Coming to the age profile...I could have gone either ways. I was happy with my ipod and the supplied earphones in 2008. Didn't even know what hifi was. Though had seen a few typical Sony and aiwa stereo decks in my well healed friend's homes growing up. Loved them as a kid.
But as life got busy and challenging at a young age of 18, I forgot everything.
Then come 2010, I was supposed to go on a long sail. And to keep me occupied, as I've been an avid reader all my childhood, I installed an app called zinio, which allowed me to download magazines when I had a network, to read them later without network. To keep me busy I took subscriptions of car and photography magazines, and just accidently saw whathifi site on zinio. Just out of curiosity took a subscription. So after reading whathifi magazine for 6 months, I found this whole repeated talk of RCA, XLR, coaxial and optical cables and configuration scary. I only knew usb then
.
There was a steep learning curve, so I joined the whathifi forum . And bombarded everyone there with tons of stupid questions, which lot of previous whathifi members might still remember. And they answered them with patience.(
@CnoEvil,
@Nopiano,
@plasticpenguin,
@Iceman 16,
@whitehart,
@Blacksabbath25,
@insider9,
@lindsayt,
@Shadders,
@Nativebon, and there are a lot more I might have missed
I still remember doting over the marantz 6004 cd player at 300 GBP, marantz PM6004 at the same price , and then the budget benchmarks and sonic Kings of that time, the monitor audio bronze also at 300 GBP .
But for someone happy with mp3's over earphones, it was going to be a big leap of faith in the dark, to pull the trigger on the above 1000 GBP system.
This was the time that qacoustics amd bluesound were in the news for the first time. And Sevenoaks were willing to give me a offer. So I bought the qacoustics 7000lri, with the bluesound power node gen 1 as my first system ever.
It was easy, no faffing with complex cable configurations I had no idea about . Just 2 speaker cables to the q7000lri satellite speakers, and I was blown
And there started the rabbit hole
In my opinion, summarising everything above :
1. To get more folks into this, the entry point has to be less complex and inexpensive, but better sound quality than their headphones.
2. They need a supportive community, to nurture them along the way. As the leaning curve is really steep.