Why do some think "music" (not gear, trading, etc.) is the ultimate end?

Listening music is a spiritual endeavour, like mathematics or poetry...

Listening music not only give enjoyment, like collecting cadavers when you are a good sniper, or female bodies if you are a pimp,or cars or gear or postal stamps; listening music can and must transform the soul coming from the spirit....

Then audiophile hobby is not essentially collecting gear, not even implementing the rightful controls of the 3 embeddings for any audio system, it is listening music first with the wish to listen to it with the optimal sound experience possible....


Music is more than only pastime enjoyment, it can be also therapeutical, and it can liberate our limited senses and by a cenestesic miracle propel our soul to the spirit world where all our senses merge in an interpenetrating one....



« At the end music is no more incoming waves of sound»- Groucho Marx thinking about the deaf Beethoven

For me its about enjoying music that I like to the maximum possible level. If I could listen to every song I play at a concert (in a good venue) with non-animal fans showing up, that's nirvana. Unfortunately, many of my records are by artists that are no longer with us, so it's impossible. Other than that, it's how can I come as close to that experience as possible? Most live albums are not recorded well, but when you find them....BINGO. Otherwise well recorded, mastered and pressed studio albums will have to do. 

To do that you need an excellent stereo and high quality records (some would say streaming or RTR or HiRez DLs or SACDS or whatever, but that's not the point here) to come as close to that experience as possible.

To the hardware fetishists/collectors, insanely obsessed tweakers, record collectors (or should I say investors) who never play or even open them, constant upgradeitis victims with monopoly money to blow (or sadly not like I was in college), or those who listen to the same thing over and over to hear "the wire" and not the music, I'm not going to criticize you. It's a free country (and mostly free world) so whatever floats your boat. BTW, at times I can be all of the above.

I will mention that my son loves music (he is out of college and off the payroll, so he is in control of his finances), and likes a lot of the music that I like +rap, and just got his first hifi system. It's an $8 speaker he bought at Walmart to play music from his iPhone. He asks me why I care so much about the sound - he can hear the music just fine and it worked great when the had a few people over. I recently sold an older amp and preamp I was saving for him because I knew it was hopeless (he knew I had it for him and all he needed was a source box and speakers and didn't care)....If he does ever become interested in music sound quality and wants to spend judiciously, he can go explore some used equipment. And he has someone to help him.

hilde45 I disagree. The point of Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is that the mechanical aspect worked along with the ride to cement the bond between father and son.  Without the ride, the maintenance, much less the bike, is worthless, as is audio equipment without the music.

We can agree to disagree on what "the point" is of the book. A few key passages point me toward my judgment. 

Pirsig: “A classical understanding sees the world primarily as underlying form itself. A romantic understanding sees it primarily in term of immediate appearance. If you were to show an engine or a mechanical drawing or electronic schematic to a romantic it is unlikely he would see much of interest in it. Is has no appeal because the reality he sees is its surface. Dull, complex lists of names, lines and numbers. Nothing interesting. But if you were to show the same blueprint of schematic or give the same description to a classical person he might look at it and then become fascinated by it because he sees that within the lines and shapes and symbols is a tremendous richness of underlying form.

The romantic mode is primarily inspirational, imaginative, creative, intuitive. Feelings rather than facts predominate. “Art” when it is opposed to “Science” is often romantic. It does not proceed by reason or by laws. It proceeds by feeling, intuition and esthetic conscience. […]

The classic mode, by contrast, proceeds by reason and by laws – which are themselves underlying forms of thought and behavior. […]

Although surface ugliness is often found in the classic mode of understanding it is not inherent in it. There is a classic esthetic which romantics often miss because of its subtlety. The classic style is straightforward, unadorned, unemotional, economical and carefully proportioned. Its purpose is not to inspire emotionally, but to bring order out of chaos and make the unknown known. It is not an esthetically free and natural style. It is esthetically restrained. Everything is under control. Its value is measured in terms of the skill with which this control is maintained.

To a romantic this classic mode often appears dull, awkward and ugly, like mechanical maintenance itself. Everything is in terms of pieces and parts and components and relationships. Nothing is figured out until it’s run through the computer a dozen times. Everything’s got to be measured and proved. Oppressive. Heavy. Endlessly grey. the death force.

Within the classic mode, however, the romantic has some appearances of his own. Frivolous, irrational, erratic, untrustworthy, interested primarily in pleasure-seeking. Shallow. Of no substance. Often a parasite who cannot of will not carry his own weight. A real drag on society. By now these battle lines should sound a little familiar.

This is the source of the trouble. Persons tend to think and feel exclusively in one mode or the other and in doing so tend to misunderstand and underestimate what the other mode is all about. But no one is willing to give up the truth as he sees it, and as far as I know, no one now living has any real reconciliation of these truths or modes. There is no paint at which these visions of reality are unified.

And so in recent times we have seen a huge split develop between a classic culture and a romantic counterculture – two world growingly alienated and hateful toward each other with everyone wondering if it will always be this way, a house divided against itself. No one wants it really – despite what his antagonists in the other dimension might think.”

To go way deeper than with Pirsig in the same direction, try Jean Gebser, "the ever present origin" and reading Julian Jaynes and Ernst Cassirer will do the rest of the job....

Classical and romantic, or left brain and right brain are surface manifestation of polarities deeply seated in the dynamic genesis history of consciousness...

Gebser, Cassirer, and Jaynes are all complementary works but perhaps a bit hard to read then i suggest this small book, very astounding one indeed : Owen Barfield, "saving the appearence" and more easy read than the three i recommended already : Iain McGilchrist: "the master and his emissary" will complement Barfield.....After these 2 you are ready for Gebser/Jaynes/Cassirer....

In one small book by the physicist Henri Bortoft, disciple of David Bohm: an explanation of Goethe vision and perception: "taken appearence seriously"... Understanding Goethe the greatest thinker since Plato and easily the more underestimated and difficult to understand anyway, is very helpful even if you read none of the books i suggest....Goethe was a supremum artist and his science understanding had 2 centuries in advance then.....😊

The best Christmas to you and to all.....