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(Technically I've been to Canjam London, but I meant that this was the first Hi-Fi show with high-end speakers and such)
I went today to a hi-fi show in Israel, very close to where I live in Tel-Aviv. I's something pretty local, I don't think anybody here heard of it (it's called DigiTown 2019). Yet its scale was pretty impressive to me, spanned all over three floors of a convention center, plus an entire floor of demo rooms in a hotel. My phone is pretty much a potato, so I didn't take pictures, sorry.
My overall impression of the entire thing was of sameness – everything sounded kinda the same pretty much, except for a few stand outs, which I'll get to later. It was mostly stereo systems, with some rooms demonstrating all kinds of surround sound systems like Atmos, that still doesn't really do it for me. I'm just a two-channel kind of guy, even for movies. And besides those there were a small amount of headphone dealers and also some TVs.
And unexpectedly, almost everything I saw there came with a ridiculous price tag. Who are these people that just go and buy 40,000$ worth of speakers? And that's not even the most high-end I saw there. The prices in the audiophile world are indeed beyond making sense. After the show I talked to a guy that wanted us to bet a 1000$ that he could distinguish between different speaker cables in a blind test. I suppose he represents the kind of people with the spare cash to blow on all of those 10,000$ tube preamps and 3,000$ speaker cables…
At the convention center there were big show rooms, each contained one main flagship system that played loops of the same music, along with many other less pricy products from the same brand. The ones I remember were those weird sail shape speakers from Kef that sounded like meh, some flagship Focal model that were fine I guess, and also there were some Martin Logans that kept playing boring single female singer recordings that probably supposed to make them sound their best. There were other systems that just weren't unique or recognizable enough to remember. It's very unsurprising that they focus just on acoustic music that’s designed to sound well in show conditions. You can't really get a sense of what these systems are capable of. And on top of that, you can't really listen to anything because of the general noise and talking all around.
At the hotel it was room after room of what seemed like the same system with the same music and the same crappy acoustics. Yes, it all looked very different, but sounded the same. Some people tried to position the system properly or add some diffusion to the room, some showers just gave up apparently. I really can't remember which speakers I heard there, let alone to what amplifiers, dacs and turntable they were connected to. There is so much variety and who can realistically remember what every individual piece of equipment sounded like.
There were a couple of rooms that stood out enough for me to remember them. there was a room with horn speakers that just played really loud all the time. I can't testify to the quality of the speakers, but apparently they can go loud. There was another room that had Magnapens which really intrigued me, but the guy there messed up connecting them properly and it took time until I could actually listen to them. They sounded pretty good and were actually reasonably priced, but the presenter did a very bad job of trying to sell them – when I asked if there good for listening to Metallica for example, his eyes nearly popped out of their sockets and he tried really hard to convince me they are not for me. Ok dude, if you don't want my money, suit yourself.
The best sounding room overall had speakers that cost too much and I don't remember their name, but the guy there said they had diamond tweeters. Ok… anyway, I believe that the good sound there was simply because they were just positioned better. First of all, the room was pretty empty with the speakers quite far into the middle of the room, and pushed as far from each other as possible. The listeners sat at a sofa a good distance away, while in the other rooms everything was much closer. And most importantly to my view, in this room the presenter had opened the window curtains, exposing the big glass window behind the speakers. In every other room the curtains were closed and often blocked by some diffuser. I really think that by opening that window he allowed for much more sound reflections that just made the speakers sound huge and impressive. It's surely wasn't the fancy turntable he used or the ridiculous cable risers he had there…
So to summarize, my initial impression that the audiophile world is full to the brim with snake oil vendors and pretentiousness was revealed to be pretty true. Most of all this experience strengthened my belief that I should avoid the regular wasteful purchasing habits of audiophiles, and buy gear that is objectively proven to be with high value for money. If someone want to squander their money chasing after imaginary subjective improvements, it's their problem. Fortunately for me, I get the most enjoyment listening through equipment that is just objectively well engineered and reasonably priced. you can call it "the objectivist's snake oil" .
I went today to a hi-fi show in Israel, very close to where I live in Tel-Aviv. I's something pretty local, I don't think anybody here heard of it (it's called DigiTown 2019). Yet its scale was pretty impressive to me, spanned all over three floors of a convention center, plus an entire floor of demo rooms in a hotel. My phone is pretty much a potato, so I didn't take pictures, sorry.
My overall impression of the entire thing was of sameness – everything sounded kinda the same pretty much, except for a few stand outs, which I'll get to later. It was mostly stereo systems, with some rooms demonstrating all kinds of surround sound systems like Atmos, that still doesn't really do it for me. I'm just a two-channel kind of guy, even for movies. And besides those there were a small amount of headphone dealers and also some TVs.
And unexpectedly, almost everything I saw there came with a ridiculous price tag. Who are these people that just go and buy 40,000$ worth of speakers? And that's not even the most high-end I saw there. The prices in the audiophile world are indeed beyond making sense. After the show I talked to a guy that wanted us to bet a 1000$ that he could distinguish between different speaker cables in a blind test. I suppose he represents the kind of people with the spare cash to blow on all of those 10,000$ tube preamps and 3,000$ speaker cables…
At the convention center there were big show rooms, each contained one main flagship system that played loops of the same music, along with many other less pricy products from the same brand. The ones I remember were those weird sail shape speakers from Kef that sounded like meh, some flagship Focal model that were fine I guess, and also there were some Martin Logans that kept playing boring single female singer recordings that probably supposed to make them sound their best. There were other systems that just weren't unique or recognizable enough to remember. It's very unsurprising that they focus just on acoustic music that’s designed to sound well in show conditions. You can't really get a sense of what these systems are capable of. And on top of that, you can't really listen to anything because of the general noise and talking all around.
At the hotel it was room after room of what seemed like the same system with the same music and the same crappy acoustics. Yes, it all looked very different, but sounded the same. Some people tried to position the system properly or add some diffusion to the room, some showers just gave up apparently. I really can't remember which speakers I heard there, let alone to what amplifiers, dacs and turntable they were connected to. There is so much variety and who can realistically remember what every individual piece of equipment sounded like.
There were a couple of rooms that stood out enough for me to remember them. there was a room with horn speakers that just played really loud all the time. I can't testify to the quality of the speakers, but apparently they can go loud. There was another room that had Magnapens which really intrigued me, but the guy there messed up connecting them properly and it took time until I could actually listen to them. They sounded pretty good and were actually reasonably priced, but the presenter did a very bad job of trying to sell them – when I asked if there good for listening to Metallica for example, his eyes nearly popped out of their sockets and he tried really hard to convince me they are not for me. Ok dude, if you don't want my money, suit yourself.
The best sounding room overall had speakers that cost too much and I don't remember their name, but the guy there said they had diamond tweeters. Ok… anyway, I believe that the good sound there was simply because they were just positioned better. First of all, the room was pretty empty with the speakers quite far into the middle of the room, and pushed as far from each other as possible. The listeners sat at a sofa a good distance away, while in the other rooms everything was much closer. And most importantly to my view, in this room the presenter had opened the window curtains, exposing the big glass window behind the speakers. In every other room the curtains were closed and often blocked by some diffuser. I really think that by opening that window he allowed for much more sound reflections that just made the speakers sound huge and impressive. It's surely wasn't the fancy turntable he used or the ridiculous cable risers he had there…
So to summarize, my initial impression that the audiophile world is full to the brim with snake oil vendors and pretentiousness was revealed to be pretty true. Most of all this experience strengthened my belief that I should avoid the regular wasteful purchasing habits of audiophiles, and buy gear that is objectively proven to be with high value for money. If someone want to squander their money chasing after imaginary subjective improvements, it's their problem. Fortunately for me, I get the most enjoyment listening through equipment that is just objectively well engineered and reasonably priced. you can call it "the objectivist's snake oil" .