Why Don't More People Love Audio?

Because most people don't have the time to listen. From those who have, a bunch just don't get it (do you have to play it so loud? I have neighbours walk up to my door in broad daylight cmplaining, one telling my wife to turn down the system, they like Céline Dion on a ghetto blaster by the pool... the other telling me to lower the volume, he firmly belives, bless his religious heart, that the blues is the "Devil's music"... maybe I should move). This leaves another bunch who have the time but not the money (I think there's a song in there somewhere...)and then you get to those who really believe, like I do, that the whole thing really is an ends vs. means mixup. Focus on the music, get your system to a certain level of accuracy, competence then forget it and concentrate on buying recordings, reading about music, reading about recorded music and above all else listening to music, preferably live.

I have a couple of friends who make absolute nuisances of themselves hinting and hemming and hawing for invitations to come over and listen to my good system. They wanna bring stacks of their own CDs (and wow does one of them have terrible taste) and sit for hours in rapt attention to Sousa marches and tribal music from Outer Barudisplatt.

Now, both these guys have beaucoup bucks--helluva lot more than I do--yet they won't spend a dime on their own systems. One has little more than a Technics boombox while the other has some ancient electronics and a pair of Advent "bookshelf" speakers with the grill cloth literally rotting away from the frames.

Both these guys have healthy personalities and reasonably good ears. Neither is cheap. I think they are just daunted by snotty salesmen, incomprehensible jargon, and the challenge of struggling for that synergy we all keep talking about.

I think it would help a lot if we would try harder to introduce people to our hobby in ways that seem to them realistic. Help them to start with some just-above-entry-level gear and grow into the hobby, as most of us did.

Telling a newbie to budget as much for cables and ICs as for components is an utterly absurd thing to do. We wouldn't have believed it at that point in our own lives and many of our most golden-eared colleagues don't believe it now. Condescendingly referring to $3K speakers or $2K amplifiers as "mid-fi" doesn't help matters, either. One afile friend of mine told an enthusiastic newbie that if he didn't have ten grand to spend right off the bat he should just forget it and stick to his boombox.

That, brethren and sistren, is a big chunk of (1) why high end remains a niche market and (2) why people think we're nuts.

Have fun anyway.

Will

My personal feeling is.....there are not to many people loves audio( high end) because they were not expose to it.We kind of keep the good stuff within our community. If we look at the ads, it is only going in our own small world. Nobody did try to go out there and expose it and worst than that common people felt that going to a high end audio store is worst than going to a car dealer. We as audiophile needs to spread these hobby. Let us go out there and explain to our freinds that having a good equipments will really make the difference.
I know a guy that recently bought a lexus... He asked me if a Mark Levinson car stereo is better than the ones you can buy from the regular electronics store.I said to him. Go listen to it with me and I will let you know. Thanks.

Because the more revealing the hardware the less enjoyable the software. Since I have become involved in this hobby, 90% of my CD's are unlistenable. So now I sit in the dark and listen to Tubular Bells. !@#$%

Joekras, got to love'ya. Short, to the point. The undoing of this hobby lies in its very goal! As someone once put it, audiophiles upgrade their hardware until they can prove that all software is excrement. At least you have Tubular Bells. Maybe another thread could be started, something like: "How many recordings do you have that still remain enjoyable after your last upgrade". Whoever can honestly answer 0, should win the "Great Golden Ear Award" and retire to Arizona. Why so few people becoming audiophiles? Most people have lives to live and don't really enjoy obssessing over trivialities.