What does being an audiophile mean?

My mileage does not vary.

 

Since I don't own a record player I can't be an audiophile!

 

"Generally speaking audiophiles are musicphiles, but in a Venn diagram they would overlap but one would not enclose the other."
Yes! but that and possibly more.. The "A-B" venn diagram could have third "C" section for those who are technically inclined. So A B and C are all three?

Most of the musicians I know are musicphiles. Maybe I do not have the right perspective, but they can rattle off more titles and artists than I ever will, and musicians do concern themselves with the quality of music. A musician has the ability as an audiophile does, to listen into a recording, to critique, and isolate an instrument, but couldn't care less about the hardware that's reproducing it. And I know of musicians who are also guitar techs or who build guitars and amps, and who have an ear for tone. (they wouldn't be musicians if they didn't) For the musician, it's all about live sound, or sound directly produced by the musical instrument. The musician is perhaps more concerned about the creative aspect than with how well or not their music will be reproduced in the home, since that is outside their control.

Audio engineers will sometimes tweak a mix to sound ok on a "bitch box" which is a cheap limited range speaker in the studio, much like what's out there in the world.

The musician is intimately connected with making music, which involves the voicing or timbres of their sound. So the musician and audiophile (stereophile) are closely related as they both concern themselves with the presentation of music. The difference is the "production of live sound" vs. "the reproduction of live sound".

A recording, by pure definition, is a live event which is recorded then later reproduced for everyone to enjoy.

Thomas Edison coined the term, "recreation" which the Edison thick discs have printed on their labels. If anyone thinks 200 gram LP's are thick, the Edison recreation disc beats them by a mile! (or kilometer by the rest of the world.. but whoever coined the phrase, "beats it by a kilometer"? haha)

So this brings me via the long route to a little criticism. I do not think of studio recordings as a concoction to create an illusion of a live soundstage. They are not recreations either. The studio recording is a creation... anything goes! The creative juices flow in the studio. The artists and engineers add effects, artificial reverb, chorusing, pan this way or that, sometimes "color" the sound with EQ, add sweetening with light compression (or heavy in the 2000's) Individual instruments can still be recorded faithfully, and reproduced. That is up to the artists and sound engineers. I can enjoy a studio recording for it's great sound, and perhaps a drum kit well recorded. That's still of great interest to the audiophile, and to me, many great studio recorded rock albums which are audiophile quality recordings.

The illusion of a soundstage can be created in the studio, but that's not the same thing as the re-creation of a live event.

just another audiophile's viewpoint,
Steve VK

 

I suppose one test for whether an audiophile is actually a musicphile would be:

Do you own The Dark Knight soundtrack? If you do you're an audiophile in it to demonstrate the gear. If you actually listen to The Dark Knight soundtrack for the music I have to question whether you actually know what music is.

Do you own "Flight of the Cosmic Hippo"? If you do you're an audiophile. If you do and listen to it for the music and not as a bass demo then you're a musicphile in it for the music. That track is kind of like the test for The William Tell Overture. If you can listen to The William Tell Overture and not think of The Lone Ranger you're a serious classical music listener.

I own The Dark Knight soundtrack. Only for the bass demo in Why So Serious. As music is sucks (but the bass manages to suck the air out of my ears). I also own "Flight of the Cosmic Hippo" because I'm a big Bela Fleck fan. Cosmic Hippo is not actually that great of a bass demo (it doesn't go as deep as people think it does when the bass goes deep and starts to growl and the bass sound is sloppy).

 

Henry Rollins wrote the best apologia for being a musico-audiophile I've ever read.

His system is pretty righteous, too; Rega sources, McIntosh amps, Wilson Sophias. Well-chosen for tonal balance and extracting every last bit of groove and meaning from his collection, methinks!

Notice, though, he only mentioned it in passing - his real passion was saved for a RL Zeppelin LP.

 

Bang on. Hey, I started off listening to music on a Dansette Viva. It set me on the road. It gave me the emotional connection and there isn't a fancy-dan deck or CD player out there that'd remotely come close to achieving that impact again (YMMV, etc).

 

I did a little sketch how a scenario can look like. The ones farthest to the left love only music, care next to nothing about equipment.

The ones to the right love in principle only the equipment and how it sounds, the records they love the most is the ones they can use for demoing.

Most of us are somewhere in between, as I see it.

 

Audiophiles love music in different ways and since many of them don't approach recorded music the way I do, then there is the perception (on my part) that they don't love music. There are audiophiles who listen only to "audiophile recordings" of artists who may be technically talented but that's about it. I can't help but feel that these audiophiles are missing out on the discovery of jazz and rock recordings from, at the very least, the 50s to 90s. My view is that these audiophiles have so limited their musical curiosity that it's just easier (though perhaps not fair) to label them.

 

What beng an audiophile means is that your a person of class and quality with good taste and well above average intelligence , oh and lets not forget exceptional good looks . lol

 

Hey, are you Charles Murray?

Ok, so this is just standard normal distribution and a far-cry from what you said earlier:
" As of now I have come to one conclusion, an audiophile is not foremost a music lover."

So, what's missing from the graph? You failed to identify where the reviled audiophile falls on this curve. Based on this statement they (we) fall on the far right. You also changed your language from "Love" at the extremes to "Like" at the apex.
So your thesis is then:
The more someone "Loves" gear the less their ability to "Love" music because we have a limited reserve of "Love" to expend.

Yikes, better tell my sig other that she was right about the stereo when she said I "Loved" it more than her. I've only got so much love to give honey.

So my original question still remains.

 

I've re-read some of these comments questioning whether all audiophiles are created equal and if all of them are music lovers...forgive the assumption, but it seems like this point is centered on people with more money than sense, who just happened to settle on audio as their hobby? For example, there was a recent video on YouTube titled something like "the world's best sound system" in a guy's basement, which seemed to embody every negative connotation surrounding the term "audiophile" as if they were hitting a checklist. He was a professional reviewer I think...you probably know the one. There were comments here that he was 'wasting' that system by playing music others didn't find particularly worthy.

I didn't have an issue with the music he played...but, an audiophile could have taken issue with the fact that he said he designed his house around this listening room they were showing in the video, the dimensions and layout for which (as he stated them) didn't seem to follow any common guidelines for an ideal listening environment...that would seem to bolster the argument that the difference between an audiophile and everyone else wasn't just the gear, but the deep understanding thereof - up to and including how to make it sound best in any given space. After all, if you're going through the trouble of building a new house with a dedicated listening room for $100s of thousand worth of gear, why not at least ensure you don't have parallel walls and get the length:width parameters right? For an audiophile, and that includes a lot of folks around here, that stuff matters - probably more than whatever you decide to put in it.

Like I said before, there's no 'certification' for being an audiophile. Some people have a lot of cash and like to have fun with it in a show-offy sort of way. I talked to someone like that at a trackday - he was telling people how he had been trading in one supercar for another for years, eventually landing on this garish Lamborghini that was far, far too much vehicle for him to handle. People who were actually talented drivers and passionate about cars would DIE for the chance to flog that thing on a track, and probably know more about it than its owner, but would never be able to afford it themselves and get frustrated seeing someone with no apparent talent or passion showing off their shiny toy. I get that.

So yes, those people probably exist, we can probably find some of them online if we look, and we can question their "street cred" if we want...I'm just not sure it matters at the end of the day whether someone loves the right music, or the right gear, or loves it the right way. Their involvement in audio is probably a net positive, vis a vis their desire to spend money on new stuff, which spurs R&D, which eventually results in small (or large) incremental improvements to gear, which gets copied and eventually trickles down to the hoi polloi like ourselves. True for cars, true for audio.

 

Not any more. He upgraded believe it or not. Check his second article. He's in "Fremer Territory" now. So I suppose that in itself should draw hatred and jealousy.

Although I believe he kept this system for a secondary system.

 

I think I anwered Your question. In this case, according to my sketch, one cannot be at left extreme and right extreme at the same time.

 

That's what I was afraid of, a Flat Earther.

The earth I live on is a sphere where the love of music AND gear are able to converge and exist together.

 

An audiophile is a hobbyist. There is not likely any hobby where everyone who is passionate about it is able to invest the time and money equivalent to their passion. Life isn't fair that way. Or is it? Anyhow, the millionairre who is passionate about audio will be able to go to greater lengths than most of us. That is a great thing and not one that we should be conflicted about in any way. We have some rather wealthy forum members here who have a great deal of money invested in gear. I do wish more of them would share their experiences and not worry about personal attacks on their priorities, etc.

 

Fremer Territory would mean that he's developed some extreme analog attitude.

I just read his second As We See It column. Nice upgrade. I wonder if he's played some Sunn O))) LPs on that system yet? Put ear plugs in, play it loud, and see if you can get the TT to skip.

 

I have two friends who are audiophiles who have large wine collections. They are both successful people, one an academic, one a real estate developer.

They have never understood why spending money on audio is frowned upon in some quarters but spending money on amassing a fine wine collection is not.

One of them told me the other day that, while he is proud of both his music and wine collections, he thinks audio is the better investment as the music goes on forever.

 

Wait, you're making assumptions and drawing conclusions based on a short video. I was actually going to defend the guy when he was getting blasted for his fine system and especially his choice of music. It seemed to mellow so I decided to not expend the energy. Here he is again.

You misinterpreted his statements on design. I know this project and this guy absolutely put the listening room first in site design. If you knew what had to be done to the site you would come to no other conclusion than that this guy LOVES music. Some of what had to be done to the site was BECAUSE of needing proper room dimensions. The room was a combination of AES and Louden room ratios that fell well within the Boltz range for proper mode distribution. The walls were constructed with constrained-layer damping techniques to both isolate the space, hence lowering the noise floor, and to help dissipate some of that energy stored within the room for better LF performance. I could go on but you get the idea.

He's not the only "affluent audiophile" who has been intrinsically and obsessively involved in every detail of their listening space. Some folks buy yachts. Some folks buy islands. Some folks buy influence. I'd rather hang with the folks who buy and build dedicated listening rooms. My money sez he's got some great Scotch.

 

I've run me some Sunn throught the system and it is unbelievable. Boris too....wait, damn there goes my self-proclaimed audiophile cred!

 

I'm determined to have a dedicated room someday, but that may not happen. Meantime, I'd love to meet some "rich guys" with dedicated rooms and hundreds of thousands in gear. What a learning experience that would be!

 

That is definitely good to know...the video obviously didn't do that justice, not like it mattered what I or anyone else thought about it. His specific case is obviously not the best example, but I wasn't really trying to make an example out of him specifically as much as recognize that there are likely some folks who probably fit into the "more money than sense" category, which I had previously discounted because there seem to be so few of them...but they do exist (irrespective of the gentleman in question). I don't know this gentleman, but I do know one (at least - lol) with more money than sense. They don't go quite to the extremes he did, but they definitely didn't blink at a $50,000 line item for entertainment/automation when building a very large house. :/

 

I consider Sunn O))) to be audiophile worthy.
I'd love to hear it played on the Alexandria speakers.

 

Agreed, there are some but I worry that the derision felt for "audiophiles" is misdirected and ill-informed. Once we know the back story that attitude can fall to the wayside. At least it does for me.

 

Agreed, I throw Earth in there as well. Saw them with GY!BE at the Roseland a few months back. Doh, there goes my cred again.

 

I like Henry Rollins. He seems like a solid dude, has a great sense of humor and he's good at writing these sort of articles. His articles also further convince me that I'm not an audiophile. To his assertion that I "don't know what I'm missing", I would suggest that I'm not missing anything. To my perspective, he's the one that's over-thinking it. It's in the little details of his (admittedly very entertaining) description - things like pointing out his copy of Hawkwind's Doremi Fasol Latido is "pristine". I can just imagine Lemmy shaking his head. That's audiophile talk, and has nothing to do with the experience that is Hawkwind.

There was a YouTube clip that circulated a while back, of Jimmy Page playing an old favorite 45 of his.



Note the UK pressing of the 45 - obviously cut from a dub tape, and in less than mint condition. Note the mediocre turntable and setup. Room treatments? Don't think so. But check the look on Jimmy's face at about :20 into the clip. He gets it. He's not missing out on anything.

Truth is, I'd much rather hang with Jimmy - listening to his scratchy 45s on his crappy setup, reveling in the rapture of the best that recorded music has to offer... than be sitting in the sweet spot on Henry's couch - admiring his "pristine copy" of whatever on his $100k system. Nice guy that Henry is, notwithstanding. It's just a different experience - a different priority.

No hatred or contempt by the way (just as Henry expressed in his article toward people like me). Audiophiles can be good people. I know because I've met many. It's all good. I'm just not an audiophile. Music obsessive, record nerd? more likely.