How To Field Questions About Your Audiophile Lifestyle...

@enginedr1960

Good for you and you are right that for people who don’t get it - well it is their loss - what is your system?

My system is made up of components that play my room well . I us a distributed bass system and a pair of Ohm Walsh 2.2000 speakers . A good digital & vinyl front end .  

Wolf,

Where I used to live in northern Wisconsin, ( now reside in Az.) you were lucky if you could find a dozen audiophiles in a 100 mile radius. If you weren't a hunter or a fisherman, you were nothing. Most of those people up there looked at me as if I had some sort of disease when I told them what interested me. When enough people say to you that that kind of stuff makes you foolish or stupid, you ALMOST, and I say ALMOST start to believe it. When I was still working at a paper mill up there I would meet and work with some of these guys for the first time and when they asked me if I hunted or fished and then told them neither, that was the end of any conversation they would have with me for the 30 years I worked there. I thought it was a very sad situation with those people.  I'm not trying to make myself out as a "bleeding heart" but that 30 years was sure a learning experience in life....

It’s interesting reading that some people seem to experience negativity about this hobby from people they know.

That hasn’t been the case for me. Certainly lots of my friends and acquaintances are not audiophiles, but I can’t remember ever getting even a sideways look if the subject comes up, or when anyone visits and sees my system. They just see some nice looking speakers and sometimes comment on the nice looking speakers. And if someone is interested they listen and are usually blown way by the sound. They get it. Not that they’d buy such gear for themselves, but they aren’t left baffled as to why I get enjoyment out of it.

(But then again, I don’t have a system with all the nutty looking stuff like cables on risers, every bit of gear exposed, vibrating discs and bowls around the room etc...Lots of audiophiles it seems want to see every bit of technology they paid for placed prominently in the room, so it ends up looking more like an electronics lab vs a domestic environment).

I also deal with some reactions to my home theater set up, which is the same room as my two channel speakers/listening. I turned my living room, which is the most prominent room in the house, the first one you see when you walk in the door, into a home theater with a giant projection screen, surround sound etc. Complete re-build, with dropped felt-lined ceiling, automated 4 way masking, projector on rising lift, etc. It’s the kind of idea that would give many wives a heart attack (and almost did mine, I promised it would come out ok).

But I think because I was so concerned with good aesthetics myself, I worked super hard to make it a beautiful, integrated looking room vs a "man cave" moved to the main floor. Turned out great and even other guys wives express admiration.

So I think that, yes, when we start talking about what we paid for our gear it can start looking goofy to other people. But I don’t see why we have to do that. Then beyond that, it seems to me good aesthetics go quite a way to making our hobby look reasonable to non-audiophiles.

This passion we all share mixes science with art . What can be better than that . One of the finer things that enhance ones life