Audiophiles on Audiogon.
During my time here, I have found some of you to be too opinionated - like your life depends upon what you think about audio gear. Holding on to one’s beliefs a bit too tightly is bad for the soul.
I was reading some content on the Ken Rockwell website, and then found an article entitled: "What is an audiophile?"
in the article, Ken says: Audiophiles are non-technical, non-musical kooks who imagine the darnedestly stupid things about audio equipment. Audiophiles are fun to watch; they’re just as confused at how audio equipment or music really works as primitive men like cargo cults are about airplanes.
Given my time on this forum and a few others, I have found his statements to be true. I mean, if you have an amplifier that costs say, $10,000, and you buy cables for $20,000, is that really going to improve the sound? (make the stereo image more accurate)
Or on the otherside, if you buy an amplifier for $1000 and then go buy the top of the line audioquest cables costing tens of thousands of dollars, then would the sound improve accordingly? After reading some of their literature, I cannot be sure they have an understanding of how electricrity works, much less the intricate details involving high-end audio systems.
And then we have power conditioning to consider. I have done extensive research online and it turns out that if your gear is really "high-end" it should already have a device inside that filters the incoming AC. Therefore, do you really need a power conditioner?
I learned about PS Audio products being spec-ed much higher than their measured performance. This is also true of the audio "power plants" that cost thousands of dollars. No really, tons of money to "regenerate" power with little to no sonic benefits.
Would love to hear what you guys think about these findings.
Oh, and high-end DACs?
This thing will outperform all your fancy gear.
How can you tell unless you listen to them? Forget what things cost, just plug them in and listen, it's not rocket surgery. If these items are out of your price range, why even bother? |
@russ69 , then similarly, how can you tell that a $20,000 cable improves the sound over a $100 cable, unless you listened to both, without the knowledge of which one you were listening to at any point in time. I work on developing technology for batteries. Myself and my competitors have access to almost any equipment we want due to how big the $ prize is. Anytime we have a positive improvement, no matter the quality of our equipment or how sure we are we did not make a mistake, we still repeat the experiment several times, preferably with independent teams, just to be sure. It's just a hobby, but would it not be prudent to assume we could be mistaken before we assume with limited information we are absolutely correct? |
I’m about as "kooky" as they come, proud of it! Call me what you may, but it’s whatever floats your boat and makes you happy. I will say that I don’t buy things that cost outrageous amounts of money, as for one, I do not have that kind of money, secondly, I like to find the underdogs so to speak, that perform well above their price point. However, I will also say that I’m not shopping at the local best buy for my stuff. I feel what I do own is pretty respectable equipment that was not exactly cheap to maybe a more reasonable or frugal person. Tannoy, Sugden, Naim, Cyrus, Ear, Avid, Music Hall, Graham Slee, AKG, Shure, Sennheiser, Musical Fidelity, Wharfedale, Martin Logan, Aiwa, Marantz, Cambridge Audio, Pro-Ject, Chord, Atlas, Audioquest, Ecosse, HifiMan, Sony, Ortofon, Goldring, Hana, Technics, Tavish Design, Rothwell, Border Patrol, Stein, Ringmat, Jensen, Atacama, Butcherblock Acoustics, Isanoe, Vibrapod, Blutac, Furman, Fostex, Beyerdynamics, Audio Technica, Denon (103), Record Doctor, Disc Washer, Vinyl Revival ( I'm sure I'm forgetting some) are just some of the brands I’m using currently. It is my one and only hobby and it makes me content. You would hate to see what I’ve paid for some of the records I own 😳 lol.... |
You will not like the rest of the article Mahgister though perhaps there is some truth. He did get off the rails a bit and made a comparison that I found rather offensive and I will not repeat here as it showed rather poor judgment on his part.
@jackhifiguy , it is good form to provide a link to material you reference:
https://www.kenrockwell.com/audio/audiophile.htm
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