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Comment by rixrax | Hacker News Reader

I feel that the AV-receiver market has gone the way of the DSLR market. Compact speaker systems like Sonos (that don't need a separate AVR) simply got good enough. Thus the need for buying a separate AVR to drive your Dolby / DTS / etc. setup has all but vanished except maybe for the most determined audiophiles (and even most of these would do well to simply get a compact wireless speaker setup instead of some monstrosity that they can hardly ever enjoy...because too small of a listening room, and neighbours).

I'm not saying market for Onkyo, Denon, Sony, Yamaha, etc. AVRs is a goner, but I am suggesting it may have peaked and that going forward there will be less and less demand for AVRs, especially in the low/mid range of things.

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Sonos still has severe limitations and I regret buying two 5.1 setups from them.

As a simple example: there is no 7.1 support at all and the Atmos support is a sort of faked 5.1.2 support where the upward firing speakers try to bounce some sounds off the ceiling.

Sonos only supports 2.4GHz (no 5GHz support at all) so in a congested area network degradation is a big issue.

Codec support is limited as well. For example if your source outputs in DTS, you may need to throw away the whole system and buy a different sonos system just to get audio working. The same thing applies to dolby atmos or vision - you need to buy new speakers just to listen to those type of sources.

FWIW they do support DTS (but not DTS-HD) now.

Poor/late timing, as DTS is essentially dead at this point[1] in the streaming market which I’m guessing is generally what they are catering for.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30942269

I was actually surprised they bothered to add it at all. It's definitely not for their target audience: people using streaming services. What they provide is actually great for that audience.

My best guess is that they keep pushing into the home theater space and wanted to grab a bit of market share from the higher-end bucket without having to pay too much in licensing.

I don't this contradicts the "gone the way of the DSLR market" claim. Sonos and similar systems are simply good enough for most people.

Whether it's TVs, cameras, surround sound systems, we reached a point of diminishing returns by cramming in more pixels or speakers. At that point, you're competing on factors like convenience. There will still be markets for 7.1+ surround sound or DSLR cameras, but they're smaller now.

DSLR just got replaced by mirrorless basically same thing but without a mirror, cameras still have a more tech advancements to come, better EVF,global shutter, lower noise, higher fps, better AF, better metering, better IS, better battery life etc etc, a bit difference to a speaker that can only improve audio quality and at this point i probably can't tell the difference between a good 20 year old speaker and one bought today.

I think the point is that sure, recently DSLR got more or less replaced by mirrorless, tech wise, but the camera market as a whole has been massively diminished because smart phones ate it from the bottom up.

Now they're good enough that basically the DSLR/Mirrorless market is really just for enthusiasts or those with very specific needs.

enthusiasts? its for professionals and some enthusiasts, i doubt high end camera gear has reduced market share but the lower end consumer grade stuff has for sure gone since most people don't care about image quality etc when their phone can do basic photography. Just checked the sony A series lines cameras since 2015 have increased units sold every year.

The camera market has cratered, from 2010-2020 it dropped from 120 million units sold to under 10 million:

https://www.popphoto.com/news/the-camera-industry-is-changin...

The total market for all interchangeable lens cameras appears to be on the decline as well:

https://1kcreatives.com/smartphone-vs-mirrorless-vs-dslr-cam...

The point of the argument was that sonos and other smart speaker tech like sound bars etc, have eaten the market for hi-fi in the same sort of way. There is an enthusiast market, sure, and likely always will be. But it's way, way smaller than the old 'full' market and it's slowly declining as the convenient, easy to use products continue to get better (or continue to be terrible but convenient, if you want to be dismissive, but objective tests seem to show smartphones taking pretty damn good images these days).

i am not being dismissive, phone cameras are just no where near as good as a larger sensor camera, yes probably most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference on a smart phone small screen, but when your editing and doing large prints its very obvious especially when the phone camera uses anything higher then base ISO it becomes mush or that fake bokeh to mimic real cameras and editing latitude is really bad

yes smart phones did cut in the consumer grade camera market but the professional level cameras continue to do well and have increased in sales.

thing is about cameras you can't make a small sensor better then a larger one its not physically possible, this is a big difference between cameras and speakers... speakers have not changed much in the last 20 years most people won't be able to tell a difference between a 20 year old speakers sound quality then a modern one, so less and less people invest in those, who needs to upgrade a speaker every few years? so you can't compare cameras to speakers.

> yes probably most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference on a smart phone small screen

This is the dismissive part. See, for instance -

https://www.dxomark.com/smartphones-vs-cameras-closing-the-g...

And this was written a couple of years ago, with 2019 phones used to compare. The conclusion is that the non-smartphone market is likely to keep shrinking because the pictures keep getting better, but that people who want to 'tell a story' and tweak everything will probably stay with cameras.

> yes smart phones did cut in the consumer grade camera market but the professional level cameras continue to do well and have increased in sales.

No, they haven't, see the link I gave you before. Sales of all changeable lens cameras as a market sector are declining, regardless of how Sony's range is doing. In the mean time, sales of just body units are up as a percentage, meaning fewer folks buying starter kits - i.e. even in the pro-sumer sector the casuals are dropping off and the remaining market is people who are really into it.

> thing is about cameras you can't make a small sensor better then a larger one its not physically possible

But you can use multiple sensors with different characteristics and very smart software to do incredible things. You're getting into audiophile territory here. Phone cameras continue to improve faster than the camera-camera market can keep up, adding all sorts of stuff like depth sensors, IR, physical zoom capabilities etc, and they are a massive win on convenience. So this is cutting the market down to those very few individuals who do care about tweaking ISO levels and setting up the perfect shot.

I'm not saying "nobody will use DSLR/Mirrorless", but as phone cameras continue to get better and better, that market shrinks. This is borne out by the market figures.

And this is just like the hifi market, where good-enough + smarts + convenience is winning out in the same way.

Frankly, even if the market sector were holding steady, your objection to the comparison is bizarre. It doesn't have to be 100% exactly the same for the comparison to stand - the convenient/polished/not-necessarily-technically-superior product has eaten the vast majority of the market in both cases.

Lower noise is not going to do much.

Most of the noise in a modern camera at 'high' iso is present in the light signal you are capturing, rather than the result of a noisy amplifier.

Light (the arrival of photons at a pixel) is approximately a poison process with the brightness being the arrival rate of photons.

At low brightness, short exposure time, the variance in the total photons received at a pixel starts becoming relevant and visible.

and yet noise has improved over the years same with the dynamic range, to the point where they can decrease photodiode size and still keep fairly good noise and then also release cameras with lower resolution with this technology to have very good low light capabilities like the A7S series. Look at the Canon EOS R3 just a massive jump in ISO quality and double the resolution of the A7SIII

Resolution has little effect on 'shot noise' (The noise I was talking about). That's because when viewed at the same size, the noise averages out to be the same visual noise.

I believe that 'low light capabilities' are going to stagnate soon-ish simply because shot noise starts dominating sensor noise. The only real solution to shot noise is just more exposure. But aperture is generally maxed, and it seems unlikely to me that image stabilization can go much further.

With DSLRs my main complaint to this day is still the lack of a good modular lens system for phones (I understand some of the challenges and tradeoffs). For most people's camera habits (selfies, food shots, group pictures...) the lenses your modern flagship phone provides are mostly great.

What's seriously lacking though is in the say 50-70+mm focal length range. I have an old Canon DSLR in my office storage collecting dust I had to quickly dust off and throw some batteries in to get some shots at the edge of my yard a few weeks back to capture some unique wildlife that was hanging out. With my flagship premiere phone I simply couldn't capture the moment, no matter the hope of digital zoom techniques and a built in "zoom" lens. Stepping closer would have killed the opportunity.

My 10+ year old DSLR was there to save the day. Quickly rummaged out my 400 mm lens and simply stabilized on a table and got mostly the shots I wanted. My smartphone cameras have been good enough and convient enough to capture most things I want but I really wish there was a mount system for small portable optics

Another huge problem I've experienced with phone cameras is that they seem to all need to autofocus before taking a shot. This is horrible for, say, trying to take a picture out of a car's window as the car is moving, as the phone camera keeps refocusing on different parts of the scene, so I often miss the shot I need to take.

Any DSLR (and even many non-phone point-and-shoot cameras) have manual focus, so this is just not an issue with them.

Other problems with phone cameras are relatively slow shutter speeds and poor low light performance compared to DSLRs.

Phones can also only do digital zoom, which is horrible compared to a DSLR with a zoom lens. There's no way to put lens filters on phones either. They can't do infrared photography, etc, etc.

Lots and lots of ways that phones simply haven't caught up to DSLRs yet.

> With DSLRs my main complaint to this day is still the lack of a good modular lens system for phones (I understand some of the challenges and tradeoffs). For most people's camera habits (selfies, food shots, group pictures...) the lenses your modern flagship phone provides are mostly great.

Point-and-shoot cameras have been replaced by phones; DSLRs, on the other hand, are rapidly being replaced by mirrorless cameras. Mirrorless cameras, at least on the surface, seem to be an improvement on DSLRs -- they don't require a mirror, so they're both easier and cheaper to manufacture, they allow for modular lens systems, and even allow for more features (like shooting video as well as stills) than a traditional DSLR.

Wait Sonos is 2.4Ghz only?

Even my cheapo digital photo frame and my “need to make it cheap to turn a profit” ereader work on 5Ghz…

This isn't true. I have Sonos running on 5GHz right now, from a setup including the Ikea Sonos speakers.

Maybe the OP is using an old, v1 Sonos setup or something?

It might be SonosNet only supports 2.4ghz. I run SonosNet, I find WiFi to be problematic.

I just want to point out that while sonosnet is 2.4 only, most of their products support 5ghz APs. In addition, DTS support has been included for a little while now.

> if your source outputs in DTS

This was (finally) remedied relatively recently, but Sonos sound bars now support DTS.

It all comes down to demand I guess... Most people seem to like Beats headphones or think their Airpods have top quality sound and don't care that $200 headphones exist that blow them out of the water. Most people use bluetooth with low quality codecs that distort the sound. In addition, most people listen to their music on streaming services that compress the heck out of tracks that are already heavily (dynamic range) compressed. So it's a case of (a) people never having been exposed to "hi-fi" and (b) people ceasing to care/being willing to sacrifice audio quality (which is heavily subjective anyway) for convenience. So it is the same as phone cameras, people are willing to sacrifice image quality and control for the convenience of having a camera in their pocket all the time.

I personally care about audio to a reasonable degree, but I also think that AVRs in their current form are a weird mix of "too much" and "not enough". I wanted to have a 5.1.2 system that wasn't a soundbar with tiny, tinny speakers that bounce off the ceiling and a tiny sub that moves hardly any air. But in order to drive decent speakers you need a decent amp. But in order to get a decent amp you have to buy a unit that has a million connectors, spatial audio processing, etc. Out of the gigantic array of connectors on the back of my AVR, (7 HDMI ports, phono plugs, component, composite) I am currently using 3 HDMI ports because I play most media off an HTPC anyway. I feel like I'm using less than 30% of what it has to offer, and there is a growing divide between people who want convenience and people who want uncompromising quality at any cost, so low end AVRs aren't much better than a soundbar, and high end AVRs aren't affordable for the average consumer.

I built modern thing a little like the old console stereo units. Used high end full-range drivers for the left/center/right and built in a sub. The thing looks like furniture but has your 3.1 covered. I think there's a Yamaha receiver in there but it isn't too crazy with regards to connectors and such.

I like to think the console stereo could come back for people who want higher quality speakers/audio.

Streaming services don't compress dynamic range, rather the opposite - because every streaming service employs loudness normalization the loudness wars have largely ended. Compressing your track to hell in an effort to get it to sound louder doesn't work anymore because every streaming service will just normalize it anyway.

Spotify at least uses 320kbps vorbis for their "high quality" setting which is at the point where I don't believe it's humanly possible to distinguish from a lossless encoding.

> Compressing your track to hell in an effort to get it to sound louder doesn't work anymore because every streaming service will just normalize it anyway.

This is a bit of confused remark. "Normalization" means applying some constant gain factor to the signal so that the loudest level is 0dBFS. Compression applies a varying gain factor to the signal to meet some parameters. Normalizing audio will generally make it louder (unless the loudest level is already at 0dBFS), but it does not change the dynamic range of the signal. The "loudness wars" were all about using compression, and this does change the dynamic range of the signal (you end up with less difference between the quietest and loudest parts of the signal - hence the term compression).

You can still "sound louder" by using compression, even if the peak volume is still 0dBFS.

Modern volume normalization isn't done based on the highest peak of the track. Instead they normalize based on the average perceived loudness of the whole track (to a level below 0 so there is headroom for peaks). It's intentionally designed to avoid the exact issue you describe.

If this was not done users of streaming services would have to be constantly adjusting the volume to deal with perceived volume differences between tracks due to different levels of dynamic range compression.

I don't have to change the volume between shows. But for a while, every action show required I down volume the noisy bits and up volume the talking bits.

I understand dynamic range is a thing and people with reasonable stereos and a place to use them should enjoy. But in an apartment with a sleeping toddler I simply want to hear it without waking my kid.

I now run: Windows Loudness Equalisation, Clear Voice on the sound bar, every show is subtitles on.

Sure, peak-to-N-dBFS is not what the streaming services do. But what they do is not normalization.

I'm the author of a DAW that allows normalization, compression and loudness control. The first one is more different from the last two than they are from each other.

>"Normalization" means applying some constant gain factor to the signal so that the loudest level is 0dBFS.

Not necessarily, although that has been perhaps the most common use of that term so far. But you can normalize to a lower peak level or to something else... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_normalization

> the loudness wars have largely ended

I've been digging up a lot of remastered 80s albums from the last 5-7 years (mainly Japanese stuff), and I can 100% tell you that this is not the case. The engineers may not be sucking every last decibel out of the tracks anymore, but they're still compressed to hell, dynamic range often 5-10dB less than the original version straight off the 80s-era CD.

If you think about the way normalization works, there's still benefit to slapping a master limiter on top of it and pushing it to the point where normalization doesn't require any gain, because at least then you have control over the final mastering chain. But I don't think this is the reason, and I don't really know why they still juice it hard. Maybe for car stereos, or because phone amps are weak, or because they're not thinking about Spotify specifically.

>because every streaming service employs loudness normalization the loudness wars have largely ended

This is a joke, right?

Although I applaud their efforts, it has just created a second loudness war on how to maximize loudness despite the normalization.

I’ve been a headphone mid-fi buyer for at least 15 years now (think Denon AH-D2000, B&W P5 etc.) and it’s just also the case that lower-fi audio has greatly improved.

The sound quality AirPods or the Samsung buds deliver are simply very very competent for the price. They’re good sounding, convenient, dependable.

Contrast to the crap you used to get included with your iPod or the entry level IEM’s that were 99% bass and 100% ear pain and snapped cables.

It’s not that people enjoy crap these days. It’s just that previously you needed to spend Onkyo levels of money to get decent sound, and these days a lot less.

I recently wanted up upgrade from 2 to 5 channels. Previously I just had 2 powered studio monitors hooked up to my tv via 1/8th inch. All I wanted was a D2A box that took the atmos signal and let me plug in more speakers. Turns out these are crazy expensive and it’s way cheaper to buy the giant box.

You don't really need Atmos for 5 channels - you could probably pick up an old surround AVR sans Atmos for pretty cheap.

I think soundbars have taken over for home theater setups.

annoyingly, you can't get a system without a wireless subwoofer.

I have a soundbar that creates a wifi access point for the subwoofer and it's really annoying. I really just want a wire.

So, I've been considering an a/v receiver and dedicated speakers, which means I can't mount them on the tv

I am using my old Stereo, which has 5.1 support for the DVD and the TV. Way better than must friends soundbar. Maybe there are decent systems, but I doubt you can get as good as proper stereo stuff.

Do it. It'll sound much better than any soundbar.

Sonos stuff is also outrageously expensive for mediocre audio quality. I have a really nice home theater from hand-me-downs, friend's basements, and yard sale finds, and sure I had to re-foam some woofers, but it sounds quite a bit better than anything Sonos offers.

But yes, I've always been an A/V nerd. Just like with Bose, it bothers me when there are companies that manage to market their way into getting people to buy a middling product for luxury money.

As a Sonos owner ...

It sounds pretty good to me, and I didn't have to spend time re-foaming anything, or even wiring anything beyond finding power sockets. After I spent five minutes waving my iphone about in each room I have the system in, I don't have to worry about tuning it to the space or anything much else. Plus now with a few taps on my phone I can transport the tv sound into the kitchen and follow along when I'm cooking.

Ease of use and lack of time spent messing around with it, is absolutely part of the value proposition.

Because this isn't a hobby for me, or something I'm interested in spending time on. I want something fast, easy, convenient, with streams I can shift around the house at will.

If the sound is objectively 'middling', well so are my ears most likely. But given just how subjective I know most hifi/audiophile reviews and opinions are, I'm not really worrying about that.

The difference with Sonos compared to those speakers is that these are wireless and work very well together. They can play music from your TV and also virtually any other music streaming service directly from the app or through the native app itself (e.g. Spotify).

However, I'll never forget the big floor standing speakers my parents had and how great I thought they sounded. The difference was they were all wired to a receiver and if you wanted to add any additional speakers outside you needed to hardwire everything.

>Compact speaker systems like Sonos (that don't need a separate AVR) simply got good enough.

I don't like em. I am not the stereotypical smug audiophile but the sound on most of these new systems, soundbars, headphones, etc... is absolute trash.

Any pair of moderately-decent bookshelf speakers blows them out of the water and you can get them for ~300USD so they're actually cheaper than "high-end" speakers from brands like Bose, Sonos, etc... which sound terrible IMO.

Old audiophile saying, "there's no replacement for displacement".

No amount of whizz-bang tech is going to get around the problem of tiny speakers crammed into a small box in a ridiculous location.

About a year ago I tried the top-of-the-line soundbars from LG, Sonos, and Samsung respectively. They all went back to the store. A time-consuming, but worthwhile reminder of the adage you mention.

If AVRs are DSLRs, then Sonos is Leica, not the iPhone. Sonos is the expensive option that found & cemented a niche audience on an experience.

Soundbars are what's killing AVRs for what's left of the 'home theater' market. They're much easier to setup and deliver a good enough experience. For everyone else, it's laptops & tablets with maybe a pair of headphones.

yea but AVRs didn't get replaced with better tech like DSLRs did with MLC's

As you say with DSLR, there is still a high end market but much much smaller than what mid-range audio used to be. I don't have any equipment myself now, but was considering buying one.

In that market, the big japanese brands (Onkyo, Marantz, Denon...) seem to have lost their way with mediocre products. Smaller British brands like Cambridge Audio or Rega may take their place (in a tiny market):

https://ware2go.co/how-cambridge-audio-leveraged-amazon-prim....

Are there any of those compact speaker systems that actually sound good, though?

Most people think so. Audio nerds don't.

Yes - the Sonos Arc + sub + 2 rear channels sounds amazing after using the built in sound tuning, and got a pretty damn good review in What HiFi.

That's one I've already listened to, and it's atrocious. It sounds like 1990s car speakers.

I feel this may be hyperbole.

Doesn't everything get a good review in What HiFi? I gave up with it.

Even the USB powered Logitech z120 which costs a few dollars sounds good enough even for movies.

I guess you watch movies where all the dialogue takes place over a telephone and there's no music?

Are there any $15 wines that taste good or $500 DSLRs that can shoot good video footage or $50 dress shirts that look good? For most people the answer is obviously yes, and for some the answer is obviously no. And the one group will never convince the other group that they are wrong.

No. You can't change physics. What usually suffers is the midrange(woofer) because everything is tiny. So you get high frequencies, and then usually some paltry subwoofer. There is no replacement for displacement.

This!. I've been searching for a set of speakers for my lounge room with a nice big cone in them, but I just cant find that is not priced for audiofiles. I have been looking second hand, but everything I can find is over 40 years old and the cones have all started disintegrating.

Yeh, unfortunately you're going to have to spend some bucks for quality. I'm still using my fathers 50 year old ESS Model 5's in my upstairs office and they sound amazing. Original woofers too! I just refoamed them, easy. I love the sound of the HEIL air motion transformers.

Downstairs is all Totem I bought 20 years ago.

I would love some JBL L100 with the 12 inch cones, but I just can't justify the $8K they are here in Australia.

Love the look of those, I'll have to listen to them. $5000 here in the states.

I'm in Australia, and there are still plenty of good options around.

I got a pair of Dali floorstanders for around AU$1000 a few years back on sale. The Dali Oberon (which I think is the replacement) is $1500 when not on sale right now.

You can get B&W 603s for under AU$3000.

Sure, you aren't getting a 12" woofer - but these are lovely speakers.

Oh yeah, I have a really nice set of JBL floorstanders in a 5.1 cinema set up I bought when I left home 30 years ago but I have never been fully satisfied with the sound. I'm sure its the mid range from the large cones that I'm missing.

The subwoofer I bought at the time doesn't have a large cone on it. The mistake I made I think.

If you have some diy desire and skill, you can get a lot of bang-for-your buck from the speaker kits from Parts Express (https://www.parts-express.com/speaker-components/speaker-sub...). The sound quality of their kits is surprisingly high! In addition, there can be a lot of satisfaction when you're listening to them, knowing that you built them yourself.

I actually bought a couple pairs of these Dayton bookshelf speakers with AMTs for surrounds with my Totem mains and center a few years ago. They sound fucking GOOD for $60. Far better than all this satellite and soundbar crap. If I was on an absolute budget, I'd get these as my mains, and the acoustech subs that I use for my computer($240) at the time. SOLID.

https://www.parts-express.com/Dayton-Audio-B652-AIR-6-1-2-Bo...

Sony HT-A9 (+ a sub) has been praised, but it is not cheap.

Sony’s speaker quality isn’t great. Had to replace an HT-5000 sound bar last year because the center began distorting.

I have a pair of ($30) Yamaha NS-BP200 and a 48 year old Sony STR-7045 ($50) and an Onko CP1200A (free).

They sound really good to me as the amp is really good at driving these speakers, and my Onkyo turntable benefits from excellent phono from the amp.

Of course, I can help you drop $50,000 easily on a system and you may still be unsatisfied.

I recommend setting a budget and just getting what you can. Also, the used market has amazing stuff. Have a look as well at NAD as they have some very small amps with phono and even subwoofer like D 3020 v2 or D 3045. Those are are very compact.

I also have an Onkyo TX-18 from 1990 that still works great.

The main reason why I got a Marantz AVR was to be able to connect 10 different devices to the TV at 4k@60 via HDMI, as well as various sound outputs, including the output of my music studio mixer.

Pretty much this. Places like Parts-express have been creeping more upmarket with their own brands like Dayton Audio to fill some of the gap, but they are still more downmarket hobbyist niche and probably won't ever be in mass market stores. The same thing that happened to cameras being replaced by good enough phones happened to stereos, just with soundbar/box type appliances.

Yeah, used to buy a lot of stuff from Parts-Express (mainly full-range drivers) and made some nice speakers, etc.

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