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Should people who can't solder, build or test their speakers be considered audiophiles?


  So, if you bought that Porsche but can only drive it and not fix it do you really understand and appreciate what it is? I say no. The guy who can get in there and make it better, faster or prettier with his own hands has a superior ability to understand the final result and can appreciate what he has from a knowledge base and not just a look at what I bought base. I mean sure you can appreciate that car when you drive it but if all you do is take it back to the dealership for maintenance and repairs you just like the shape with no real understanding of what makes it the mechanical marvel it is.
  I find that is true with the audio world too. There are those who spend a ton of money on things and then spend a lot of time seeking peer approval and assurance their purchase was the right one and that people are suitably impressed. Of course those who are most impressed are those who also do not design, build, test or experiment.

  I propose that an audiophile must have more than a superficial knowledge about what he listens to and must technically understand what he is listening to. He knows why things work and what his end goal is and often makes his own components to achieve this. He knows how to use design software to make speakers that you can't buy and analyze the room they are in and set up the amplification with digital crossovers and DSP. He can take a plain jane system and tweak it and balance it to best suit the room it is in. He can make it sound far better than the guy who constantly buys new components based on his superficial knowledge who does not understand why what he keeps buying in vain never quite gets there.

  A true audiophile can define his goal and with hands on ability achieve what a mere buyer of shiny parts never will. So out comes the Diana Krall music and the buyer says see how good my system is? The audiophile says I have taken a great voice and played it through a system where all was matched and tweaked or even purposely built and sits right down next to Diana as she sings. The buyer wants prestigious signature sound and the audiophile will work to achieve an end result that is faithful true to life audio as though you were in the room with Diana as she sings. The true audiophile wants true to life and not tonally pure according to someones artificial standard.

 So are you a buyer or an audiophile and what do you think should make a person an audiophile?
mahlman
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geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 

roberttdid
Maybe the system was accurate, and you don’t like accurate systems? In my experience, musicians will tell me what sounds most accurate, and what sounds most pleasing and often they are not the same, it all depends on the person.

>>>>I’m getting a bad feeling. One of the worst sounding systems I’ve come across was the system of a professional musician. First Oboe, National Symphony of Washington to be precise. It’s not that his components were bad, either, on the contrary. He was a dealer for Cello speakers and electronics.

So, the moral of the story is being a musician doesn’t necessarily guarantee anything. An ordinary man has no means of deliverance. 😬

>>>>>I hate to be overly judgmental in these matters but I must be a better judge of sound than you are. Especially involving a system I heard and you didn’t. 
mahlman OP
433 posts
 
" Mahlman, so you have a bias against B&w as well I see. So one of my others systems with 800D3s is also terrible, as is mine with the Tekton Ulfers. I guess my Wilson Sasha Daws will be next on the list, lol. What a live performance sounds like? So many different setups, different amplification methods used, or non amplified, different acoustics. Live has many different sounds. Trying to group it as one sound dosnt seem to make much sense. And since acoustics are not great at many venues, I’d say live isn’t really the end goal holy grail sound to me. Recorded in a studio where acoustics can be better controlled makes more sense in my mind. Live can be fun for the entertainment, not always so much for the quality of the sound "

Yes the ones I have heard were pretty bad for the money though I have only heard ones up to 22g in price. Watched the little "Please do not touch our Diamond Tweeter" sign on top while I thought about how bad they were. Killed any interest I had in them.
Nope your Wilsons won’t be on there because I am not going to ever make an effort to listen to things like that. I have no interest in super high priced things no matter how good they are. I have people come by who have listened to those types of speakers and they like my home built just as much so I am quite content to trust their judgement and not waste my time.

Yes on large live venues but small ones can be superb. What I find hard is to get good recordings from any source be it live, studio or whatever. Much of the music I used to listen to I have thrown out because the initial recording engineers have done such a bad job that even Audacity can’t fix it.
geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
d2girls
Some of you guys make no f*cking sense. Get your head on straight. Also, the guy above me shills Synergestic Research. GO FIGURE! HAHAHAHA

>>>>Is there a Report Whiner button?
speedbump6
760 posts
 
I shill Synergistci research? When did this happen? I have bought their products, but I am not in the audio business any more than I spend lots of money in the industry for my personal listening pleasure. And if it’s not ok to talk about the products you own, and why you might or might not like them, then this whole forum is a waste of time. Mahlman, it seems you are just against things that are outside your budget range. There are products outside my budget also, but I would not turn down a chance to hear them, much less assume I would dislike them. Also seems that they’re probabaly are not many things you do like based on your additional comments about music recordings. M thinking you and kenjit should collaborate and create speakers and a proper recording studio. I would agree that B&w from the early 2000s were nothing special to me, but the 800d3s do sound very nice. I tend to buy much of my equipment on the used market and let someone else take the big depreciation hit, so I’m not paying full dollar. More value for the money that way, and I don’t have to spend hundreds of hours breaking it in. 
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