Are all Audiophiles masocists?

An ex-gf’s sister reminds me of what I imagine some audiophiles might be like.  Whatever she does/experiences, she analyses.  If she joined us for supper, she would be looking about and wondering out loud why things were in the places they were, why wait staff made the passes they did, why other diners looked or behaved as they did.  When the meals arrived, she would tentatively taste and say, “Hmm, I’m trying to determine . . is that cinnamon? . . . or maybe ginger?!”  She compares the food to multiple other versions she recalls from other restaurants and wonders why she isn’t enjoying this food as much as some others.  She must ponder the differences.  

After a bit, I am thinking, “I don’t care what’s in it, I’m not going to make it, I just want to enjoy it!  If she doesn’t like it, she should return it and get something else instead of trying to reverse engineer the recipe to figure out what the components are.  Can’t we just enjoy the food and talk of something pleasant?”

When it comes to music, I expect reviewers to discuss what equipment or recordings sound like and speculate why.  That is what they do.  But if I was just kicking back and enjoying music on my system, it would annoy me if someone said, “I have figured out what is not right here.  You need a bass trap over there, maybe there, some ceiling panels, oh and behind you on that wall.  It would improve the sound so much!” Great, now they have me considering the various deficiencies of my room (or equipment), and now I’m not enjoying it so much.   

Can you imagine having sex like that?  What a waste!  Lol

^^^^ That

Isn't that part of the definition of hobby?

Experience vs analysis, love and hate, pleasure and pain.

Why is human experience always linked and limited in such opposing ways?

Why can't we simply enjoy books and films in a purely visceral way without worrying too much about plot, direction or themes?

Why can't we have drugs that give nothing but untrammelled pleasure without any fallout?

Or sufficient amounts of alcohol without a hangover?

Or unlimited fast food without weight gain or sugar issues?

Did God make a mistake or is evolution only a work in progress?

The only two great pleasures in life that we can luxuriate in that don't have unfortunate side effects seem to be sex and music, as long as we take a bit of care with cueing up.

Perhaps there's some common link between these two great passions.

I bet Freud would say that audiophilia is a mere fetish. What might he say about tonearms I don't want to know...or the audiophile games people play. Or maybe we should ask Eric Berne, or even Joe South?

Or perhaps, just maybe, as long we can concentrate mainly on the music and not the means, ultimately the love of music is the greatest, most universal, least harmful pleasure of them all?

Something worth getting just a little obsessed about. So I don't think we're necessarily masochists as we know what we want but we do seem to have a lot stacked against don't we? 

Unfortunately that only becomes apparent at a later date as you eventually realise the record companies are not on your side, nor are most reviewers, and that the perfect playback you were looking for is not even a remote option, at any price.

Now if only you were aware of all that before you began...would you still do it?

For the first part of your post i will say that the price to pay to be free, really free, is consciousness of our own slavery, to begin with ourself and at the end to end with ourself....But in between we are suspended between polarities, and extremes.....

For the last question part, yes, i will do the same thing in my audio journey, and being without money has been for me a great luck because i has been push to be creative, then my audio wishes are realized by my own hands ....

Obsession is a problem only if we cannot satisfy it and control it by ourself, his name is creativity when it is the case, otherwise it is a bottomless pit...

:)

I apologize to give an asnwer to questions that were only rhetorical and for which you did not wait for an answer...

My best to you....

« All fundamentals are polarities» Goethe, Coleridge, Faraday, and Groucho Marx