Audiophile Survey, early 2023: Who we are (including age and gender). What we use. How we think.

Well ladies and gentlemen, thanks to all who took the time to complete the information in the open "SURVEY: What audio playback system and/or streaming music service are you using in 2023?" post. The survey collected responses from February 11 to May 5, 2023 on this blog, and as usual, the responses came from audio lovers around the world, receiving in total 1330 entries with general information on demographics, broadly what kinds of systems are being used, multichannel playback, interest in masterings, and for those using streaming subscriptions, which ones.

As with any survey, we have to start with some context for the data. Obviously, the individuals who submitted results to me would have been primarily the viewers on this blog although I know the survey was advertised at various audiophile-related forums. I did not do any special advertising personally, other than mentioning it on a few forums I visited like Audiophile Style or Steve Hoffman Forum. I don't maintain much of a social media presence so basically just let the survey diffuse across the Internet.

Given the nature of this blog and its contents, I'd like to think that this survey will tell us about some of the characteristics of the subgroup of intelligent, reasonable, balanced, technically savvy, prudently skeptical, practical audiophiles around the world in the first half of 2023. ;-)

SURVEY: What audio playback system and/or streaming music service are you using in 2023?

Hey there gals and guys. I've been busy over the last while getting some things at work going, so this means it's time for a survey to hear from you ;-).

It's always good to know what audio lovers are doing out there and this could of course help me look at interesting topics to examine in the future. The last time I did this was back in 2019, looking at adoption of streaming services and lossy vs. lossless among the readership - much has changed since then!

I've seen various hobbyist poll results over the last while. A common question being asked these days is "Which digital streaming service is most popular?". This certainly makes sense given the growth of Internet streaming over the years, but much too simplistic! As an audiophile blogger, my interest isn't so much about which commercial service is "winning" since it really doesn't matter too much to most of us I think, and will fluctuate depending on where one lives and what services are available. Instead, audio enthusiasts these days have access to all kinds of ways to listen to music and choices to make including whether we like "spatial audio" as a recent feature.

In Archimago's Musings style ;-), let's go deeper and get a detailed survey going, collecting anonymous data on who you are, what you use mostly, and what kind of systems you enjoy in 2023 - not just what music service...

MUSINGS/POLL: A lifetime of digital audio storage? Enterprise / Data Center hard drive update.

For this week's post, I thought I'd spend some time talking about music storage, a recent upgrade, and some thoughts while reviewing my own music collection. A potpourri of observations and ideas, ending with a little poll...

A few weeks back, I saw this "extreme" server system described on Audiophile Style. I certainly agree that a machine like this is very much extreme for simply audio playback or as a music media server (presumably it will not even be used for something more demanding like a higher bitrate 4K/HDR movie/video player)!

What got me thinking about my own server system was not whether one needs something like this for "good sound" - of course one does not. I thought it was very cool though that the machine is capable of such a large amount of SSD storage - up to 24TB. Basically, what they're doing is putting up to 3 ASUS Hyper M.2 X16 PCIe (~US$60-70) cards in the machine. The user can then install up to four M.2 SSDs within each card (a single 2TB WD Blue 3D can be had for about US$230 currently, 2TB WD Red for around US$280). So with each ASUS card filled up, we have up to 8TB SSD storage, and 3 of these populated ASUS card results in that 24TB potential.

POLL RESULTS: Music streaming service adoption among audiophiles in 2019...

Click on image to zoom.

Yeah, I know. Music streaming as a subscription model is the latest "revolution" for music lovers. This is why I decided to put up the recent poll in mid-March while we were concurrently also running the blind test as reported on in the last few weeks. Above, you see the overall results based on the visitors to this blog.

Remember that for the poll, I allowed voters to select up to 3 options. As a result, even though there were 616 respondents, a total of 809 selections were made. This means that up to ~30% of people selected more than 1 option and these are represented in the percentages above.

POLL: Do you subscribe to a music streaming service? And a Wilson Sasha DAW, dCS, Audio Research listening session @ The Sound Room, Vancouver.

Alright guys, first off, I'm trying out a quick poll here since I was interested in how many of you are currently streaming music off a subscription site... No doubt we are seeing the shift towards the streaming, subscription model for music delivery and consumption.

It's interesting to see this article recently about the music industry's revenue growth in these last few years on account of streaming. Considering the decades of decline, I'm sure the music industry is interested in promoting any system that nets a profit. We will need to see however whether the rate of adoption in streaming wanes in the years ahead as warned by Forbes recently.

PERSPECTIVE: Poll - Upgraded USB and Sound?

I enjoy visiting the Steve Hoffman Forums for perspective. I think it's probably one of the most balanced places to hang out at. Of course, as in any audio forum, there will be a number of heated arguments here and there, but overall, it's great to see a place where heterogeneous music lovers of various experience levels and beliefs can congregate, share tips, and get advice... It's certainly one of the more vibrant audio communities out there!

Recently there was an interesting poll on whether USB cable upgrades can improve a system's sound quality. Titled "The Great USB cable debate poll" (full disclosure, I took part and posted a comment as well), it ran from February 22 to March 8th before it was closed. In total, it received 415 votes, gathered 36 pages of responses and the outcome was:

About 1/4 felt that upgraded USB cables make a difference, and 3/4 did not. Surprised?