I truly do believe we’ve taken a step back to true hifi listening.
When the general population is use to listening to “music” from tiny/tinny little speakers on their mobile device, a dock/soundbar/BT/Alexa all starts sounding good.
To me, as someone who considers himself an audiophile, I personally can’t stand listening to these types of systems. Digitized, EQ’d and processed to the hilt, without significant air coupling (small drivers), practically no amp power, and no soundstage, let alone imaging from mono speakers, no thank you. And wireless music that’s gone through how many DACs/ADC. Hrmph! It’s a facade of real music.
Don’t even get me started on 5.1 from sound processing via a sound bar. YUK! The masses in this digital generation don’t know real music.
Yet for the audiophile, there is so much technology and products to serve that group if they seek it out. Hi-bit rate encodings and transports, super high quality DACs, clean amplification, big or exotic driver technology. At price points that are reachable by the average consumer (who are not drawn to the “processed sound” tech above). Marry the convenience of music from the cloud or blue-ray, back it up with a high quality external DAC, with real amplification and speakers…absolutely blissful!
I bet your audio setup sounds great…because it starts with clean (hopefully high bit-rate) digital source, decoded on a high quality DAC onboard the prof soundcard, to a solid analog receiver/amplifier with real power, to backup larger speakers that can ultimately move far more air to get legitimate linear stereo audio output.
