2. misc-audio
  3. 152293-121242

What is wrong with audiophiles?

Something that has happened countless times happened again last night. Ordinary people over for a party listening to some music easily hear things audiophiles argue endlessly don't even exist. Oh, its worse even than that- they not only easily hear but are stunned and amazed at what they hear. Its absolutely clearly obvious this is not anything they ever were expecting, not anything they can explain- and also is not anything they can deny. Because its so freaking obvious! Happens every time. Then I come on here and read one after another not only saying its impossible, but actually ridiculing people for the audacity of reporting on the existence of reality.

What is wrong with audiophiles?

Okay, concrete examples. Easy demos done last night. Cable Elevators, little ceramic insulators, raise cables off the floor. There's four holding each speaker cable up off the floor. Removed them one by one while playing music. Then replaced them. Music playing the whole time. First one came out, instant the cable goes on the floor the guy in the sweet spot says, "OH! WTF!?!?!"

Yeah. Just one. One by one, sound stage just collapses. Put em back, image depth returns.

Another one? Okay.

Element CTS cables have Active Shielding, another easy demo. Unplug, plug back in. Only takes a few seconds. Tuning bullets. Same thing. These are all very easy to demo while the music is playing without interruption. This kills like I don' know how many birds with one stone. Auditory memory? Zero. Change happens real time. Double blind? What could be more double blind than you don't know? Because nobody, not me, not the listener, not one single person in the room, knows exactly when to expect to hear a change- or what change to expect, or even if there would be any change to hear at all. Heck, even I have never sat there while someone did this so even I did not know it was possible to hear just one, or that the change would happen not when the Cable Elevator was removed but when the cable went down on the floor.

We're talking real experience here people. No armchair theorizing. What real people really hear in real time playing real music in a real room.

I could go on. People who get the point will get the point. People who ridicule- ALWAYS without ever bothering to try and hear for themselves!- will continue to hate and argue.

What is wrong with audiophiles?

Something almost all audiophiles insist on, its like Dogma 101, you absolutely always must play the same "revealing" track over and over again. Well, I never do this. Used to. Realized pretty quickly though just how boring it is. Ask yourself, which is easier to concentrate on- something new and interesting? Or something repetitive and boring? You know the answer. Its silly even to argue. Every single person in my experience hears just fine without boring them to tears playing the same thing over and over again. Only audiophiles subject themselves to such counterproductive tedium.

What is wrong with audiophiles????
128x128millercarbon
millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon OP
12,531 posts
 
The word audiophile literally means lover of sound. Can also mean sound enthusiast. Key being, either way, sound. Not lover of specifications. Not lover of gear. Not lover of explanations, theories, technology, or even music really. Just sound. 

Which is hard to square with the uncomfortably large number of so-called audiophiles who it would seem the last thing they will ever do is trust their ears, let alone anyone else's. 

And even crazier they do indeed hang out on websites posing as audiophiles while posting comments that could only have come from a misaudiotrope- one who hates sound.

So its a love hate relationship. Which, we got guys loving listening to music, and we got guys loving talking tech. The technobabblers hate not being able to explain what the audiophiles hear, which drives them crazy because they think they're better (more scientific, objective, etc) than the listeners. 

Which makes it a trick question. The genuine audiophiles, there is nothing wrong with them. Not at all. How could there be? Its the fake ones, the ones who not only deny the evidence of their own ears but everyone else's as well, who make me shake my head and wonder what is wrong with audiophiles?
ivan_nosnibor's avatar
ivan_nosnibor
1,047 posts
 
Don't know that I can accept your premise, honestly. 

I can appreciate that some audiophiles seem to me to be irrationally or persistently overbearing when it comes to what others report hearing firsthand, but that's always really been the case. Even before the internet. Is there a cadre of idiots online now days that seem to excel in their stupidity or their desire to dig their heels in and stubbornly refuse to acknowledge facts or observations of others in order to defend their own position at all cost? Well, yeah. But, so what? News flash: those people are ignorant. And there have always been ignorant people in the world...long before the hobby ever got started...and they'll be there long after. 

But, if I ever went through a period in my life where I thought it was important to me that I 'go forth' in the hobby and 'save the world' and fight that kind of ignorance, then it was something that I was forced to recognize that I would ultimately have to give up...or at least modify to only being concerned with limiting my own ignorance instead of trying to limit the world's **inexhaustible** supply. Since then, I've managed to regain my perspective, something that I inadvertently surrendered when I got down into the weeds of 'fighting the good fight'. I couldn't search for information anymore, I had to fight the infidels. And at times the fight seemed so intense that I couldn't devote time to anything else. So in my zeal for all in the hobby that I felt was holy, I wound up digging my heels in and refusing to acknowledge certain facts or observations of others in order to defend my position at all cost...knowwhuttimean, Verne?? It's a free country, you can do what you please, but I'm just telling you, as a guy who's been there and done that, that it's just a trap...it's intellectual flypaper...a waste of any "true" audiophile's time or energy, if you ask me. There's no victory in it - nothing to be won...the fight will always rage eternal - whether you decide to be a part of it or not. 

Just before I heard 'the call to enlist', I was on my way to learning for myself how to increase my own level of knowledge and awareness so that I could benefit from it directly. Once I regained my bearings, that's exactly what I returned to...swords beat back into plowshares. Sure I still see the people, with their heads down, stuck in the trenches fighting, but now that I can stand up again I also can see the reasoning of all sorts of relatively more civil folks I've never met, who may happen to be wearing different audiophile hats than mine, but whose ideas I'm free to consider for my own purposes again without having to subject them to a purity test by trying to filter it all through a 'cause'. 

Peace is mo' better than war.
millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon OP
12,531 posts
 
miller carbon: The word audiophile literally means lover of sound.

Don't know that I can accept your premise, honestly.


Okay. But at least I have one. What's yours again, anyway?
ivan_nosnibor's avatar
ivan_nosnibor
1,047 posts
 
My assertion is that when we stop learning, we tend to stop living...even if it's to fight something that otherwise might seem important to us at the time. Go your own way as you like, but that's maybe the best benefit of my own experience in this case that I can offer you, is all.
agrippa
160 posts
 
For maybe the first 10-15 years of my audiophile "career" I heard differences between anything and everything. Cable lifters, signal cables, speaker cables, power cables, isolation devices, that green CD pen, you name it. I heard the differences at shop demos, at my friends’ places and at home.

Then real stuff happened and I lost interest in HiFi completely for a couple of years or so. When I came back I heard none, or almost none, of it. Not, I hasten to add, because I’d lost my hearing in the meantime. It is and has always been excellent. I have no problem picking up and pointing out slight nuances between cartridges, tone arms, CD players, amplifiers and whatever else which *ought* to sound different - but all that other stuff all sound the same or make no difference whatsoever.

I’ve given this quite some thought and the one change from before to after that I can point to as an explanation is that I no longer give a s**t. I no longer want, need or expect things to sound different and so, apparently, many of them don’t.

That’s my personal experience anyway. Take it as you will.
More to discover