Back in the early seventies sandwiched between the tube era of Fisher and Marantz and the birth of the high end in the late 70's guys were coming back from Vietnam with stereo's they bought in Japan and Korea. Those guys fueled the high end boom. As they got older they dropped the flashy big chrome equipment as a result of kids and home decor; but the real change came about because the sound got irritating. Maybe not on a conscious level but it was enough to cause people to write off stereo as a entertainment purchase. A percentage of these guys went on to seek better stuff and as they approached their 40's they had the cash to indulge and so we saw the 20k$ stereo systems in homes. Look how the magazines increased in numbers and circulation for all hobbies; cars/boats on and on. A direct result of spare cash and free time. Those luxuries are dissolving as jobs and spare money gets scarcer. That is part of what fuels the DIY boom, just like in the 50's when the guys came home from WW2 and built their Eico and Heathkit stuff. Thee will always be a small group of hardcore audiophiles but the people coming up behind us are not going to reproduce what happened in the late 70's-the 90's. They are of a different time concerned with PC's and TV's and music that is not even capable of sounding good on the best equipment. Notice how the DIY'ers play all of about 30 or 40 CD's? Mostly acoustic pop and lite jazz. We are a dying breed, the kids will not follow the high end audio as we know it. That is why the guys are trying Box store sales; out of desperation. Little guys like Brines will play to a small cadre' of dedicated listeners that like his stuff and that goes for all the small and esoteric builders. The big companies will morph into B&W and Polk etc. All having a similar sound designed to play to a certain type of listener brought up in the new age that they find through product testing and survey.
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