HERE COMES YOUTH
That is, a few remarks on the world of “old”

⌈ youth
1. «the period of life contained between childhood and adulthood»
2. «the set of characteristics and behaviors inherent in this period»
3. «an early stage of development of something»
⸜ The keyword: ‘youth’ in: „Słownik Języka Polskiego PWN”, → SJP.PWN.pl, accessed: 22.11.2024. ⌋

I DON'T KNOW IF YOU'VE EVER WONDERED, where do manufacturers in the audio industry come from. Young manufacturers in general, but since we are immersed in this world and not in another, this question applies to our industry. It has to do with some observations I collected during the Warsaw Audio Video Show 2024. Although I had little time to wonder and mingle during the event, even what I was able to observe seemed interesting and puzzling.

It puzzled me why there are so many people in our industry, so to speak, at a mature and 'distinguished' age, and so few really young ones. I remember when I met KAROL GOLINSKI, then a rookie in our industry, in 2017, and what a shock it was to me to realize his presumed PESEL (an identification number of every person in Poland containing birthday) - or actually his very young appearance, but that’s one and the same thing. Take a look at the photo he sent us at the time → HERE ˻PL˺.

The realization lasted only a second, though. It quickly became apparent that Karol had clearly crystallized views on sound, knew what he wanted to achieve, and time worked in his favor. Today he is a truly experienced producer, still young, though no longer as young as he was those seven years ago, who offers thoughtful, successful products. Back then it was something new and refreshing to me.

But to the point. And the thing is that young manufacturers one meets in audio very rarely. Usually, such is my intuition, they are people who have already listened to a lot of systems, experienced a lot of good and bad sound, and “digested” what the world of perfectionist audio has to offer. In a word - experienced people. That is not-really-so-young people. What does this say about us? First the obvious: this is the industry where experience counts the most. Education - sure, it's a priceless thing. But as countless examples of smart, capable and agile electronic engineers and IT professionals, college graduates show, academic learning is disconnected from mainstream audiophilism. It simply doesn't understand it.

And that is why education is only one component. For it also requires experience, often replacing a diploma. And it is it that determines, it seems to me, the time it takes to achieve the desired results. All the more so because as we get older we acquire financial capacity, so to speak. That is, we have more money to allocate to interests or passions. Not always, but usually. And the closer we get to retirement, the easier it is to think about realizing our dreams and turning hobbies i.e. putting together, braiding, assembling or whatever one needs to do to create some audio inventions for one’s friends and their friends, into regular activities.

⸜ The Palace of Art (Pałac Sztuki), the building of the Society of Friends of Fine Arts in Cracow at 4 Szczepanski Square, which hosted the Nówka Sztuka fair, dedicated to the work of the young people

A credit-based new business model would be much more beneficial, there is no doubt about it. This would move that threshold of “adulthood” in audio to much lower age. However, we need to remember that this is a high-risk industry, requiring a long time to “settle in”, let alone make a return on investment. That's why, the way I figure it, banks are reluctant to lend for production related to the audiophile part of the luxury market. Unless the borrower has something to secure such a loan against. And this is most often related to the fact that he/she has already achieved something, which brings us back to the starting point, namely age.

And if some “youngsters” happen to enter the industry, and even if we're lucky and they are someone with something interesting to say who also loves music and would like to share their ideas about how it should sound, the industry acts as a brake. The thing is that every perfectionist activity is embedded in only the right and dogmatically held views. Right - let's add - for us, people with a baggage of experience (read: older). And there is no room for new ideas and deviations from generally accepted views. Let's be honest - it doesn't matter whether we prefer tubes or transistors, digital or analog, etc., because it still involves perfectly the same state of mind. And the young see things differently.

I remember it vividly, what it was like when I started my adventure of a lifetime, actually one of two, writing my first articles on audio issues. To tell the truth, I completely disliked what I knew from Polish audio magazines. I opted for writing related to emotions, describing accompanying components, tracks I listened to when reviewing, and audio description based on concrete examples. Today I know that the problem was the Germanocentrism of Polish audio writing, which tried to be “objective”, hiding the author's person in all this. I didn't like this and considered it a systemic error, leading to erroneous results.

⸜ The first of the rooms where I bought my daughter a very interesting picture made in the crochet technique; three of them can be seen at the very top, in the back, in the form of geometric assumptions, below them colored versions

I was only able to fully realize my ideas by starting my own magazine. Today most of the things I write about may seem obvious, but, believe me, for many years I was regarded as the ‘odd’ one. Only with time, as if by osmosis, that is, by the exchange of imperceptible particles between writers, did the situation change. In my opinion, for the better. Over time, however, I myself began to harden my views and habits, taking the positions that I contested years ago. Today I have to be very careful not to lose something important by doing so. Sometimes, I hope, I succeed.

Such conflicts between “young” and “old” are something absolutely natural. If you have someone in your family who is graduating high school this year or did last year, you know that one of the most important motives is the one related to the conflict of generations:

Intergenerational conflict is an age-old problem of mankind. No wonder it has become a literary motif. However, the struggle between young people, full of ambition and conviction, and experienced old men, despite its naturalness, loses none of its drama. On the contrary; it is the natural need to exchange generations that gives this conflict its tragic character.

⸜ Motyw konfliktu pokoleń w literaturze - konteksty z różnych epok (The motif of conflict between generations in literature - contexts from different epochs), → POEZJA.org, accessed: 22.11.2024.

This situation is universal to all fields, not only art, but also science, technology, even, let's face it, the principles of cooking. After all, I took the title of this editorial from the name of the exhibition presented by the National Museum in 2019, which showed the works of the 1st Cracow Group. Its members came from Krakow, Lodz and small towns in the Eastern Borderlands and took up studies at the Krakow Academy of Fine Arts. The curator of the exhibition, Anna Burzałek, said at the time:

Almost every one of them, under the guidance of their professors, won accolades, awards and contended for scholarships. It's not that they were offended and rebellious from the beginning. What angered them was that the professors stayed mentally in Young Poland, while time ran on and the threat of nationalism, especially fascism, emerged in the 1930s. This caused them to break out of the bonds of academia and start searching.
⸜ „Idzie młodość!” – w Muzeum Narodowym wystawa artystów I Grupy Krakowskiej (Here comes youth!" - exhibition of the artists of the 1st Cracow Group at the National Museum), → DZIEJE.pl, accessed: 22.11.2024.

As I’ve said, defying authority is part of us, part of our humanity. Regardless of who we are or what we do for a living. Steven Pinker, author of the excellent Language Instinct, cites the research of another scientist, anthropologist Donald E. Brown, in support of the thesis of innate grammatical skills. The latter, disgusted by the Standard Social Science Model (SSSM) still in force and the tendency of anthropologists and sociologists to emphasize differences between different peoples, decided to take a closer look at their reports.

⸜ The view of the further part of the first room

Drawing on the language research of Noam Chomsky and psychologists and linguists associated with the promotion of knowledge of universal grammar (Universal Grammar, UG), he was tempted to create a description of universal people (Universal People, UP). Piecing together field research, he found a huge number of characteristics that unite us all, not divide us. And among them something of particular interest to us: music, cited right after hygiene (!) and dance.

But also the imitation of elders by children (Zysk & S-ka Publishing House, Poznan 2023, pp. 518-520). However, as Pinker notes, this imitations must not take the form of duplication, as this would be associated with autism. It must involve similarity, but generalized similarity. There must be in it, in a word, room for experimentation. That is, for young people's disagreement with the existing reality. More or less confrontational, but nevertheless inevitable and even necessary.

And this is probably our biggest problem - that’s what make it an uphill and doubly hard struggle for young audio manufacturers. I have already talked about the economic component, but the second, perhaps even more difficult obstacle is, already alluded to, ‘dogma’. We, the elderly, simply ‘know’ how it should look. “Since it works, let's not change it.” -we collectively claim. There are, of course, exceptions to this attitude, but - as exceptions are - they only confirm the rule.

Therefore, it is high time, I believe, for a change in thinking. I'm thinking of those in the audio industry who have something to say: manufacturers, distributors, dealers, buyers and acting as mediators between them, i.e. the press, university associations, etc. It is high time, I think, to help the young. Or at least not to make their lives harder.

I wish it had just occurred to me proving that I am so sensitive, but the truth is different - I ‘saw’ the future of the audiophile idiom thanks to someone else. It happened exactly on November 9th of this year at, plus-minus, 1:16 p.m. It was then that I entered the Palace of Art, the building of the Society of Friends of Fine Arts in Krakow at 4 Szczepanski Square, where the Nówka Sztuka fair, dedicated to the work of young, up-and-coming, or still looking for their space, artists, was taking place.

The organization of this event was trivial - in the interiors lent (rented?) to them, they could set up their stand and try to attract visitors to it. It worked, I saw that many were buying works, and I also left with two items for my children. It just wasn't possible otherwise. And just there looking at how much fatigue, pain and doubt there was in the place, because being a young artist is probably even harder than being a young audio manufacturer, but also joy, passion, love for what you do, it occurred to me that - despite everything - it is something we audiophiles lack.

⸜ The last of the rooms, dedicated to the artists working mainly with posters

Could one imagine, just for starters, a space during the Audio Video Show where young, up-and-coming manufacturers could present their products, This could be a raw of high tables, reminiscent of the kind of section at the Munich High End Show, a Start-Up aisle. To make more sense, however, it would have to be combined with a listening room where, on a rotating basis, for example every hour, presentations would be conducted. The whole thing would have to be well-advertised and treated as a “premium” event, not a godsend.

Again - exhibitors would have to be supported by the organizers and this should be coordinated by one person, someone like an “animator”, present on site at all times. I would be happy to host a few such meetings myself. Equally important: it would have to be held at a good location, not a basement in the west-south part of the garage complex :) The important determinant, however, should not be that someone there assembles something for themselves, because the DIY room has been operating at the show for many years, successfully. I imagine that it would be a space exclusively for new manufacturers offering commercial products.

Another possibility, perhaps even more attractive, is local events of this type. Perhaps organized by audio showrooms. Or, this is also an idea, prepared by technical universities in a given city and using their infrastructure. This would also be an opportunity to bring these two, for now disconnected, worlds - academic and audiophile - closer together. Ideally, this would be handled by the Polish Audio Organization, only that we don't have one. Nor do we have a Polish Audio Association, or any such support group. As you can see, it's still too small a market.

⸜ A corner where postcards and small-format works were available for purchase alongside posters

Or maybe not? Maybe we are used to what we have and don't want changes in the world we have tamed and somehow embraced? Or maybe this is the moment when the young should enter the game and propose something they themselves would expect from us, and we should help them? If so, “High Fidelity” will be happy to lend a hand, most likely in terms of informing readers and advertising such meetings, but also perhaps as a host of meetings during the AVS in Warsaw. Because it's high time to let some fresh blood into the self-satisfied, brassbound audio world. It will do us all good. ●

WOJCIECH PACUŁA
Chief editor

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The ending year was full of excitement and events, also in the world of music and audio.
We would like to thank you for being with us, for looking at our activities with sympathy and kindness - we are very grateful to you!
We would like to wish you all a good, peaceful, full of love and music 2025 year.
See you around!