I mean the heritage of independence, of problem-solving, of actively creation and craft. A boutique acoustic maker — they supply kits and schematics for high-end speaker systems — is going out of business and a big reason is, for lack of a better phrase, the dumbing down of their market. They spend more time and effort on simpler, more basic questions than before.
The Size of the Market is Getting Smaller: (you have to scroll or use the search option: no anchor tags)
One thing I have noticed about the speaker building community the last few years is that it contains far fewer young people than it did in the early 90’s when North Creek began. I have thought about this a lot and the conclusion I have come to is that it is all about the vanishing ability of the average person to build things with their hands.
I attribute this to reliable cars.
Before about 1990, cars and particularly used cars were so fantastically unreliable that every guy I knew had a tool box in his trunk and was capable of changing a tire, a water pump, an alternator and its belt, etc. This stuff broke all the time, and the ability to work with one’s hands was practically a requirement to get through day-to-day life. In fact, by the time I was working for Apogee Acoustics and had the income to afford my first new car, I bought a Volvo. At the time it was considered a very expensive car, probably more than I could afford, but I bought it because it was the most reliable vehicle made. I had come to resent having to work on my old Impala every other weekend just to keep it running and safe. So I bought the Volvo, kissed the Impala “good bye”, and from that moment on my days “under the hood” were over.
Today, even the lowest price new car on the market is far more reliable than my trusty old Volvo. What this means is that the average young person today has no need to be knowledgeable about how to fix their car, hence limited need to use hand tools, so those skill required to build a cabinet and assemble a crossover are rare. This is the primary reason why we encourage our Echo and CM-7 loudspeaker kits for educational purposes, and why we will continue to offer them to educational facilities in the future.
An interesting observation: how close are we to a world where no one knows how to do anything, where a button with instructions but without a pictograph is a mystery? Or are mass-produced things so good that no one needs to build anything anymore?
Comments welcome (as always, of course).