Audiophilism is a hobby


This post grew out of another discussion on music vs. sound. According to a poll taken in that discussion, it is clear most A’goners claim they listen to their rigs primarily for the music. Although I don’t doubt the truth of that, I maintain that much of the listening is as a hobby, with music being a very important component. I’m not saying we can’t be profoundly moved by the music but rather that a lot of our enjoyment comes from the sheer sound emitted from our speakers. Great music is of course a vital part of the experience, but with all the manipulations we do with our systems, we  are fascinated by the idea of sound in itself as a hobby.

128x128Ag insider logo xs@2xrvpiano

 

 

@mashif: Fantastic, thank you SOOO much! I read No Depression for years (I have a complete collection of the original---pre-online---run of the mag, but I obviously need to catch up with their current issues).

For those who read the article mashif provided a link to, that should give you an idea of how special Julie and Buddy Miller are. As is Iris DeMent. And Lucinda Williams.

 

@tomcy6 No, pointing out the obvious fact that there are many audiophiles who play music and, instead of just enjoying the music, sit there and over-analyze fidelity-related minutiae, wherein dismay at disappointing fidelity is often the experience (just pursuing this very thread and hearing people say they won’t even listen to music, no matter how good, unless it has ‘good sound,’ will indicate this), is not a “straw man argument.”  
For one, it wasn’t an argument, it was a clarification of the issue; a couple posters said they didn’t understand why for many there was a conflict between enjoying music and striving for maximized fidelity, so I provided the clarification as best I could.  
For two, again, you can look on this very site and find several people dismissing outright God knows how much great music because “the sound is bad.”  
Perhaps you and others spent x-amount of time (months? years? decades?) maximizing your system’s fidelity, and at no point did you find yourself analyzing the fidelity instead of just enjoying the music (which is sort of impossible - a non-audiophile just listens to music…an audiophile, by nature, must divorce themselves from sheer enjoyment of the music itself to meticulously and diligently analyze the sound), then, well, hats off to you.  
Any way you slice it, there is no “straw man” here. 

 

Audiophile Billy is sitting there fretting about the distortion, the transient accuracy, the imaging, the soundstage, on and on and on and on….

Billy is a ball of anxiety, angst and minutiae-scrutinizing madness.

I have never met anyone who listens like that nor have I read posts by those poor people.   If you can provide links to posts by all the Audiophile Billies around here I'll be happy to read them and maybe learn something.  I guess I just don't read those threads.

 

@tomcy6 i fit that description to a large degree. On the other hand I am not really an audiophile.

The gear

The room

The recording

In my estimation, that's the trinity. . When all three points converge