Why audiophiles are different (explained with color)

Do not want to spoil the party, but based on my experience with 'audiophiles' (that I know or have met) I would not suggest that they appreciate music more than others. Than again, I would not say that dissecting the reproduced sounds of hi fi systems ad nauseum have  necessarily any conection with love for music at all or that hi fi has any meaning if majority of your music collection is not unamlified music...

All people here a too different from one another to be  rounded up on a square and bagged up in the same bag....

Calling this bag "audiophiles" will  not  always  help....

 It is not because people are interested by improving their sound in many different way fron one another that they loose their individual character to suddenly transform in some mythical beasts named "audiophiles"


 In the same way human perceive colors the best if they name it first, it is for example scientifically proven that distinguishing a shade of color by name help and speed up tremendously any objects classifying task...

In audio it is the same, we must learn many words pertaining to sound...

 But you are right, music is not sound and many people here, not necessarily ONLY  "audiophiles" must learn to listen to music passing  over their habits and taste....

Sound is not necessarily music, and music manifest  through sound but is not sound....

My best to you....

Do not want to spoil the party...

Nah, don’t worry, you haven’t spoilt anything mate.
Interesting opinion you have formulated, your circle of audiophile friends are very much unlike mine, who regularly go listen to live music as well as listen on their systems, often with a glass of vino. I for one used to listen to live music at least once or twice a week for many many years, when I went Latin dancing.
I’ve even taught my wife how to dance, and we also enjoy listening to music that takes us back in the day so to speak. Roxy Music last week, was flavor of the weekend. Bryan Ferry, you should chill to him sometime..Take the edge off mate.

Opinions vary, I suppose. Fear not, our party is doing great thanks.

Agree with millercarbon with a twist  that explains human behavior and characteristics -  You can  take a horse to water but you cannot make it drink the water. You can take a horse to water but it may decide instead to take a whiz in the water trough. Finally, you can take an ass to water and if it drinks the water it surely doesn’t become a horse; it is still an ass.

What I find fascinating about this discussion is there is mention of a book about audio, Robert something or other and how after reading it a new world of sound appreciation opens up.

What’s most fascinating about that is, we don’t learn that way. Especially when talking about nuance.

For instance, for anyone reading this who isn’t color blind go look at Pantone’s color of the year 2012 “Tangerine Tango” (DD4124). You have now likely seen a color that you haven’t seen before. I challenge you to describe it to a friend or family member who hasn’t seen it and have them use an RGB color palate on the computer to dial in the color you’re describing.

What you’re seeing is someone’s seeing (or in the case of audio listening) translated into words that are then filtered through someone else language filter to be reconstructed into what you have seen or heard.

The truth is you can’t translate nuance into words like that. When your friend or family member sees tangerine tango for the first time they will finally know what it is.

This is the same for auditory learning, you can’t read about it in a book. Someone has to distinctly point out the sound that you’re listening to and add a reference vocabulary to it. Otherwise what you might think of as tangerine tango, someone else might think is reddish orange.

So while there are terms that are descriptive of audio nuance, they simply can’t be reasonably exchanged through words in a book or on a forum. Sadly even if you were to encapsulate them on some audio medium to share, the tool that reproduced that sound would alter what it is.

Here’s a good example of trying to share pink that can’t actually be shared without being there in person.

https://youtu.be/_NzVmtbPOrM