These looked ripped right out of my old high school auditorium!

Problem for me is I’m a classic rock/rock guy and there are many old bands - Beatles, Rush, Pink Floyd, etc. that have been remastered that sound great. However, I’d love to hear hi-res recordings from newer bands but they don’t exist (Muse, Coldplay, etc). I’m anxiously awaiting Def Leppard’s Diamond Star Halos on BluRay ATMOS in January. Some country like Chris Stapleton would be awesome but that’s a genre that has like no interest in producing hi-rez apparently. Oddly, I see a bunch of hi-rez & ATMOS music on Amazon music but no discs to buy…which sound much, much better BTW. 😡

My top 5 favorites:

1. Pink Floyd DSOM in ATMOS (BluRay)
2. Moody Blues “To Our Children’s Children’s Children” (BluRay audio)
3. EL&P “Brain Salad Surgery” DVD-audio
4. Pink Floyd “Wish You Were Here” SACD
5. Beatles “Abbey Road” ATMOS (BluRay)

I listen to SACD, DVDA, BluRay Audio and ATMOS recordings (on the latter format). Unfortunately, the latter is expensive as they force you to buy box sets and the overall selection is limited. Fortunately, my favorite bands are represented well in these formats (Pink Floyd, Rush, Moody Blues - I’m a classic rock guy) but I lament the paltry selection. They sound WAY better than what I get from Amazon music though - especially the ATMOS recordings. Also, I hate perpetually renting my music. It’s like Columbia House back in the day where they send you an album once a month for $10-$12 - in 1980’s $ - but you have no return option and you don’t “own” what you paid for.

The good definitely outweighs the bad! 😂

Nice! I would LOVE for more women to enter this hobby! Sincerely, I think it would be great and certainly having shared interests with others is always a plus. It’s just, unfortunately, it’s a small, small pool. I mean, you can’t force people into a hobby and you can be as welcoming as you want to all but there needs to be an interest first. Also, to be fair, most of my male friends could care less either. It’s just everyone I’ve met in this hobby personally or had contact with has been male. I’m sure there’s a thread on needlepoint (or whatever) where someone is asking “where are all the guys?) 😂

He sounds like a fool then!

The only thing that lowers when my wife enters the room is enjoyment of my speakers…

I’ve been digital since the 80’s. I got my first CD player Christmas of ‘85. For me personally, I could never get past the scratches and pops on records. In addition, I only owned about 10 LPs so when starting my music collection it really began with CD’s. What’s really weird is some of those 80’s CDs I still have because the remasters over the years sounded worse. Mind you, this applies only to about 10% of them as 90% of the time the remasters over the years sound better. Digital back then was inferior to the sound on an LP but didn’t have the scratches and pops and was more dynamic (my record player back then was not the best however). Anyway, I guess I’m saying I went the digital path over the years as that was the media I owned. I will say digital (to me) really got “great” with SACD, DVDA, Blu Ray - basically with 24/96 and 24/192 masters. I prefer the physical media over streaming as well as I hate “renting” music (and movies too!). I made a huge mistake years ago ripping all my CD’s on a hard drive and selling my CD’s. 3 iTunes crashes later and transferring everything to yet another external hard drive (and hoping it won’t crash) I have found myself buying back a lot of music, mostly at garage sales for .50 a CD. Anyway, I have heard great vinyl rigs (still had the issues I described - even after the nitty gritty record cleaning before putting it on the turntable! This said, whatever format gets you into the music is the way to go.

Not sure the race element here either. As other have said, for me it’s about customer service after purchase and knowing there are parts down the road in case I need repair. This is also why I buy from brands that have been in business for years and years (there are many of them). Sure, some of these companies may have stuff assembled overseas or use parts from other countries BUT they will be there to service it. After being in this hobby going on 40 years I have seen the small, esoteric manufacturers come and go like fashion. Companies I never heard of seem to pop up with rave reviews every few years or so and then “poof”, gone. It just so happens most of those companies that have stood the test of time are from Europe, North America and Japan/Korea…

I agree a sub - a good active sub - makes everything sound better. I have tower speakers rated to go to 25Hz BUT adding a sub (xover set at 60Hz) opened up the soundstage. The main reason is that the amount of power needed to drive the low end has now been relegated to the sub and it’s internal amp (yes a passive sun with its own amp works too). This frees up the power in your amp(s) to drive the frequencies above your xover range and the difference is NOT subtle.