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

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kemmler3D

kemmler3D

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I suggest your segmentation needs work. In short, what you propose is 2D when it may be much more. Since you went with 2D, objectivist and subjectivist fit along one dimension nicely. IMO, your nominal and romantic segments struggle to have a comparable fit along another dimension.

Before we expend further effort here, a key marketing rule is to know your audience. Am not sure you have shown why an ASR audience would find much value in a audiophile market segmentation. I acknowledge it may have value in a professional marketing context but much less so here. The marketer in me asks what is your message while the engineer wonders what problem would this really solve?

Rick, you are correct and I've actually already redone it, in about 1/3 the word count to boot. Will sleep on it before publishing. Thanks for the feedback!

To your point I don't think this is actually ultimately a dimensional segmentation (subjectivist vs. objectivist notwithstanding) there are other priorities that I think are equally fundamental but are really orthogonal to objectivism. (the statement ITT about the 'economic audiophile' was a better approach than I had been using before.) I think each category basically comprises a scale of its own.

I'm also not doing real marketing work here, because I haven't done any actual research, for now I'm just summarizing personal observations.

When I used to survey the general public about how they decide what audio gear to buy, the actual values are 1) cost, 2) sound quality 3) opinions of people I trust. I tried very hard to find other ways to convince the public to buy speakers and headphones, but you can't get around those. Real-world segmentation is basically demographic and affinity/psychographic. Targeting different types of audiophile was not something I was in a position to bother with, working in the sub-$500 world.

As for why and who cares: The highest goal here is to throw some water on the hottest arguments that seem to break out incessantly in every and all audio forums, which I assume would be valuable to the readers of ASR.

However, maybe I'm mistaken about it all and there's only one segment: "People who enjoy arguing about electronics". ;)
 
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Duke

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Rick, you are correct and I've actually already redone it, in about 1/3 the word count to boot. Will sleep on it before publishing. Thanks for the feedback!

To your point I don't think this is actually ultimately a dimensional segmentation (subjectivist vs. objectivist notwithstanding) there are other priorities that I think are equally fundamental but are really orthogonal to objectivism. (the statement ITT about the 'economic audiophile' was a better approach than I had been using before.) Ultimately I think each category comprises a scale of its own.

The highest goal here is to throw some water on the hottest arguments that seem to break out incessantly in every and all audio forums, which I assume would be valuable to the readers of ASR.

However, maybe I'm mistaken about it all and there's only one segment: "People who enjoy arguing about electronics". ;)

Segmentation can be unifying. For instance there are online resources which can be used to assess and understand personality types, and from there people with this or that personality type can (and often do!) choose to view those with different personality types with more tolerance for differences as well as more appreciation for what the other does well.

Segmentation can also be divisive, as we have all experienced.

I think you are trying to be unifying rather than divisive, to increase understanding and comraderie rather than justify hostility, and to that end I think your initial four segments are valid, based on my inherently limited experiences. Hadn't been aware of the "Romantic" variation, but now having read your description, I recognize it. I thoroughly applaud your effort, though this isn't an area when I can make much of a contribution.
 

Vince2

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Interesting question to pose "are there meaningful distinctions among audiophiles." To answer this question, a qualitative or quantitative, or combination of both, approach could be used. The assumption would be there are no meaningful differences, unless the data show otherwise. It would take a considerable amount of work to research this question. I don't believe that this discussion is going too settle this question, it is asr after all. But carry on ....
 

Rick Sykora

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Segmentation can be unifying. For instance there are online resources which can be used to assess and understand personality types, and from there people with this or that personality type can (and often do!) choose to view those with different personality types with more tolerance for differences as well as more appreciation for what the other does well.

Segmentation can also be divisive, as we have all experienced.

I think you are trying to be unifying rather than divisive, to increase understanding and comraderie rather than justify hostility, and to that end I think your initial four segments are valid, based on my inherently limited experiences. Hadn't been aware of the "Romantic" variation, but now having read your description, I recognize it. I thoroughly applaud your effort, though this isn't an area when I can make much of a contribution.

The outcome may be unifying but more often segmentation itself is not. It is inherently divisive.

Let‘s see if the OP can do so but is off to a rough start. Needs more than good intentions IMO.
 

MattHooper

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Audiophile - "a person who is enthusiastic about high-fidelity sound reproduction"

It’s an impossible destination and will, therefore, continue to attract the snake-oil salesman. How do we define this high-fidelity and reproduction without being present in the mastering suite, the mixing studio, the recording room with our ear next to the microphone? The purity that is being chased is a wraith even at the point of capture. Everything after blurs it even more. We do the best we can to get the playback equipment out of the way, although some like their reproduction seasoned with a sprinkling of distortion.

For some of those reasons, and others, I prefer this version myself:

Audiophile - "a person who is enthusiastic about sound quality"

I see that as more open ended, allowing for the variety of approaches we find among what most of us would call "audiophiles."
 

Cars-N-Cans

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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.
Its worth noting that we do not have objective metrics to control every aspect of listening yet. The biggest one, for me anyway, is imaging, and there is no "right" or "wrong" at this point as there are no hard and fast objective targets yet for that, other than maintaining smooth uniform directivity over some predefined listening window, be it more focused like studio monitors, or wider like hi-fi speakers. There are guidelines for both speaker and room setup, obviously, but the final results will vary depending on how much time you put into things like room treatments, speaker placement, and such. Lesser ones are the nuances of the speakers and the room and how that translates to the steady-state room response. Here having some knowledge of the speakers and the room will help in determining what the neutral response looks like. The usual est. in-room is fine for most situations, but wont cover every permutation possible. If your setup falls significantly outside of the norm (e.g. near field), then trying to EQ to such a curve will indeed give bad sound. Really a more balanced approach than just forcing a particular response is needed, and having references and controlled listening helps.
 

MattHooper

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I despise the usual connotatioms of the term audiophile. It is packed with sectaria tendencies that involve dogma about Diana Krall, luddite attitudes (active speakers are bad, class D is terrible, vynil gets you higher than angel dust...), and prejudice against non-music sounds (home theatre and multichannel is for plebs, podcasts are for nerds...).

But all that speaks more about my phobias than about the general reality, so the most rational approach i can think is this:

If you want quality sound, first you have to get a good definition of what is "quality". Usually the most common is "closest to natural". But since that is bs knowing many films are not "natural" (I have never seen an X Wing in the sky) or music can be perfectly "artificial" (Kraftwerk anyone?),
so perhaps we can leave it to "playing the source closest to what it contains"

Unfortunately "playing the source closest to what it contains" (fidelity to the source signal) doesn't capture it either. Because as we all know you can have a terrible sounding source that no one would deem "Good Sound Quality" and certainly doesn't represent the sound quality most audiophiles want out of their system.

So I think we really are stuck with a slightly more amorphous "quality sound" - or "Sound Quality" which accommodates the goal of most or all audiophiles.

But what could "sound quality" mean?

While there will be some disagreement, there are general markers on which most people tend to converge. "Natural" or "Realistic Sounding" for one thing, when reproducing acoustic sources like voices, acoustic instruments.

To accommodate music that isn't strictly acoustic, or is even purely electronic, I think people still converge on things like "clarity, vividness, detail, richness, dynamic" etc.

I mean, I've played my various audiophile systems to tons of guests over many years and, whether it's another audiophile, broke-assed musician, or total regular joe/jane, no one has ever failed to remark with amazement on the "sound quality" they were hearing. Nobody needed to see a breakdown of the signal or measurements as to just what level of precision...or not...the signal was being reproduced. They simply recognized the qualities most people
will think of as "quality sound." (And if I'd played a very low quality source, with perfect fidelity to that source, no one would have been impressed with the sound quality).
 

MattHooper

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We are using the term 'valid' differently here. A valid opinion (in the way I am using the term), is rational or cogent, but not necessarily correct or even justifiable in terms we can relate to. To me it just means that the statement of opinion is not logically malformed.

"Bubblegum is better than chocolate" and "chocolate is better than bubblegum" are equally valid, but both can't be correct, in fact neither one is correct because they're just individual preferences.

"Speaker A is better than Speaker B" is an opinion that can be justified with a great deal of evidence of performance, expertise, knowledge, etc. However, "Speaker B is better than Speaker A" is equally valid, and possibly even correct, if your value system is such that you don't care about performance, expertise, or knowledge.

What I am getting at with this post (not very clearly so far) is the differences in personal value systems.

Because I like making analogies, here's another one. "Risking your life to climb mountains with no ropes in harsh conditions for no pay is awesome." is a valid opinion. It is not one that many of us share, to put it mildly, but alpine climbers have a value system such that they would probably consider this opinion not only valid, but correct.

Most of us think they are insane, but that doesn't mean they're WRONG, (you can't prove "awesome" wrong), they just have very different values than you or me.

e: Just because an opinion is valid doesn't mean we have to accept or tolerate it. Some people think horrible crimes like beheading your children are totally acceptable, because of their value systems. Some people think [insert the worst speaker you can think of here] are good because of their value systems. We are under no obligation to tolerate, entertain, or humor bad opinions, but I do think it's helpful to understand where they come from, if only to more effectively combat them.

(Bolding mine)

Ha! Welcome to the club. That's been part of my arguments here (and other audio forums)...to an annoying degree :) (I've used the rock climbing/mountain climbing analogy before too).

It doesn't mean everything is subjective and anyone can have "whatever facts they want to make up." It only means it's good to recognize people have different goals, and it's not always helpful to evaluate everything through one's own particular goal. (E.g. some people may see no need for the existence of certain types of audio gear....simply because they find no value in it. But of course, others do. Or some may rail against a certain design as "crap" and a "rip off" even if it may be suiting the desires or goals of other people).
 

TimF

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I don't believe all audiophiles are music lovers. I don't think all people who have sound systems are music lovers. I think they want to fill the house with something just like they fill all the space in their closets. I especially don't think that people with home theaters are necessarily music lovers. I would go even further and suggest that people who listen to a limited number of performers and recordings from a specific period of the life, and do that for the rest of their life, are not much music lovers. Some of this greed and drive for better and best equipment, I think, is culturally determined predominantly male behavior associated with male focus on performance. I can imagine a female who likes music and who wants a decent music player, but I have a hard time imagining many women getting into 'audiophile' equipment, and especially expensive and showy equipment. I suspect most women are perplexed by audiophiles. I have said this before, I have never seen a woman at a meeting of the Minnesota Audio Society....well maybe one woman once. Sound perception itself can be fascinating, interesting, meaningful in itself regardless of whether it is music. It would be swell to have machines that made orchestral complexes of odors. Are people who buy 'sports cars' that cost greater than $100,000 driving and sports car enthusiasts? All right, let me put it this way: every mid summer, covid or no covid, audiophiles of a certain ilk load their equipment onto trailers and drive to Sturgis, SD, where they get boozy and display their equipment to equipment aficionados. Some or much of the equipment borders on being impractical and some is quite excessive for the sake of being excessive. Much fun all that. It is what men do.
 
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Cars-N-Cans

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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.
Thats a very good point, and one often missed. People generally don't like to cut against the grain. I know I have had similar experiences going into a room full of PhD's who have long lists of respected publications and credentials only to have to tell them they are all wrong about a certain topic, even when I know all the facts are on my side. It just goes against our nature to have our own beliefs and opinions confirmed and accepted by those around us. There are those who wildly differ from this and but they often are ideological zealots to whom facts and contradictory evidence don't even come onto their radar. You know, the type that think all their speaker wires need to be put up onto sticks or it will sound bad :)
 

phoenixdogfan

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Now if you really want this to be helpful, explain how the four classes of audiophile map into the 16 Myers-Briggs personality types.
 

Vacceo

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Unfortunately "playing the source closest to what it contains" (fidelity to the source signal) doesn't capture it either. Because as we all know you can have a terrible sounding source that no one would deem "Good Sound Quality" and certainly doesn't represent the sound quality most audiophiles want out of their system.

So I think we really are stuck with a slightly more amorphous "quality sound" - or "Sound Quality" which accommodates the goal of most or all audiophiles.

But what could "sound quality" mean?

While there will be some disagreement, there are general markers on which most people tend to converge. "Natural" or "Realistic Sounding" for one thing, when reproducing acoustic sources like voices, acoustic instruments.

To accommodate music that isn't strictly acoustic, or is even purely electronic, I think people still converge on things like "clarity, vividness, detail, richness, dynamic" etc.

I mean, I've played my various audiophile systems to tons of guests over many years and, whether it's another audiophile, broke-assed musician, or total regular joe/jane, no one has ever failed to remark with amazement on the "sound quality" they were hearing. Nobody needed to see a breakdown of the signal or measurements as to just what level of precision...or not...the signal was being reproduced. They simply recognized the qualities most people
will think of as "quality sound." (And if I'd played a very low quality source, with perfect fidelity to that source, no one would have been impressed with the sound quality).
That's precisely why find "audiophilia" packed with connotations I despise. Is Venom's Black Metal a good source? To most audiophiles, no. But that is absolutely irrelevant for the fidelity of it's reproduction.

It does not have to sound good to you, it has to sound true to the source.
 
OP
kemmler3D

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Now if you really want this to be helpful, explain how the four classes of audiophile map into the 16 Myers-Briggs personality types.

I can be more helpful than that: The MBPI has low repeatability and predictive value, and is considered hogwash by most psychologists. There! We've saved everyone some time. Very helpful. ;)
it's good to recognize people have different goals, and it's not always helpful to evaluate everything through one's own particular goal.

100% agree. That's really what I'm driving at here, although the original post was so overwritten as to bury that goal completely, I think.

what could "sound quality" mean?

This has all been solved by the various Harman curves, I thought? ;) In all seriousness that's up to the individual, which is perhaps the basis for most of the 'segments'.
Its worth noting that we do not have objective metrics to control every aspect of listening yet. The biggest one, for me anyway, is imaging, and there is no "right" or "wrong" at this point as there are no hard and fast objective targets yet for that,

Indeed, and it's further complicated by the fact that all imaging is artificial to an extent. All the imaging we get is filtered through microphones or is synthetic. So there is a bit of a philosophical leap from "fidelty" to "fidelity to a stereo image" which arguably never really existed in the first place...
"are there meaningful distinctions among audiophiles."

I think this is categorically validated by the absolute inability of some audiophiles to agree on anything. ;)
I thoroughly applaud your effort, though this isn't an area when I can make much of a contribution.

Thanks Duke! I know it's a bit rough, but maybe we can gradually come up with something useful as a guide to the different priorities people bring to the table.
 
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I’ll say one thing: you’ve got guts.
My thought as well. :cool:

I think of my self as being reasonably good at putting my self in others' shoes. From OP's POV and work-life skills and training, I have an understanding of the point he tries to make. That's obvious from his perspective to put people in different groups and segments in a marketing perspective. He's even trying to do it the most polite way possible.

Reading some rather harsh comments makes me sympathetic for the OP and I wish some where better at imagining what other peoples perspective might be and where they come from, BEFORE writing some comment on the internet. -Aaand there I flashed my naivety.. :)
 

Blumlein 88

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I can be more helpful than that: The MBPI has low repeatability and predictive value, and is considered hogwash by most psychologists. There! We've saved everyone some time. Very helpful. ;)
Finally you've posted something I can fully agree with. My employer for a 4 year period used MBPI as an important part of hiring and promoting people. It seemed not only low in repeatability and predictive value, I honestly came to believe it was worth less than nothing. That simply flipping a yes or no coin would work if not better at least as well. Coin flipping is quick easy and cheap. I suppose the elaborate theater around MBPI is easier to pretty up for when you get sued over hiring practices.
 

Digital_Thor

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What about the pragmatic audiophile?
I go to my friend, he has the new Bliesma T34B tweeter, and I admit it sounds good and has a lot of potential. I hear some music that I also like, and find the sound pleasing, and I enjoyed the music like I always did.

The price is pretty high, so I looked into what really made it better than the SB26ADC, Seas DXT and other way cheaper alternatives in terms of value, performance, distortion and other potential audible compromises.
Instantly, in direct comparison, the tweeter - to me - was worthless. It radiated all over the place and smeared the stereo image into a soft blur, where it kinda stood on top of the midrange, instead of blending in. By switching to the DXT, I quickly found the power response to be the culprit - and at the time - there was no waveguide for the T34B. So technically I applaud the Bliesma, but rationally I can't use the tweeter... because .... well... all the old guys that wrote books and spend their lives figuring most of this stuff out - we all know who - already told us, what is mostly important in sound reproduction, and I have to say - I very quickly came to the same conclusion after a few attempts/mistakes.

So here I am, enjoying my music, movies and talks/shows via my stereo - build with a printed Augerpro waveguide and the ADC :D

What's difficult for me, is to build nice and pretty cabinets :facepalm:- but the mirange/tweeter sound is the now the best I ever had. It could be better - I acknowledge that... but life should also be enjoyed with respect to living, instead of constantly looking for flaws. Because they will always be there.
 

phoenixdogfan

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I can be more helpful than that: The MBPI has low repeatability and predictive value, and is considered hogwash by most psychologists. There! We've saved everyone some time. Very helpful. ;)
Forgot to mention that I also want to know how each type ties in to the audiophile's zodiac sign. :D
 

tomtoo

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Their ears, previous experiences and emotions while listening. I'll bet Amir, Erin, A Jones and J Atkinson have heard many things that did not show up in measurements and vice versa, but because they listen to and measure so many devices they are more acutely aware of subtleties that are missed by even many so called "audiophiles". I would say the same about a musician listening to recorded music. The ear attached to the brain can be a effective measuring device when need, training and experience are part of acumen. Subjectivity gets a bad rap around here. Electronic and acoustic measurements displayed in tables and charts are only a proxy to sound waves moving into ones ear and brain. Relying on measurements only reduces the work to the subjective goal of hearing accurate and pleasing recordings.


"..Relying on measurements only reduces the work to the subjective goal of hearing accurate and pleasing recordings..."

Exactly.

See if my girlfiend goes into bathtub. And i ask how is temperature? She says great. And i feel like a cooked chicken after 5min.
Thats where the great moment of a instrument called thermometer comes in.
I read it, and i have a impression how i will feel.
The subjective impressions of others have not to be mine. But with meassurements you can correlate them better.
 

Rick Sykora

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Finally you've posted something I can fully agree with. My employer for a 4 year period used MBPI as an important part of hiring and promoting people. It seemed not only low in repeatability and predictive value, I honestly came to believe it was worth less than nothing. That simply flipping a yes or no coin would work if not better at least as well. Coin flipping is quick easy and cheap. I suppose the elaborate theater around MBPI is easier to pretty up for when you get sued over hiring practices.

Both my previous employer and my wife’s put us through MBPI. Was unaware of backlash in the psychological community. The structure is a market segmentation. Always suspected it was a crutch for HR to pigeon hole leaders vs followers though. They seemed to be struggling to find good middle managers. Probably a good example of where segmentation was more definitely more divisive than unifying.
 

Digby

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I can be more helpful than that: The MBPI has low repeatability and predictive value, and is considered hogwash by most psychologists. There! We've saved everyone some time. Very helpful. ;)
Really, I get the same result every time. I think it has some value. People seem to want some 100% infallible scale, but how many things are like that?

I suppose if I had to pick one of those listed from your original post that closest resembles me, it would likely be the romantic. Would you like to guess my Myers Briggs from that alone? :p
 
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