How Do You Live The Audiophile Life

Mind-matter interaction. Honest injun. It’s a whole enterprise/hobby unto itself. I would say it’s an undertaking, but, well, you know...Kind of like Feng Shui for audiophiles. The study of the influence of the local physical surroundings on the sound. You could say the lower the entropy the better the sound. Check it out, dudes and dudettes!

The acoustician know much more about Hi-Fi S.Q. than the electronical engineer....This is my motto.....

Your ears then know much more than a measuring device....

But only a fool will put aside the experience of the electronic engineer…. But in life there exist priorities....That is my point....

I live "just across the Hudson" in Jersey City and until recently, I lived in CT and have commuted into Manhattan for a long stretch.  This area is spoiled in terms of the # of high end dealers but even then, there is a lot of equipment I have wanted to demo and can't.  

One of the things I have learned through the years is that I demo'd as many things as I could, especially things that were reviewed.  I would read the review, listen and then read the review again to see if I could understand what the reviewer was saying.  This helped me understand the relative sound profiles of different equipment.  

Once I got my head around that, i was able to read reviews and understand what I was reading and what to expect.  This helped me be able to purchase things blindly without being disappointed.  In fact, my biggest disappointment was one i listed to extensively at a NYC retailer that did a very poor job of explaining what the room requirements were for the speakers I bought.  

Ultimately, I have started my own company.  Designed my own speakers and import products I like.  I also resell products I like.  It has been fun but the business basically was born from unhappiness with high end retailers.  

asvjerry,

"Are things getting better? Or are things getting worse?"


I suspect the advance of audio is much like the advance of civilization, forever moving forwards, and then backwards, and forwards again. Enlightenment followed by the dark ages followed by enlightenment and then so on.

How long has it been since Democritus, Socrates, Euclid, Aristotle, Pythagoras etc? How long since the construction of the Antithykera mechanism? How much progress since have we really made?

When was the real golden age of audio?
Was the highest point the 1950s where many people took an active part in building hi-fi equipment and actually demanded and sought out higher quality recordings? Or is it now?

Did we really need 4 track and beyond?
There’s plenty of recordings out there doing fine in plain mono, aren’t there?

If the wheels of history are driven by what the people want, then is it not also fair to say that the audio consuming public seem content with compressed garbage, err I mean music?

So did the CD/loudness wars era usher in a new dark age for audio? Were many of the advantages of digital recording and playback simply casually discarded in an attempt to stand out even further on AM/FM radio?

So are we audiophiles hopelessly fighting against the majority and merely pissing against the prevailing audio wind?

Or could we be on the cusp of a new audio awakening where we will witness the digital era coming to fruition, finally relegating analogue to history once and for all?

Either way, the audiophile life has never been easy. Even the well-heeled rarely seem to get what they really want, whilst the rest of us may merely be chasing a most enticing mirage, but mirage nonetheless...

Pop Quiz! 🤗

Who will have the best sounding system? 

a. Electronics engineer
b. Acoustics engineer
c. Audio engineer
d. Professional musician
e. System engineer