Blog post: What is an Audiophile (Watch out! Idiot alert!)

This blog page was brought to my attention:
http://www.kenrockwell.com/audio/audiophile.htm

 

Some truth, some tommyrot. You never needed a degree to get good sound but in those better days you did have to be able to think a little and you learned to solder pretty quick.

<copyrighted material deleted>

 

I like his camera reviews and he takes great photos, but he does not understand our hobby.

He makes sweeping generalizations about audiophiles not loving music, but many of them hear a lot of live music and are first and foremost, music lovers. They just want to hear at home what they may hear at the concert hall. It is well known that Harry Pearson had a regular near front-row seat at Carnegie Hall. I wonder when Ken last went to a classical music concert.

The last paragraph is interesting and a constrast to his previous rantings, and actually matches what many audiophiles do - they get equipment that sounds great (and is a substantial initial investment) and stick with it for years. They have substantial a collection of recorded music, and enjoy music immensely. They do have an urge to keep improving their playback system, and this is the point that has escaped the writer. The audiophile does love music, and simply recognizes that that the sound they have at home can be improved, and want that to happen.

He knows that domestic sound production is never going to be perfect - but does not realize that it can be always improved, and that improvement brings greater enjoyment.

 

The guy's not right about much. He may know his way around a console, but for most everything else he writes about, he sounds downright ignorant.

 

He just sounds bitter. Didn't he write for Audio Magazine or Stereo Review at one time?

 

I Thank God I'm not him...

 

That diatribe is WAY off base. Some audiophiles fit that description, I suppose. Not me. None I've met.

I do listen for "audiophile effects" on occasion. What we hear may be imaginary and in our head, but my friends hear the same thing. I use these "audiophile effects" to improve my system. Accurate reproduction of an effect leads to accurate reproduction of voices and instruments, and other niceties like tone and imaging. "Illusions" anyone hearing my system participates in and enjoys.

Guess I'm a magician.

I don't spend much time at live concerts, true. I live in the sticks. I use my audio system to get as close as I can to the live experience. And sometimes, when the recording is good, the moon aligns with the planets, and the system "clicks," that is very close.

I am not listening to my system. I am enjoying the music in the best way I possibly can. I am an audiophile and I love music.

 

I am not one of his stereotypical audiophiles but they do exist. I know a few of them who can hardly sit through playing a single side of record. Of course, there are many music loving audiophiles for whom the equipment is just a means to hearing good sounding music.

 

By his description I'm a music lover. I consider me an audiophile. The two, as he considers them, are not exclusive.

It's interesting that in his last paragraph about what a music lover is, he links to Stax electrostatic headphones as something a music lover would use and keep using for years and years. Odd. I don't agree. If you've got Stax headphones and are willing to put up with their peculiarities for amp needs and willing to put up with their potentially delicate nature (they need careful handling or you'll ruin them, just like an expensive TT cartridge needs careful handling) you're an audiophile and well aware of the gear needs to get such a headphone system to work right and sound right.

 

I've met one guy who was like the audiophile the writer describes. I was buying once an used Octave preamp from him and he showed me in his villa his room with all his audio gear: four complete high-end audio gear systems of which a complete Zanden and Burmester system were two of these, four different brands of the most high-end speakers and the most expensive Nordost cables crawling around those. I think for a worth of more than half a million Euro alltogether. He told me he used only cds for his playback.

Well, I got enought time to count these while listening to an audiophile female singer (forgot which one). All I saw at a rack were just... 12 of these.

 

The name sounds very familiar...

 

Self publicising, two faced. Never ask a Pentax user... well known for somehow writing a completely biased camera review before review copies of the camera had even been released.

PS Burt, just including the copyright doesn't permit quoting unless you're licenced. Ken will charge.

 

He must be right. After all, his gandma was Henry Steinway's personal secretary.

 

Very mean-spirited. Boo on him!

 

Having spent more than a little time around the various audio forums, seems pretty accurate to me.

 

Having spent more than a little time around the various audio forums, seems pretty accurate to me, too.

(smiles all around)

 

Rockwell is full of crap. He is full of crap concerning photography and pretty full of crap in that little writeup. The guy likes to blow his own horn and just seems to be some rich guy buying every bit of photo gear he can.

 

Steaming pile right there...

 

He is well known on photo forums, and his opinions are not very highly regarded there.

 

I found the article quite amusing & he does tell a few home truths. There are people out there that once used to play their own music & now just play Audiophile Musak .

 

True about the stereo is more important than the music for audiophiles

 

That's why they are called audiophiles and not musicphiles.

A person can be both of course. Or either. Or neither.

 

He talks of Stereotypes, but Stereotypes exist for a reason....because they exist!
He should have added that they are incapable of listening to anything but free jazz and wimpy broken hearted female vocal crap. That would complete the stereotype.

 

Ah! I think you can narrow the field too much, so as it's no longer stereotypical... a Monotype?

 

I found this on Urban dictionary:


audiophile
One who listens to the stereo rather than the music.