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What’s the future of hi-fi I'll kinda Dylan this along, hopefully it comes off as interesting and entertaining. There's been so much talk about the future viability of high fidelity playback that it is making me sick—“the unraveling of the high end”, “the death of two channel”, “the iPod kids of today don't care about fidelity” and on and on it goes. Why all the talk? Certainly history shows that music is a primal force enjoyed by mankind irrespective of environment, nationality or age. People will continue to make and enjoy it, music is ever expanding, ascending, descending and reaching to fill our collective souls. But to disregard the large dynamics shifts in the industry of high fidelity audio, and not just in philosophy but in its trade and lifestyle, is to signup for obsolescence. The Times They Are A-Changin' but just like Dylan, the more things change... What Zu is seeing is a return to the fundamental enjoyment of musics—all music, harmonic, melodic, soft, loud and otherwise. It’s simply about the music, no more than ever before. But without get too far down this windy road let me just give you a few hooks to chew on. Hi-Fi has lost its mantle of keepers of fidelity. It has lost its regard for new sounds, textures, expressions and horizons. By and large it’s leaderless and burdened with assumptions. It’s the end as we know it... Hi-Fi is being replaced. It is being replaced by systems and devices the new music lover can live with, systems that are capable of recreating sonic events that move them. The young and open are buying vinyl like crazy, putting realistically priced turntables, like the SL-1200, in their living rooms, using iPods to access all their musics, and at home often played through some decent sounding pro audio loudspeakers capable of delivering. No, it wasn’t Hi-Fi that saved vinyl it was the DJ and this whole new scene. This new generation of music lover is about the DJ, punk, metal, desert, country, pop, alt, ambient, world, space, goth, jazz, classical, bluegrass, nerd, noise and everything between, bitchin, and far out. Like most of what is going on in the music scene today, Zu is about sincerity, originality, putting it out there, making it happen. The original searchers for high fidelity recording and playback embraced sounds in all their forms. The original audiophiles embraced ideals, compromise and new progressions. The original audiophile has much more in common with the new generation and both are a 180 out from where the analytical high end poser from the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s lead us. Hi-Fi is returning to its roots, returning to sincere playback. Here is a bit from Zu’s original communication drafted in 1999 on the eve of our bootstrapped launch: “Impressions of new realities struggle and flow—eventual transition. Awareness of surroundings, songs of tranquility and warning—history and intuition instruct that patterns of sound have been a fundamental constant. Observance of nature, both physical and spiritual, teach us of the endless interplay of vibrational forces. While traveling the line of time we can see many periods of increased awakening and technological advancement but none so powerful and rapid as that of the Scientific Revolution, Enlightenment and the birth of modern physics. The dramatic increase of understanding regarding possibility, vibration and energy coincide with our collective ability to listen and express patterns of life. David Toop in his book Ocean Of Sound paints a powerful image of our modern musical awakenings: “...Starting with Debussy in 1889, is an erosion of categories, a peeling open of systems to make space for stimuli, new ideas, new now, this environment included sounds of the world—previously unheard musics and ambient sounds of all kinds, urban noise and bioacoustics ... unfamiliar tuning system and structuring principles, improvisation and chance.” In 2005 Zu expanded upon this theme, condensing and adding to these thoughts, turning them into a hard hitting marketing statement—A Revolution In American Hi-Fi. To us that has many meanings, but let me assure you that Zu is “only a part of the revolution”. So, what is this revolution? It's the return to musical exploration, tradition and character. it’s the return to reason, to ease of use, accessible and fitting for normal homes, it’s the return to searching for new sounds and insight through them, its the return of sincere craftsmanship and design in the devices that recreate those sonic events. It’s simply a return to music, and we’re here for the music. Zu isn’t trying to capitalize on Hi-Fi's change, Zu is trying to participate in it, embracing and helping the new sounds and expressions along. We hope we are making a contribution to the art of playback—in our products, and with our music lifestyle marketing and sincere attitudes about music, fidelity and corporate integrity. Zu has been approached many times by Hi-Fi industry movers and shakers, asking us how we are reaching out to the youth, how we are trying to tap into younger markets. This question reveals just how lost today’s Hi-Fi is. Zu is currently made up of ten full timers and I am the oldest at age 38. We are the younger market. We aren’t reaching out to this younger generation, we’re live it, making it. We are reaching out to the older generations, to those in Hi-Fi that can help bring about a revolution, where Hi-Fi playback is restored to it’s proper place in the home, out from the cave in the basement, back to the living room, back to the first or second thing an eighteen year old kid “needs” in his dorm or apartment. Yeah, traditionally a guys thing, big playback, but not in the new scene, chicks are way into it, the second, third and fourth biggest music lovers I know are girls, and that’s pretty normal today. The fragments of hi-fi that remain must embrace the DJ scene, and everything else that has come along since Dylan, Beetles and the Stones. The new scene, where it’s about the music, is looking back at their heritage, never question that, they know Miles, they know Cash and even the great composers. The new scene gets it. Embrace them and learn from them. The remnants of the “specialty audio” industry (what a slap in the face, you really let CES call you that?) needs to band together, lower its nose, and share its insight and experience with the real music movements. |