> The funny thing here is I think we old folks need a better sound system then the > younger folks. Why? Well, I at least have a far harder time separating noise, so > the less noise the better the sound to my ears. Current consumer sound is: 1. > loud. 2. excessively bassy. 3. noisy.
Current consumer sound co-exists with MP3 players and over-bassed car stereos :-) > That said I don't think many of us could tell the difference between a good > $2000 system and a fine $20,000 system, but most of us who care can easily tell > the difference between a $2000 high fidelity system and a $500 home theater system. You'd be surprised, I think. I've just switched from using my $2000+ HiFi system to my $500 home theatre system because the sound is better. Partly this could be because my ears are old, and have been subjected to much abuse over the years. But at least part of it is due to the downright amazing improvements in speaker technology; the frequency response of a 7" x 2.5" elliptical speaker astounds me. I've still had to keep part of a HiFi system hooked up, though - the main A/V unit doesn't have enough inputs, and it doesn't understand magnetic cartridge input levels. So the record deck and cassette tape player go via a pre-amp to a tape input on the main unit. The easiest way to find a multi-input pre-amp was just to hook in an old amp I had lying around. > That kind of applies to us photographers also. There is a lot of lip service to > quality on this list. But if quality was really important to us we would not be > shooting 35mm, we would be using 4x5 or larger. We would not be using over > saturated films. We would hate the lack of tonality in digital prints. We would > hate the over sharpened look of digital prints. Funny thing is most of us on > this list think all those things I just listed are positive rather than negative > features. Well they do say beauty (quality) is in the eye of the beholder. Many of us don't use over-saturated films (e.g. shooting Provia, not Velvia). And while the tonal qualities of a digital black-and-white print aren't a match for even a reasonable-quality chemical print, it's a lot closer for colour; the price of a top-quality colour print is enough of a deterrent for most people. No argument on LF vs. 35mm, but I couldn't get most of my shots with a 4x5.
