Is the Stereo Dead?

For quite some time, I had a component stereo system. It consisted of an AM/FM main unit receiver, a double cassette deck, a five CD changer, and a set of speakers, plus a monstrous subwoofer. It was definitely state of the art- for about 20 years ago. As it worked fine, I haven't looked into upgrading anything for quite some time. Unfortunately, it all got destroyed in one felt swoop, and I am now in the market for some new gear.

I actually had two sound setups in the basement. The first was the stereo outlined above, and the second was a set of THX certified speakers attached to a desktop computer. If I didn't want to power up the computer for some reason, I would plug an MP3 player directly into the speakers. I didn't listen to that much music, but when I did, I wanted it to sound good, which it did.

Looking through a few websites, it looks like stereo receivers have all gone video. There is no shortage of them that can do surround sound, in 5.1, 6.1 and even 7.1 setups. I have no plans to watch video using the stereo to provide the audio. From my looking around, it appears that audio has been pushed aside. Even with a surround sound receiver and speaker setup, my CD's are only encoded in stereo anyway, so at best it would be a "virtual surround sound" experience anyway, which I could certainly live without.

Looking at this objectively, most of my CD collection got digitized into MP3's through the years. It actually had been a while since I listened to a CD on the stereo. It really is much easier to keep the collection organized and accessible using the desktop computer as the digital jukebox. With hard drives so cheap these days, even large CD collections, encoded at high bit rates, can easily be stored on a single drive, and backed up on another external hard drive.

Lately, I've been thinking, that I'd be better off putting the money that I would have spent on the stereo components, into higher quality audio gear. With a higher end sound card, and better speakers, the sound quality should be quite good. I could always play a CD directly through the desktop's optical drive without a dedicated CD player.

Sure, there have been attempts to bridge the computer to the stereo. Gadgets that often are wireless, and include cool remote controls. However, they are designed to bring the music from the computer to the stereo system. For those that have room for a computer, I'm thinking the best way is to simply play it off of the desktop, and cut the wireless bridge, and the stereo out of the loop.

For the average listener, I think the stereo is simply not needed anymore. I'll stop looking for stereo components, and turn my attention to sound cards, and computer speaker setups. Today's desktops are so powerful and versatile, it's hard to upstage them, even for dedicated components. In my mind, the stereo is on the threatened list, headed for extinction for many home users.

--Jonas