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.

jackhifiguy

@jackhifiguy - you are correct. A 20k cable will likely not improve the stereo separation. We’re done here. We can all shut everything down and go to bed. 

@waytoomuchstuff --that video clip was right on point and helped me explain my audio obsession to my wife who is a wine nut.

@jackhifiguy Whether or not you are a troll, someone pointed out that you haven't really been here long enough to make judgements---there are all flavors here and plenty of them are audio engineers, physicists and other technical people who know what they're talking about--thus contradicting the "non-technical" definition because all of them are audiophiles.  I second the poster who said keep your fingers off the keyboard and just read (for perhaps a year or so) and you'll learn who to listen to and who can be ignored--that is,  if your intentions are honorable.