Comment by dylan604
My dad was into music, so we had a decent set up with turntable, cassette, 8-track, and even reel to reel. I’m very thankful that crappy Bluetooth speakers were not a thing growing up. I had full speaker cabinets with sub, mid, tweeter for rich full sound. I also had lots of time where I was the only one at home and could push those speakers to release the full potential of songs.
Volume makes a difference to be sure, but full wall of sound vs loud earbuds are totally different experiences.
There's no shortage of crappy modern audio hardware, but compared to like a bedside clock-radio, or an 80s economy car, a decent bluetooth speaker is actually an upgrade, and something like a HomePod (that costs around $115 in 1988 dollars) is revolutionary.
Which is not to say you couldn't find a Hi-Fi system from that era that would put a HomePod to shame, but it was the sort of thing only rich people and music geeks would have access to.