What do you say to your audiophile friends who say you just listen to your equipment more

This is one question I don’t want to even think about anymore. Those days we spent listening to cables and power cords are thankfully behind us. Life somehow interrupted our pursuits and things changed as almost inevitably it must.

One of my friends went through a divorce and a debilitating injury and another had to cope with the death of both parents in fairly quick succession.

On a personal level I feel I’ve made great progress in my recovery from Audiophilia in these past 4/5 years.

Instead of obsessing over the minutae of sound quality I’m beginning to enjoy all sources from TV sound to Bluetooth speakers, (I still draw the line at smartphone speakers though, ugghh!)

My days of worshipping at the shrines of Linn, Naim and Rega etc are now a bad memory. I am now immune to the preachings of all those Hi-Fi gurus and high priests of audio prose.

Don’t get me wrong, I still love high-quality playback sound as much as ever, eg those Monopulse speakers I heard at a show recently, but I’m just more inclined to be pleasantly surprised whenever I encounter it instead of actively seeking it out.

Glad to be able to willingly disembark from that never ending merry-go-round. I suspect this happens to quite a few audiophiles eventually once the bubble bursts.

Call me an unrepentant audiophile.  I just love listening to good sound.  Exulting in sheer tonal beauty. Getting lost inside an image. And if I feel the need to up the experience and I've got the lucre, I do it.

People say, "gee, you really must like music." You bet. 90% of my listening is in my office to a pair of Sonus model 3's streaming away. At this moment Simon and Garfunkel are doing Mrs Robinson. "Most of all you've got to hide it from the kids." 

A non-audiophile friend wouldn't know what listening to music VS. equipment even means!;)

Its a fascinating subject, Mike. So many times I’ve caught myself being carried away by the music .... in the grocery store... So its the music, much more than the system.

But we want a good system, and this just does not ever happen by accident. Especially not when so many designers and manufacturers are out there making stuff specifically knowing and with the desired intent of hyping stuff up in order to get your attention enough to make you buy.... what it will only later on dawn on you was not the revealed involving detail you thought it was but ingratiating now turned tiresome hype.

I just covered the vast majority of everything out there.

So in defense we make these checklists: tone, dynamics, imaging, etc. This of course is an endless rabbit hole as we go from tone to timbre to harmonic development to timbral balance until before you know it we’re like Michael Fremer talking about how much there is there and how the presence is present but is it palpably present?

Which I say only halfways jokingly as you know I take this stuff very seriously myself.

The way I got out of this trap years ago happened quite by accident. I was auditioning a McCormack DNA1 vs a Krell and being a bit perturbed because in spite of not caring for the Krell it was very hard to find anything really technically wrong with it. Until it dawned on me while enjoying the DNA my foot was tapping. While listening to the Krell I was happily checking off my audiophile to-do list. While listening to the McCormack I was happily tapping my foot.

But wait! Not so fast! Because, next thing you know, foot-tapping becomes just another item on the checklist.

Like I said, fascinating subject.