But, really, folks, why do we listen to music? For pleasure, for the emotional connection. How much equipment and money do we really need for that?
Growing up, my best friends were audio “hobbyists”, and spent a lot on their systems. One guy often went crazy on equipment that he’d admit would only make a minuscule difference (oh, now he won’t listen to anything digital if it’s less than a lossless Flac file @ 1411kbps).
But I made a decision back then that’s served me well: Don’t Get Spoiled and Keep The Goal In Mind.
With my car snob friends, I had to keep in mind that the goal was the fun and freedom of , y’know, driving. Which I could do even if it was drifting with my parents’ station wagon (while my pal’s MGB-GT was up on a lift getting fixed again).
With my audiophile friends, I had to remember that I wanted that shiver that Jimi’s guitar could give me, even on scratchy vinyl. Or the exhilaration of discovering the first Led Zeppelin album on my cheapo turntable from Goodwill.
I had students laughing about “the ringtone that teachers couldn’t hear”. My reply was that I believed that’s possible, because my hear… and I got interrupted by a couple of kids yelling “Stop it! That’s so annoying, with like a dozen people playing that ringtone at once! Turn it off!” I told them all to keep playing it…
you know the sad thing? 98 percent of this thread can be applied to the pc gaming crowd …
the only other board I’ve ever been on a regular basis is GameFAQs pc board …and I thought car and stereo geeks would swallow some snake oil but some of those guys it seems had too much money but didnt have much of a life …
PC gaming enthusiasts (along with ‘elite’ enthusiasts of any hobby) can be insufferable, but they tend to focus on objectively measurable benchmarks.
I apologize if this is a hijack, but this thread has actually got me wondering if there are any other extreme hobbyists who have developed a set of near-mystical standards that are completely divorced from even the highest end professionals who exist in that space.
I may think that a comic book collector is a lunatic to spend three million dollars on a mint copy of Superman #1, but its value is understandable as an important piece of history and art. Likewise, a pc enthusiast can point to his rig and tell you exactly what kind of performance he is getting without resorting to immeasurable, subjective claims.
Audiophiles seem to exist in their own very rarified air.
Speaking hypothetically, we can imagine an individual who can point to completely objective measurements of distortion, frequency response, acoustics, etc., and cares about them, but who him- or herself has the hearing of Beethoven.
That said, there is no real justification for buying snake oil or fraudulent products, or paying 10x the price for something for no reason whatsoever, not even an aesthetic one.
“High End Audio” for me is anything with more signal than noise… I still have some of my folks’ old 78s. Noisy as hell, but still kinda fun to listen to.
I wonder about this too. I think all hobbies have a subset of people that take things way too seriously and suck all the fun out of it. I think the “spending money way past the point of diminishing returns” attitude exists everywhere. I’d lump the audiophiles who fret about sampling rates, etc. way past the point of their middle aged hearing ability that @Sam_Stone is talking about into this crowd. Maybe there is an actual measurable metric they’re chasing but it’s really not useful for just enjoying music.
I see this in cycling too. There’s certainly some money to be spent to get to a baseline of quality components and lightness of bike that will make riding more enjoyable. But when you start spending hundreds or thousands of dollars to shave off some number of grams from the weight of your gear and you’re a middle aged 20 pounds overweight man I feel you’ve gone off the deep end somewhat. You can cut back on the fries and beer for free That level of spending only makes sense if you’re genuinely competing at the highest level and those marginal weight differences can actually determine winning or losing.
But the audiophiles who buy the grossly overpriced stuff that gushes about “musical energy”, “true inner emotion”, and “musically involving” are taking this to a whole new level. Is this actually a substantial market? Or do some of these manufacturers pop out the champagne when they make one sale to a sucker?
I can’t think of another hobby that goes so far off the rails with the unquantifiable goals. It seems closer to your crystal healing or homeopathic woo than taking hobbies too far.
Yes. That’s a good attitude. I keep that in mind with the cycling. The goal is to get a good amount of exercise, explore trails and neighborhoods, get outside, and right now socialize in a safer environment. A marginally lighter bike would actually hinder the exercise! And it wouldn’t make me faster in any measurable way that would contribute to my enjoyment of cycling. There’s a baseline of quality that I pay for so that the bike is relatively agile for the fast paved trails but sturdy enough for bouncing around the worst of the Seattle streets. But spending $6k on a bike would absolutely not increase my enjoyment of cycling by any amount that could come close to justifying the expense.
I see this in other things too. The Pinewood Derby cars for Cub Scouts for example. The ridiculous amount of money and accessories you can buy to marginally improve this silly little wooden car, where it’s clear it’s not just a fun activity for your 8 year old anymore … at some point you’re just totally missing the point.
My ears seem to like the 320k files. The tortured path the sound takes though… from website to my desktop, then out on USB to a DAC, an amp, and a pair of NHT speakers.
If I’m bored, I might try AirPlaying that site to my main system.
On the big system AirPlaying from iPad to the AppleTV, then HDMI to the amp, I did much better, picking four of the uncompressed WAV files, even though the iPad itself appears to be contributing a fair bit of bzzzz that went away when I stopped mirroring.
I’ve been struggling to keep from going “Full Bikeophile”, too. Like you, I’ve been pedaling to get in shape (unlike you, I’d be intimidated by the hills of Seattle).
But I’ve been careful to not quantify my riding. So far I’ve avoided looking up elevations or even counting the miles. Wife bought me a bike computer, but if I install it I’ll be watching it instead of the scenery. And thinking about average speeds and gas mileage. :~}
So enjoy the ride, enjoy the music, and screw “the paralysis of analysis”.
With the Ethernet Switch UEF in place, Allison’s voice is creamy smooth and without any loss of inner detail. Guitars and percussion are now much more naturally presented and full-bodied. The results are easy to identify and it can be tough to differentiate this digital playback from my excellent vinyl pressing!
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I was amazed at the amount of dynamic headroom and lifelike immediacy, all without the typical digital glare that seems to be the norm when streaming.
I’m sure it’s exactly as transformational as their ‘PowerCell line conditioner’. Because ‘unconditioned’ bits are way more digitally bad than the conditioned ones. And make sure you plug that thing in with their $995 power cord, because otherwise you might not have removed all the power noise from the bits, making them less bitty.
Creamy
Smooth
inner-detail
full-bodied
These are all synonyms for “unmeasurable bullshit we can’t be sued for claiming, but which people who buy our stuff will swear is true, because otherwise they’d have to admit that buying thousands of dollars of equipment to ‘condition’ an ethernet data stream was a really stupid thing to do.”
And for those with truly discerning ears more money than brains:
Synergistic Research SR25 Power Cable Review
“Synergistic Research’s complex and difficult-to-manufacture SR25 Limited Edition power cord so stunningly demonstrates the relationship between high-quality power and high-quality sound that it may represent the apotheosis of power-cord design. When I said that the SR25 transformed virtually every aspect of my system’s sound, I wasn’t exaggerating.
Reminds me of an ad I once saw for a bottle of an enamel type liquid with a brush applicator that you would apply to the ‘audio chip’ in your amp to add the ‘warm tube amp sound’ to the output.
I don’t remember how much, but only that it was absurd.
I bet it was C37. Basically one of the most hilarious bits of audio mumbo jumbo in the annals of audiophoolery and snake oil. Physics so utterly bad that it isn’t even wrong. Ranks along with mpingo disks. The promotion and continued profitability of such things seriously worries me. There is an underbelly of much bad behaviour in high end audio industry. There is money to be made separating the wealthy from their money and many snouts in the trough.
That phonograph does the same thing to music that a Hermes purse does to kleenex and chap-stick. It allows the owner to preen and display status among peers, and separate themselves from the unwashed who can’t afford it.
I used to sell equipment in a mid-range audio store. I probably couldn’t have sold a $12,000 turntable, but I MIGHT have been able to sell a $12,000 phono cartridge. At the time, audiophiles were going nuts over any cartridge with a weird story. (Sizzle always sells the steak.) There was one cartridge that was made by a guy in Japan and it was hand-built in some kind of nut shell (walnut?) so it wouldn’t have any “unnatural” resonance. Seriously. You had to wait for a year or two to get one.
With that said, I agree that the transducers (the phono cartridge and speakers) contribute the most to overall system sound when you play vinyl. Preamp and amplifier are next most important. Cables, interconnects, and so forth? Whatever.
It sucks that I’m almost 70 YO and my hearing has deteriorated badly enough that I need to use hearing aids. My good equipment is all in (air-conditioned) storage. I should sell it, but I worked for years to build up the system and so it just sits. In fact, I’ve tried to give it away to nieces and nephews, but they truly have no appreciation or desire for a big, open-air system of any quality.
That level of spending only makes sense if you’re genuinely competing at the highest level and those marginal weight differences can actually determine winning or losing.
