Is Audiophilia a Dying Hobby or Just in Need of a Tune-Up?

[PYP]

being outdoors is conducive to listening to live music too. Some of my fondest memories are from listening to music under the stars at Tanglewood (Massachusetts), Caramoor (New York) and the Monterey Jazz Festival (California).

 

[marty]

being outdoors is conducive to listening to live music too. Some of my fondest memories are from listening to music under the stars at Tanglewood (Massachusetts), Caramoor (New York) and the Monterey Jazz Festival (California).

Tanglewood is a national treasure! Love that venue.

 

[PeterA]

Tanglewood is a national treasure! Love that venue.

And the nearby Clark Museum extension designed by famed Japanese architect Tadao Ando is another treasure. Both are well worth a visit over a long weekend.

 

[astrotoy]

And the nearby Clark Museum extension designed by famed Japanese architect Tadao Ando is another treasure. Both are well worth a visit over a long weekend.

Our daughter, a landscape architect, worked on the Clark Museum renovation and the Tadao Ando building grounds a decade plus ago. She was working for Reed Hildebrand in Cambridge at that time. The Clark was started by one of the heirs of the Singer Sewing Machine fortune. Larry

 

[PeterA]

Our daughter, a landscape architect, worked on the Clark Museum renovation and the Tadao Ando building grounds a decade plus ago. She was working for Reed Hildebrand in Cambridge at that time. The Clark was started by one of the heirs of the Singer Sewing Machine fortune. Larry

That is great. Ando was my teacher for one semester in architecture school and we had a gathering at my apartment where I served him a cocktail. I was fortunate to be able to visit some of his buildings in Japan. He is a real genius.

 

[treitz3]

Many years ago, George Cardas explained that he had two systems. One was a simple system that he never touched. The other he tweaked incessantly. IIRC, he said audiophiles should have a simple system at home (in addition to their main system). The kind you never touch and just enjoy. It was an interesting comment and I believe it is true.

I honestly never even thought about this, or gave it much thought, but this is exactly what I have.

Tom

 

[astrotoy]

That is great. Ando was my teacher for one semester in architecture school and we had a gathering at my apartment where I served him a cocktail. I was fortunate to be able to visit some of his buildings in Japan. He is a real genius.

Peter, Our daughter also became the primarily landscape architect for another big project designed by another Japanese architecture firm, SANAA. It is Grace Farms, in Darien, CT. Both Ando and SANAA have been awarded the Pritzker Prize. She had moved to Philadelphia at the time and was working for Olin. No major musical venue near Darien, however. Larry

 

[Vazilo]

Le temps passe vite avec levitra ou viagra.

 

[Ron Resnick]

"

on some level it does not provide the same enjoyment as my puny Sonus Move 2 that I listen to out by the hot tub regularly.​

How can this be?

In the hot tub surely you cannot close your eyes and achieve a significant suspension of disbelief that an orchestra is performing in front of you?

 

[Elliot G.]

How can this be?

In the hot tub surely you cannot close your eyes and achieve a significant suspension of disbelief that an orchestra is performing in front of you?

yes but in a hot tub you can get a "happy ending"
If your system isnt better than a portable stereo than your system can't be very natural sounding. Many build these antiseptic, sterile, detail over blown, large than life results. This is seen at every show yet many actually think this is the goal UNTIL they have that and like a crappy meal they find its just not satisfying.
in my opinion if you cant sit in front of your system for hours and get lost in it your system isnt _______________

 

[microstrip]

How can this be?

In the hot tub surely you cannot close your eyes and achieve a significant suspension of disbelief that an orchestra is performing in front of you?

IMO suspension of disbelief is not forcefully needed to enjoy music.

But there is more in suspension of disbelief than just imagining an orchestra in front of us. Otherwise we would all be listening in AV systems...

Going back to the origins, it was said that some degree of truth or consistency are needed to achieve suspension of disbelief. Sometimes additional aspects, such as the hot tub, bring the needed erasing action to achieve consistency - no absolute truth is needed.

 

[Al M.]

How can this be?

In the hot tub surely you cannot close your eyes and achieve a significant suspension of disbelief that an orchestra is performing in front of you?

The issue is that you don't expect anything from lowly reproduction/sound, but you do expect a lot from an advanced system.

I can enjoy the car radio without thinking about the sound, and because I just listen to the music without so much noticing the sound it rarely disappoints. However, the car radio really doesn't sound that good at all once you actually pay attention, but that is not what I usually do -- I basically filter out the sound aspect.

Yet with my system at home I am at a level where, exactly because it has much greater believability, I tend to notice more or less small distortions and flaws that cut into that believability.

It's simply a psychological expectation game. I expect no believability from my car stereo, yet I expect as much as possible believability from my high-end system because due to its much better sound it provokes me to do so.

***

Having said that, the distractions in my system at home are getting less and less, a very good sign, and I am enjoying the music actually much, much more consciously and intensely than on my car radio.

 

[PYP]

It's simply a psychological expectation game.

Agree that this is a huge factor. The shortest path to satisfaction with any system (for me), is to suspend the expectation and discover music as you would if you happened upon it when you were not expecting it.

And, satisfaction includes all our senses, not just our ears. I assume the hot tub is outdoors. Our senses become activated in nature. The music is then one part of that experience.

Recently, I was listening to a favorite album. It was like a perfect moment. Nothing could improve upon it. Yet, during the human musician's expressions, a song bird started a complicated rendition in our backyard. I felt compelled to use the Merlin Bird ID app to identify this talented avian musician. Standing in a doorway, listening to the human and avian musicians was even a more satisfying experience.

 

[happyrc]

An inexpensive audiophile system is subjective, but it is possible to achieve high-quality sound without reaching the extreme price points of premium systems. Here's a breakdown of what such a system might look like:

1. Speakers: Price range: $2,500 - $3,500
2. Amplifier: Price range: $1,500 - $2,500
3. Source / DAC: Price range: $1,000 - $1,500
4. Turntable: Price range: $1,500 - $2,800
5. Cables & Accessories: Price range: $500 - $1,300

I agree with everything except I don't even want a turntable, sold that scratchy&broken needle shit since 1987.

 

[happyrc]

Audio is expensive. Younger people have different priorities. So the only relevant question vis a vis this article is: has the age pyramid changed over the past decades? Who knows... I doubt audiophiles are the subject of any serious demographic studies.

If you look at videos of audio show conferences 20 to 30 years ago, most of the participants had grey hair back then too. So what's new?

I have two early 20s kids and I can tell you that it's not due to $ for them and their friends, they just don't want our preference for big bulky components that's too complicated and more importantly not portable like their lifestyle.
----
The future is lossless Apple Music and Airpods.
My video:

 

[happyrc]

I have a 28 year old son. He has a decent white collar job but the cost of everything from housing, food , auto - purchase, care and insurance, medical, etc . etc , and then putting aside money for savings/investment leaves , from my vantage point, a smaller portion for entertainment than maybe previously existed. He and his friends enjoy the music of their choices but aren't interested in a system, they spend their time and available entertainment funds on being out and about.

All of that said, if you do find younger folks who would be interested in a system but finances don't allow them to make the purchase maybe consider passing onto to them equipment that you aren't using any longer or going to be moving on from to get them started. Not virtue signaling but I've done that a few times for younger folks I knew while working and also for a couple of friends kids. They appreciated it and the feeling of helping them get started made me feel good.

I have two early 20s kids and I can tell you that it's not due to $ for them and their friends, they just don't want our preference for big bulky components that's too complicated and more importantly not portable like their lifestyle.

----

The future is lossless Apple Music and Airpods.

my video:

 

[happyrc]

I am in Texas visiting a friend. His son just graduated college. His son has a long time girlfriend. They met through a dating app. What brough them together was discussing music and bands. I asked if either had a stereo. Neither do. They go to a lot of live shows. Big music scene here.

Yep I visited Austin in 2023 and they claim to have the most live music.

 

[happyrc]

If you feel audiophilia is dying? Plant a seed. Give them a goal.

A forest will not grow without many seeds. I have planted many. Have you?

Tom

Problem is you're trying to plant seeds in a desert, not a fertile forest land.

 

[happyrc]

I would partly agree with this statement. The major progress in high end audio in the past decade has been streaming, i.e. the ability to transmit large amounts of music digitally over the Internet at high bit rates. That innovation, incidentally, did not come from the high end market, but from a small startup in Sweden named Spotify (to see the beautiful story of how streaming was invented, see the Netflix docudrama The Playlist). A bunch of technical innovations, chiefly the ability to bypass some of the latency in the TCP/IP network protocol that runs the web was necessary to get real-time streaming to work (just as streaming movies required ideas like overlay networks, which a former academic colleague of mine invented in his Princeton PhD thesis -- he went on to co-found Akamai, whose hundreds of thousands of servers runs large parts of the Internet).

If you look at other categories, say speakers, I'd say there's been no innovation at all. The best loudspeakers of the past 60 years -- the Klipschorn, the Quad ESL 63, the Spendor BBC models, the Magneplanars etc. -- are still some of the best loudspeakers today. No real innovation in the science of making loudspeakers that I can see, except putting bigger cones in bigger boxes. Sure, there is innovation in materials used to make cones, like graphene or Alan Shaw's composite polymer RADIAL midrange cones in Harbeth, but that's an incremental innovation in my book.

What would a true innovation in loudspeaker technology look like? It's really simple -- produce a loudspeaker that can resolve all 16 bits recorded on humble CD disc that has been around for 40+ years. We are so so far from being able to hear the full resolution of redbook CD that it's laughable. The best loudspeakers can barely resolve 7-8 bits of information in the bass and treble, and even in the midrange, the resolution is just around 10-11 bits. To get true redbook quality sound from a loudspeaker, distortion has to be around 0.001% from 20 Hz to 20 Khz. Where are we now? Ha! More like 5% THD in the bass, perhaps 0.1% THD in the midrange for the best (read electrostatic or horn) loudspeakers, and worse in the treble. Solve this problem and you have a real breakthrough in high end audio.

What are manufacturers doing instead? Well, selling the same old wine in new bottles mostly. Or chasing after non-existent problems, like fancy media servers or DACs that weigh hundreds of pounds, but whose measured improvement over much cheaper solutions is non-existent. Fancy power chords or USB cables is not where the hard scientific problems in high end audio are. The more you chase after non-existent problems, the longer it will take to make genuine progress.

Since I have a scientific background, having spent most of my life as an academic, in most areas of science, there's a very clear understanding of what the truly hard scientific problems are. In physics, it is understanding the large-scale structure of the universe, how the universe began, and how to reconcile the large-scale force of gravity with the infinitesimal forces underlying quantum mechanics. Black holes are the hard scientific problem in physics -- a region where time and space cease to exist. Biologists are deeply interested in how life began on earth. We know evolution is what drives biology, but how did life even get started? That's the mystery. Neuroscientists want to understand the brain -- how can 100 billion neurons in our head write symphonies, paint great art, and invent new scientific theories?

The hard problem in high end audio has to do with designing loudspeakers (or headphones) that can truly resolve the full spectrum of information in a redbook (or high resolution) digital recording. We are very very far from achieving that goal, and the more time is spent in chasing non-problems, the more time is wasted on trivialities.

I agree with streaming music as progress.

But I disagree with "no innovation at all...loudspeakers". I own the PS AUDIO FR5 which uses planar tweeters, faraday rings and curv polypropelyn that allow big driver excursions so a bookshelf can go down to 35 Hz.

My dream speaker: 3-way active all-in-one speakers like Focal https://www.ecoustics.com/products/focal-diva-mezza-utopia/

About "having spent most of my life as an academic".... that's the problem, an academic vacuum environment is not the real world.
“Those who can, do; those who can't, teach.”

 

[happyrc]

That's all great, but with your all analog system, you can listen to only a fraction of what I can listen to... At some point, one has to choose. Sure, analog may sound better than digital, but music sounds better than silence

Yep,
And streaming has the magic of access to millions and millions of songs for $10/month...and even better when it's lossless/hires lossless like Apple Music!