How To Field Questions About Your Audiophile Lifestyle...

Wise words, geoffkait.  Agreed.

I work with a bunch of engineers, but I'm the only audiophile.  It's the running joke how many speakers I own, and I'll judge the cost of things in speaker-units.  A manager that makes the most fun of me will go and play golf on the weekend at a nice club, and maybe spend $300-400.  I tell him he's got nothing to show for it....  For that money, I'd have a nice little pair of speakers.....  Even better if they were used!

@mirolab   Your golfer friend may be one of those individuals who prioritizes experiences/activities over possessions.  There is definitely a movement in that direction among younger couples these days (it's the #1 reason for the tiny house movement).  Almost every couple when interviewed about building a tiny house mentions that they don't want as great a percentage of their income going to a mortgage so they have money for weekend excursions/adventures.

I can see both sides of this outlook on life.  Just a question of your priorities, your way of enjoying life.

For the record, I would be more like you, Mirolab.  But perhaps it's time for a priority shift in the direction of questing more frequently after interesting experiences.

hifiman5,

You bring up a good distinction - one that is much more in the public air these days having been raised by studies of people’s happiness .

I’ve briefly pondered it’s applicability to high end audio and can’t say I’ve come to a conclusion yet:

Does our hobby exemplify the desire for "owning things/possessions?"

On one hand, it IS about owning material objects that make us happy, and it does seem pretty materialism based - we lust after "things we want to own" e.g. the latest speaker, amplifier etc.

On the other hand, we use these objects as "experience machines" - to generate different experiences for us each day. The experiences of listening to different music and musicians, the home equivalent of going to a concert.

So it seems hard to pigeon hole which, if either, category - object or experience - our hobby falls in to.

(I think my inclination, probably shared by others, is to spin it more towards the "experience" side of things, which may be true but may also be our wanting to ennoble our efforts. On the other hand, people rushing in to Best Buy to get the latest TV on sale could say the same thing - it brings them experiences of the different things they’ll watch - sports, movies etc. But then, things like Big Screen TVs and the like are typically held up as examples of the "shiny materialistic objects" of materialism. So if one is defending high end audio on the same ground as defending TVs or other material goods, it seems a bit more suspect).

Someone asked me if my system was better than Bose (look at my profile and decide). My answer was "I think so"