Pancreas
Addicted to Fun and Learning
- Joined
- Nov 2, 2022
- Messages
- 586
- Likes
- 149
found this comment on Drop lol
Audiophile 101: What is an Audiophile? | Drop
Image credit @Evshrug [image] In my time browsing various headphone and audio forums, I’ve observed again and again a somewhat amusing contradiction. If you...
drop.com
The "Science Review"-philes, are NOT audiophiles. They are the Julian Hirsch Memorial Society... never really listen to music, they just sit there with their scopes, frequency analyzers, calibrated microphones, function generators and measure, measure, measure... after all, to them, we KNOW everything that makes an audio system perfect. Pfft.Then you got the deep pocket "audio philes". You know, the ones that sink money into the Mk. IV Reference Signature versions with cryogenic treatments.... after all, someone needs to buy those Tice Clocks, Mpingo disks, etc... These are the folks that will buy audio jewelry with $40K of bling and $5K of actual work in the electronics and their Bill of Materials (BOM). Someone has to keep those businesses running.. and that equipment looks good... sound? Well, these audiophiles only listen to 30 recordings and have short attention spans.Then you got the vast swatch of real audiophiles.. you know, the kind that want to listen to music and hopefully in a "high fidelity" mode. Sure, we can enjoy The Eagles playing on the PA of a Kyoto store... but sometimes it's nicer when you can hear how the guitar was picked, when the drum kit sounds realistic and the performance is dynamic... the strings should be on the left, basses on the right and the woodwinds a bit off center, behind, to the right.Some of us know how to handle the Science Review crowd... heck, some of us know how to build components, review schematics, etc.. and we know that measurements only scratch the surface since the real science of psychoacoustics is far from complete ( why does negative 2nd order harmonic distortion sound so realistic? )... and we also know that $40K of bling and a Reference Signature does nothing to the sound.So, we listen. We are audiophiles... and we do NOT have a coffee table in the living room.... That impacts the sound staging of the system... I mean that. And we have thousands of LPs, hi-rez files... hopefully no CDs..