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A no-taking-sides, no judgment classification of the 4 types of Audiophile. "The audiophile bestiary".

Webninja

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I think in todays society there is a tendency to want to over categorize or segment or group. Personally I do not relate to the word audiophile or any similar label.

Instead I have a hobby or activity involving watching movies and listening to music. This site and the product tests have been instrumental in assisting my selection of products used for said hobby.

I like reading about others experiences and learning from the many smart people that contribute to this sites knowledge base.
 

antcollinet

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BTW I need to hit the hay, but I appreciate the notes, everyone. I would actually like to improve these definitions to the point that they seem agreeable and useful. At the end of the day I do think it's useful to be able to reach a mutual understanding of different points of view. Of course, since the premise is that audiophiles are highly argumentative, I will not hope for 100% agreement. :)
Your problem is that there isn't a finite set of boxes you can use.

Think of it more like a sliding scale, or, perhaps better, a spectrum (a whole set of independent sliding scales). It doesn't matter what boxes you define, most people will feel none of them fit.

You won't get definitions that are agreeable or useful. Furthermore, the discussion of different peoples approaches to audio has been going on for decades. There are countless threads here where it is chewed over interminably. You're not really adding anything.
 
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solderdude

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Anyway, I'm interested in whether these descriptions make sense to people, hopefully they are not offensive to anyone!
Some people will always feel offended regardless how much one attempts not to offend. Human nature.


The Nominal Audiophile: Their most important belief is that a person should not spend more than a certain amount on audio equipment. However, they do want the best sound they can get within that budget.
Perhaps call this the 'budgeted audiophile' ? Of course these can be 'subjective' or 'objective' or anything * 'inbetween' they are just limited by funds.
One can also be limited by WAF but we don't make such a distinction.


The Objectivist Audiophile: Their most important belief is that exact, distortion-free reproduction of the recording is the highest and perhaps only sensible goal of audio equipment.
One could add: they prefer to look at various types of measurements to have technical performance verified.

The Subjectivist Audiophile: Their most important belief is simply that audio equipment should sound good to the owner. “If it sounds good, it is good”.
This would be enough to describe the subset of audiophiles, there is no need to elaborate further as that is merely an opinion. The above can be seen as facts.


I don't know about the 'Romantic audiophile' as a subset, perhaps he/she/X does not fall under 'budgeted audiophile' but can easily be objective or subjective on inbetween.


* Note: Nowadays everyone wants to be an individual and does not want to be put in 'classic' boxes but want to have their own 'box' making them a bit more 'unique' or 'different'.
Most audiophiles (IMO) fall under The inbetweenivist Audiophile I don't think there are full objectivist or subjectivist audiophiles but most 'believe' something inbetween leaning towards one of the 'camps' and identify most with one of these camps or feel they do not belong to either camp. Some are agnostic and don't really care or want to be put in a box.

To me the definition of an audiophile is someone who explicitly cares about sound quality.
All (?) audiophiles are music lovers, but not all music lovers are audiophiles.
Technically it is possible to love music but never listen to a recording... (hey, they did this for hundreds of years before Edison came along!)
I agree with that definition... but that's just my opinion.
 
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theREALdotnet

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I need at least two levels of sub-categories before I enter this discussion.
 

fpitas

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10 kinds of people in the world, you know: those who "get" binary, and those who don't
And even then, they're on again, off again! :)
 

Digby

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There is a large difference between opinions backed by facts and research and the ones that are not. Hence the analogy I provided. There is no equivalence here. All you can say is that these kinds of groups of audiophiles exist. Not that they have valid opinions.
I've seen you say this in different threads and you do have a good point, but I don't think it is the entire point.

There are, among experts, consensus of agreement that comes about because of reasons other than where the overwhelming weight of evidence lies. Scientists, engineers, doctors, all kinds of highly educated people can be swayed/persuaded by the greater (by numbers) opinion of equally qualified people around them. It tends to take very unusual person to risk censure/punishment/derision and stick their head above the parapet to challenge received wisdom. Most people practising science of one sort or another are employing largely received wisdom, they are not themselves at the cutting edge of their particular field.

I would say that a certain segment of objectivists, as it pertains to hi-fi (and, dare I say it, this forum), are purely following other people whose opinion they respect. There are people on here who just restate what respected/learned others say without a full understanding and call themselves 'objectivists'. I'm not sure in what way this is much different from being the follower of a religion.

The interesting thing is that those that know the most, know how much they don't know and are open to sensible suggestion/argument, while those who are followers/believers in 'the science/objectivism' don't seem to understand that it is both flawed and incomplete (what science is or will ever be complete?) and are far more strident in their denunciations of anything running counter to received knowledge.
 
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tomtoo

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I've seen you say this in different threads and you do have a good point, but I don't think it is the entire point.

There are, among experts, consensus of agreement that comes about because of reasons other than where the overwhelming weight of evidence lies. Scientists, engineers, doctors, all kinds of highly educated people can be swayed/persuaded by the greater (by numbers) opinion of equally qualified people around them. It tends to take very unusual person to risk censure/punishment/derision and stick their head above the parapet to challenge received wisdom. Most people practising science of one sort or another are employing largely received wisdom, they are not themselves at the cutting edge of their particular field.

I would say that a certain segment of objectivists, as it pertains to hi-fi (and, dare I say it, this forum), purely following other people whose opinion they respect. There are people on here who just restate what respected/learned others say without a full understanding and call themselves 'objectivists'. I'm not sure in what way this is much different from being the follower of a religion.

The interesting thing is that those that know the most, know how much they don't know and are open to sensible suggestion/argument, while those who are followers/believers in 'the science/objectivism' don't seem to understand that it is both flawed and incomplete (what science is or will ever be complete?) and are far more strident in their denunciations of anything running counter to received knowledge.

"....would say that a certain segment of subjectivits, as it pertains to hi-fi (and, dare I say it, some other forums), are purely following other people whose opinion they respect...."

Sry for the correction

I follow measurements, i dont care much about @amirm subjective opinions.
So what have the subjectivists to follow if not there gurus?
 

Digby

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"....would say that a certain segment of subjectivits, as it pertains to hi-fi (and, dare I say it, some other forums), are purely following other people whose opinion they respect...."

I follow measurements, i dont care much about @amirm subjective opinions.
So what have the subjectivists to follow if not there gurus?
I don't know what it means to follow measurements. I'd need some clarification (is there some kind of hierarchy?). Measurements are pretty complex, I can't say I'd know from measurements alone which speaker I'd prefer to listen to, out of a group of three similarly performing speakers. I'd trust my ears to affirm or disagree with the measurements, so to speak.

The whole objectivist/subjectivist thing is bunkem, save for the shakti stones/snake like cables type crowd, that is obviously an extreme position. Everyone is some shade of both, look at how much flak Amir copped for saying he liked the sound of Tunetot (with eq) and stepping outside of his objectivist mould (that others had made for him?).
 

Jimshoe

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Great thread!

I'm often struck by discussions, particularly on the internet, how people quickly adopt positions and then seek to prove them and 'win'. Less often people reflect on why they take the position they do, what's the motivation/driver, what has informed their thinking, is it accurate/reliable?

It's also interesting how many people jump to 'I don't fit these categories' or 'I don't think putting people in boxes works' - like it or not we are all categorised and predictable, that's how marketing and advertising work!

D
 

rgpit

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Subjectivity and objectivity are not unlike beauty and fitness. They are not mutually exclusive.
 

tomtoo

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I don't know what it means to follow measurements. I'd need some clarification (is there some kind of hierarchy?). Measurements are pretty complex, I can't say I'd know from measurements alone which speaker I'd prefer to listen to, out of a group of three similarly performing speakers. I'd trust my ears to affirm or disagree with the measurements, so to speak.

The whole objectivist/subjectivist thing is bunkem, save for the shakti stones/snake like cables type crowd, that is obviously an extreme position. Everyone is some shade of both, look at how much flak Amir copped for saying he liked the sound of Tunetot (with eq) and stepping outside of his objectivist mould (that others had made for him?).

So you think you can gain more knowledge if following the hearing and impression of a subjective guru?

'''If there is a speaker that has a +4dB, Q2 at 4khz i know it sounds shiit to me. I dont need a subjetcive guru to tell me this. If there are minor deviations i have to listen by myself. Again no need for a subjective guru. For me subjective gurus are nearly useless.
 

Digby

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So you think you can gain more knowledge if following the hearing and impression of a subjective guru?
I can't see where I said that, but potentially, yes. For instance, say I knew a certain reviewer had very similar tastes in speakers to me, I'd certainly give their opinions more credit than not. It wouldn't be a case of treating them as some kind of golden ears, but recognising that they may help narrow down choices much quicker and more effectively.

There are many very good speakers on the market, short of cycling through all of them at home, how do you know which one to pick? I am happy to put a degree of trust in someone who I think appreciates certain speaker qualities the way I also do. This is secondary to hearing them myself.
 

tomtoo

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I can't see where I said that, but potentially, yes. For instance, say I knew a certain reviewer had very similar tastes in speakers to me, I'd certainly give their opinions more credit than not. It wouldn't be a case of treating them as some kind of golden ears, but recognising that they may help narrow down choices much quicker and more effectively.

There are many very good speakers on the market, short of cycling through all of them at home, how do you know which one to pick? I am happy to put a degree of trust in someone who I think appreciates certain speaker qualities the way I also do. This is secondary to hearing them myself.

How you know that this reviewer has always the same taste like you? You just have to look at the klipsch rp600m. This measures like shiit, but so often good reviewed? One look and i know it sounds not good. No reviewer needet. I mean it measured so bad that even klipsch did see they have to change. And GR took the oppertunity. Worthless reviews.

Much better to try to correlate your hearing to measurements. Couse then there is something to hold on.
 
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antcollinet

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Great thread!

I'm often struck by discussions, particularly on the internet, how people quickly adopt positions and then seek to prove them and 'win'. Less often people reflect on why they take the position they do, what's the motivation/driver, what has informed their thinking, is it accurate/reliable?

It's also interesting how many people jump to 'I don't fit these categories' or 'I don't think putting people in boxes works' - like it or not we are all categorised and predictable, that's how marketing and advertising work!

D
So now you're putting us in boxes as to whether or not we accept boxes Hmm? :p
 

Tom C

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Hi all, long time listener, first time poster here. Apologies in advance, 1500 word essay incoming:

TL;DR: ITT I try to classify all audiophiles without mocking anyone.

I think it’s amazing how much contributors to this and other forums have advanced the state of the hobby as well as the industry “from the bleachers”, so to speak. I’ve learned a ton just by reading.

It's really great to see how much we accomplish simply by sharing information and opinions online. But it's also a bit sad that the audiophiles seem to argue and disrespect each other so much. There's something like Godwin's Law at work here, where the probability that a slur like "audiophool" or "pedant objectivist" will be used approaches 100% as a thread grows in length.

So, I have something to add to the discussion. Not about the listening equipment, but about the listeners.

Yes, unfortunately I am no engineer - I’m part of the reviled class of subhuman leeches known as marketers. A big part of my job is to study and genuinely understand what motivates people, so we can figure out why they buy the things they buy.

I have been in product (note: NOT the same as engineering) and marketing for most of my career, both in acoustics (slinging pyramid foam on eBay) and consumer audio (Bluetooth speakers & headphones), among several other things. I’ve also been an audio hobbyist since my teens, took an audio minor in college, and have spent time reading discussions on various audio-related forums all the while.

In this time, I have observed that there are fundamentally different audiophile philosophies that don't appear to be clearly understood. While there are more than a few attempts to classify audiophiles out there, none I’ve seen are completely serious, most are jokes, and most tend to confound behaviors and basic motivations.

My goal here is to propose a legitimate way to classify audiophiles - without judgment. My hope is that by doing so, we can argue less, appreciate each other more, and generally get on with discussing audio instead of thinking the other guy is some kind of idiot or lunatic.

With all that incredibly long preamble out of the way, here’s my view of how to classify audiophiles. My goal is to write each description in such a way that the people described would actually (mostly?) agree with it, and that others might start to see the point in it.

Each category is defined by the fundamental philosophy or top priority among the group. You may share behaviors of many groups, but (if I have thought this through correctly) you can’t belong to more than one group.

The Nominal Audiophile: Their most important belief is that a person should not spend more than a certain amount on audio equipment. However, they do want the best sound they can get within that budget (and usually without inconveniencing themselves in any real way.)

This actually describes most people who think about their audio purchases even a little bit… which is not everyone, but it’s some. I classify them as audiophiles, because in any given decision-making they do around audio, “sound quality” (however they understand that term) is their first priority once the budget is met. (I’ve done the research, this is true.)

They DO care about sound, just not as much as self-described audiophiles do. Most of them will start a given comment with “I’m no audiophile,” but we know the truth… they’re still technically audiophiles. The other 3 types of audiophile almost always start out as a Nominal Audiophile before they catch the bug.


The Objectivist Audiophile: Their most important belief is that exact, distortion-free reproduction of the recording is the highest and perhaps only sensible goal of audio equipment.

Objectivists trust numbers over their own ears, and especially other people’s ears. They believe that all audible phenomena are measurable in principle, and many of them believe that all relevant audible phenomena are measurable with existing equipment and psychoacoustics. Objectivists have bravely met the hard truth that even their own ears can’t be trusted, and make the most of it, satisfied in the knowledge they are actually moving ever closer to an authentic version of the true recording.

Objectivists almost always allow some room for preference (at some point, especially with regard to the in-room sound field, even the notion of “fidelity” itself becomes a bit subjective) - but they are much less willing to entertain a preference (even their own) that is for objectively lower-fidelity reproduction.

If the measurements are good and what objectivists hear is bad, the most likely explanation is that the right measurements have not yet been performed, the problem will eventually be rooted out numerically. True objectivists will not slaughter sacred cows, because they don’t care about the concept of “sacred” or even “cow” - they simply want to know whether their pound of beef weighs exactly 453.592 grams.

Objectivists often agree about equipment, because they will tend to read the same measurements, and credible measurements generally trump other opinion-drivers for objectivists. However, objectivists are often troubled by the failure (from their point of view) of other audiophiles to recognize what they see as obvious superiority / inferiority in equipment.

The Subjectivist Audiophile: Their most important belief is simply that audio equipment should sound good to the owner.

“If it sounds good, it is good”. Notably, this is also the dictum of the musician and producer. Their core belief is that they should enjoy what’s coming out of their system - that's what "good" means here, nothing more or less. If the numbers say their sound is flawed, but they like the sound, then to hell with the numbers. Even revising the audio actively and creatively (via DSP, strong tube distortion, etc) is fine within reason.

Subjectivists rarely reject measurements out of hand, and some rely heavily on them to narrow down their choices, but measurements are a means to an end, not the philosophical bedrock of their approach to audio. Subjectivists may or may not totally trust their ears over measurements, but at the end of the day, their ears run the show.

Subjectivists disagree a great deal about equipment, because de gustibus non est disputandum - there’s no accounting for taste. One man’s trash is another man’s favorite tube amp. They also vary in how much faith they place in measurements and specs, opinions of reviewers, feelings about certain types of technology, and so on. As such, what seems obvious to one will seem insane to another - that’s just how it goes.

The Romantic Audiophile: (Romantic in the sense of the romantic authors and composers, not love and marriage.) Their most important beliefs are that the experience matters most, that audio equipment should support the listening experience in any way they see fit, and that human judgment of the experience trumps all other factors.

The difference between the listening experience and good sound seems subtle, but it’s cataclysmically huge. Subjectivists might not agree about what good sound is, but few of them would argue that sufficiently advanced technology could not - in principle - quantify the differences they debate. Romantic Audiophiles feel that the experience of listening, and the impact of equipment on that experience, are fundamentally not quantifiable or reducible, nor is there much point in trying. Placebo effect, DBT ABX, LCR… these things miss the point.

To understand the Romantic Audiophile another way, try to understand this: Is the experience of looking at the Mona Lisa the same as looking at an absolutely identical reproduction of the Mona Lisa? Objectively, of course it is. We just said they’re identical, right? But if you know one is a fake and one is real… you may answer “of course it’s not the same!” One was touched by the hand of Leonardo da Vinci, and one was made in a lab or something. The viewing experience is therefore nothing alike… this is Romantic Audiophilia in a nutshell.

Perhaps counter-intuitively, Romantics don’t actually tend to discount, ignore, or completely disbelieve measurements - but they also believe that a listening experience is genuinely more than the sum of its parts. They also tend to doubt that measurements capture everything they hear. For Romantics, measurements are more like the index page of a book than the whole story.

Romantics surprisingly don’t often seem to disagree much about decent equipment, but very rarely place another person’s account of a listening experience above their own. They can appreciate the experiences a wide variety of equipment can provide, without attempting to create a ranking, they are often content to simply describe. Romantics have a hard time understanding the Objectivist fixation on measurements above experience (since they value experience above all), and don't really care if their purchases make sense to anyone else. Acquiring strange new gear really is their hobby, because that's a way to create a new experience, regardless of what it "actually" sounds like.


>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Ultimately, I think all of these points of view are valid in their own right. There is no single correct way to enjoy listening to music. (Objectivists might have a hard time with this... I do... but remember that "lower distortion is better" is still just an opinion.)

I count myself in the Objectivist segment, maybe the Romantic segment only while at concerts… Whatever your ‘alignment’, It’s easy to see how we might end up misunderstanding each other. Although we’re all “audiophiles”, we approach the same equipment with divergent goals.

It’s as if we have whiskey, water, and gatorade drinkers all discussing “drinking” and “beverages”, but without having first understood inebriation, thirst, or exercise. Each will seem slightly insane to the others.

I should also note that this doesn’t describe every variance of opinion I’ve noticed, nor every type of audio buyer. Another big split in opinion is whether ‘apparent resemblance to a live performance’ is the most appropriate goal of fidelity or not. There are non-audiophile budget-driven buyers who simply want to hear something louder than their phone or TV. And there are conspicuous-consumption buyers who buy expensive speakers for the same reason they buy expensive cars they don’t know how to drive properly.

Anyway, I'm interested in whether these descriptions make sense to people, hopefully they are not offensive to anyone!
I’ll say one thing: you’ve got guts.
 

Triliza

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Peoples behaviors have similarities and they can be categorized if one is inclined or needs to do so. If they are useful or not depends what one wants to make of them. One type of ''audiophiles'' they I find interesting (in a not so positive way) are the ones who trust almost exclusevly their ears, but if you mention the concept of blind test to them, for reasons that I cannot understand, they are totally against it as a way to conclude a disagreement. I'd thought they would welcome the method, but it's not so, I find that paradoxical.
 

fpitas

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Peoples behaviors have similarities and they can be categorized if one is inclined or needs to do so. If they are useful or not depends what one wants to make of them. One type of ''audiophiles'' they I find interesting (in a not so positive way) are the ones who trust almost exclusevly their ears, but if you mention the concept of blind test to them, for reasons that I cannot understand, they are totally against it as a way to conclude a disagreement. I'd thought they would welcome the method, but it's not so, I find that paradoxical.
They have a group of like-minded people, and "expert" gurus. Basically, they Want To Believe.
 

NiagaraPete

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My goal here is to propose a legitimate way to classify audiophiles - without judgment.

Rather contradictory goal I think. I don't think we need this kind of thing. Nothing to be gained by it really. Dividing people up by how they approach their enjoyment of music hardly seems productive to me.
I disagree, this was a fun read and it made me look at myself.
 

tomtoo

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Peoples behaviors have similarities and they can be categorized if one is inclined or needs to do so. If they are useful or not depends what one wants to make of them. One type of ''audiophiles'' they I find interesting (in a not so positive way) are the ones who trust almost exclusevly their ears, but if you mention the concept of blind test to them, for reasons that I cannot understand, they are totally against it as a way to conclude a disagreement. I'd thought they would welcome the method, but it's not so, I find that paradoxical.

No paradox if you would loose reputation and money thru blind tests, you would hate them.
 
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