AUDIOPHILES: Are We Buying "THINGS" or "EXPERIENCES?"

[Mr. Widget]

MTBF seems to be one of my most important ownership criteria.
The dumpster divers get the residuals when I am finished with my hardware.
You will know I am the OP, if the stuff you got from that dumpster ALSO included all the cables, user manuals and accessories.
You're welcome!

That deserves more than a "Like".

 

[Blumlein 88]

Is it? Or is it a different experience, more like buying a sculpture?

I think it leans heavily in the materialism direction. Like I said you cannot always be binary in such a classification.

I've seen one of the best motorcycle museums in the world. The owner regular has them rotated thru and most of them ridden on a track at times. He also has a restoration facility. I think he gets satisfaction sharing his obsession with two wheelers with the public. As well as restoring or being caretaker of important motorcycles. But I do believe it is something of an obsession. While not always true, for most people obsessions have a way of eating into enjoyment and satisfaction if one is not very careful.

 

[Mr. Widget]

While not always true, for most people obsessions have a way of eating into enjoyment and satisfaction if one is not very careful.

+1

 

[Blumlein 88]

An 84 year old gentleman up the street from my Father purchased a Ford Model T over the internet. It was supposed to be fully restored with an all new engine. Guy could not get it to run at all. It looked good, but no go, and he wondered if he had been swindled on the mechanicals in the car. He just wanted one because growing up that is what he rode in. Nostalgia.

Well my father noticed it and stopped by talking to him. He knew everything about one of those. He asked for a couple tools, a matchbook, and I think a dime to set the points. In a half hour, he had it running like brand new after making some adjustments to various things on it. The new owner was tickled pink, and they both took a ride in it around where we lived showing it to people.

I never knew my Father knew so much about Model T's. I felt kind of sad because it was a skill that had been effectively useless for at least 50 years to him. He was getting old himself and I knew this was also the very last time he would ever get to use those skills. He was obviously satisfied to have a chance to use those old skills one more time, and to help the other guy in doing so. They both were satisfied to ride the old obsolete car around a few miles one more time too. Definitely an experience then for them. A bittersweet one to me and I think to them. Both are gone now.

 

[Leiker535]

I think audio gear is definitely in the bucket of "things that can provide (valuable) experiences".

Maybe ironically you see this most of all in the "audiophool" camp where people are constantly buying and swapping out different gear, and then experiencing things! Fortunately or unfortunately, the things they experience might only be in their own minds, but they definitely experience something every time they swap a cable or isolate a bit of electronics.

When you stop listening to it, or stop paying attention to what you're hearing, then I think audio equipment becomes a mere thing.

I get what you're saying about the experience factor being bigger when you're open to placebo and confirmation bias, but I disagree on that audiophoolia as the way to "experience" more things.

Surely, if one takes the OP in a utilitarian but quantitatively focused way, audiophoolia and general consumerisms may produce more different experiences per usage, as in more combinations of things. However, if we consider utility and experience in a qualitative manner, I've found (and bear in mind this is my own experience) that enjoying what you already have and stop chasing the next big thing, being those acquired systems already good enough, brings about more opportunities to have meaningful "experiences" (know interpreted as in more music sessions, more actual listening) with what should matter: the enjoyment of audio.

In my own mileage, this has happened when I stopped anally caring about sources and watching hype reviews of the new hype headphones/cartridges/equipment of the moment, and started creating habits around the feature rich stuff I already had, like music sessions before bed and while reading novels.

That alone made such a dramatic difference for me that the whole buying thing became less about what "they" would consider sublime to what I, in my system, would find to fit better and give me a better experience. And with this I don't mean equipment synergy or anything like that, but ease of life features and concepts like wireless streamers and (against my old self's innermost AAA beliefs) RT digital deckling and de noise of my TT setup. That last bit alone made me go buy and get to know a ton of classical pieces and folk music that I wouldn't dare touch before because of the clicks and pops, but that are nonetheless hard to find and often obscure (I wouldn't search for it/discover them otherwise).

 

[HarmonicTHD]

I buy things. Marketing wants me make believe I buy experiences with these things (eg ultimate driving experience). Although I like BMW regardless ;-)

 

[caught gesture]

I’ve had equally wonderful experiences listening to a song on a transistor radio at the beach or sitting in my listening chair in a dedicated music room. I’ve had wonderful driving experiences in a beat-up Renault 4 on potholed B roads or on fast well-maintained roads in a Porsche 911 GT2. I think we can separate the emotion of an experience from the inherent “quality” of the object when we are referencing truly memorable moments in our lives.

 

[Vacceo]

A bit of a philosophical question I guess.

There has been a burgeoning industry researching "happiness" and some of the findings have seeped in to the public sphere. Probably most recognizable is the finding that people tend to be most fulfilled by 'experiences' vs 'material possessions.' ('things').

E.g an old article:

Buy Experiences, Not Things

Live in anticipation, gathering stories and memories. New research builds on the vogue mantra of behavioral economics.

www.theatlantic.com

So in a nutshell, money spent on, say, trips where you have an experience to remember tends to be more fulfilling than a new watch or whatever.

Which gets me to wondering: Which of these are we buying when we put together our audio system, material things or experiences?

It would seem obvious that audio gear would fit right in to the "material possessions" category. And yet it seems to me we are buying this gear to "provide experiences" - all the variety of experiences that come up listening to our favorite musicians. While amps and speakers are material things, they are also in that sense "experience machines."

If that's the case it's interesting to ponder how audio gear figures in to our happiness or quality of life.

I think it's obvious there are tons of variables at play here, but just to relate this to my own experience:

Around 2009 I decided to completely re-do my front living room in to a home theater/high end music listening room. It was a long, complicated arduous project because I "wanted it all, as best I could get, exactly how I wanted it." Somehow I got that rubik's cube finished so I have a room that is super comfy for me to read in, or to fire up the 2 channel system for music listening, or hit a remote and the projector fires up an image on a big projection screen w. surround sound.

These are all a bunch of "material things" and yet it has proved a hugely satisfying project and an on-going source of happiness and satisfaction. 12 years later and I swear I'm as giddy as the first day whenever I listen to music or see that big projected image hit the screen. It just never gets old. I surmise that this is perhaps that the room is a sort of transporter of sorts, providing me with all sorts of different experiences in terms of movies and music. It's not something passive and unchanging like a painting, jewellery, or something like that. It's constantly connecting me to the creative output of other people.

So I guess my answer to the question would be that it's both: material goods, but which provide experiences, which is why it seems to be an ongoing source of satisfaction.

What is your view on this subject?



*(BTW, I've always been a big believer in experiences over anything else. As much as I love my home theater, for instance, for me actually going out to the movies is MORE of an experience - getting out in to the world, mingling with others etc. and that for me is the best way to experience movies, and often music).

It is not both, it is material, pure and simple. The gear is logically material, but also your satisfaction is, as it dependant on you philological activity.

The "buy experiences" thing is trying to provide a pseudo-mysticism that excuses the secular nature of enjoyment. Because equating the use of objects with religious experiences sound close to idolatry, in a culture absolutely hypocritical about pleasure that also despises enjoyment as a principle but at the same time, loves to sell things as part of the work cycle (yeah, Calvinist and Lutheran logic...), consumption has to be somehow redeemed.

 

[muslhead]

If you dig into the generational demographics, you will see this closely follows exactly what each desire.
Boomers want "things" and millenials want experiences.
The boomers were growing up with parents from the depression who had nothing. So they covet things the things they did not have growing up.
The millenials grew up with boomer parents who horde things and want, like most kids, to be nothing like their parents.

 

[TonyJZX]

are you really buying an 'experience' with hifi when you can replicate that 'experience' at will?

you can buy a drive of a race car, you can buy a ride in a helicopter or jet fighter but you cant replicate that at will

i like to think that we try to simplify things... we buy *this* because it does *that* reliably

 

[Rednaxela]

If you dig into the generational demographics, you will see this closely follows exactly what each desire.
Boomers want "things" and millenials want experiences.
The boomers were growing up with parents from the depression who had nothing. So they covet things.
The millenials grew up with boomer parents who horde things and want, like most kids, to be nothing like their parents.

Very true.

 

[Vacceo]

If you dig into the generational demographics, you will see this closely follows exactly what each desire.
Boomers want "things" and millenials want experiences.
The boomers were growing up with parents from the depression who had nothing. So they covet things the things they did not have growing up.
The millenials grew up with boomer parents who horde things and want, like most kids, to be nothing like their parents.

Perhaps in the US. In other places, our parents were as precarious as we are.

 

[Deleted member 48726]

To answer the question IR to audio; it depends on the individual person whereupon their value and satisfaction lies.
If I answer for myself I would always choose the better crafted, sounding and measuring equipment over design and I deem the price right for the purpose. I can appreciate nice design only if the design is done with some purpose otherwise it's just superfluous. I may be materialistic in my choices sometimes based on my beforementioned values but it's overshadowed by a huge margin by the experience my HiFi purchases give me.

 

[Palladium]

It is not both, it is material, pure and simple. The gear is logically material, but also your satisfaction is, as it dependant on you philological activity.

The "buy experiences" thing is trying to provide a pseudo-mysticism that excuses the secular nature of enjoyment. Because equating the use of objects with religious experiences sound close to idolatry, in a culture absolutely hypocritical about pleasure that also despises enjoyment as a principle but at the same time, loves to sell things as part of the work cycle (yeah, Calvinist and Lutheran logic...), consumption has to be somehow redeemed.

The great lengths one can go to when it comes to rationalizing consumerism.

 

[Vacceo]

The great lengths one can go to when it comes to rationalizing consumerism.

Not just consumerism. There is a centuries old cultural element in many cultures that despises the sensible, material and tangible. It is presented as "inferior" and "shameful", so somehow, the material aspect gets bypassed. That is classist to no end, as only the upper echelons of any society have the luxury of taking the material for granted.

 

[LouB]

If you dig into the generational demographics, you will see this closely follows exactly what each desire.
Boomers want "things" and millenials want experiences.
The boomers were growing up with parents from the depression who had nothing. So they covet things the things they did not have growing up.
The millenials grew up with boomer parents who horde things and want, like most kids, to be nothing like their parents.

Most millenials want an experience to post it up and show the world they had an "experience"
In the world I live in, the millenials I raised and all there friends buy at an unrelenting pace. They had to have a LOT of all "right" clothes in school, cell phones, ect. Now there buying, crap for there kids, black out curtains white noise machines, at least 2 strollers, more toys than I could count. The Amazon trucks going to there houses would fill a warehouse in a matter months. When they come to stay for few days they might well rent a U-haul truck. And thats not touching the surface of there hobbies, at least 2-6 snow boards, enough snow board outfits for an Olympic team. Cant just have one bike they need a MTB, an EMTB, a road bike and ton of accerisories to go with it. Lets go surfing at least 4 boards there. It never ends ! There bigger consumers than anybody could have ever imagined in fact they buy so much crap they have now become a product. There personal information is sold to companies who target them so they will buy there crap.
I'm a boomer, I had 1 used pair skis & jeans, 1 road bike that I took off road sometimes, a used stereo amp & speakers I built.

 

[Wicky]

Experiences all the way. It just so happens that we attach/associate 'things' to our experiences so we come to value and appreciate the thing.

 

[Mnyb]

We also buy stories and traditions and also want to be a part of it .

 

[pseudoid]

I wonder what it must've been like to enjoy the experience of "Buying a Vowel" in Wheel of Fortune?
Some say it was a waste!

 

[solderdude]

I like the experience of buying things which brings me more experience in buying things I'd like to experience.

I'll grab my coat..