Relatively modest setup for someone of his caliber. What makes someone (or you) look for "better"? (endgame?)

[Jiraya369]

神前 暁 氏による Spitfire Audio 製品レビュー｜SONICWIRE

作編曲家 神前 暁 氏が Spitfire Audio 製品を使用楽曲例も交えながらレビュー！

sonicwire.com

Satoru Kosaki
He's the guy behind a decent chunk of anime soundtracks. Of course, he uses live orchestras and has dozens of mixing engineers. But someone of his level using some Adam A7X, with a sub ofc, is kinda crazy for me. Kinda goes to show you don't really need to spend too much to be able to get some reference level quality. Or at least that's my interpretation of it, sure he may have some 100k home theater but his production room is so.... normal. I kinda love it.

Apart from looks/needing a point source setup at extreme nearfield setups, what more could one want? Like after getting a pair of Neumann KH420, what else is there? Controlled horizontal dispersion, deep bass, high loudness capabilities. Or a Genelec 8361B ig if you want some point source type thing for more vertical headroom. These are active as well so they handle their amplifier requirements.

Sure one may want wider sounds, and some others might like cardioid designs due to the reduction of room influence. But what else is there? If low end is needed, you can just add subs to stuff, if you don't like tonality one can just EQ a pair of speakers, if they have good directivity/headroom ofc, and the only other thing that some could want is loudness headroom.

Top mixing engineers spending tens of thousands of dollars makes sense to me, it's exactly how they earn money and so they want to get it all right. And the bigger monitors just allow you to have full range capabilities at a larger distance and some others like to wall mount the big main monitors and stuff.

But I can't really think of anything else. What else could there be that one would want? Design? Prestige? A sense of pride due to getting the exact kind of speakers you wanted in terms of sound, design and heritage? Or do you just like having different pieces of equipment?

 

[xbitwise]

Im my opinion this Archimago article is spot on:

The Luxury of Sound and Time: Audiophile products, the Rolex and Timex Analogy.

A blog for audiophiles about more objective topics. Measurements of audio gear. Reasonable, realistic, no snakeoil assessment of sound, and equipment.

archimago.blogspot.com

After reaching technical perfection we crave something more. It may be GAS, it may be certain esthetics or simply love for over engineered equipment. Or pride of new shiny thing.

 

[Jiraya369]

Im my opinion this Archimago article is spot on:

The Luxury of Sound and Time: Audiophile products, the Rolex and Timex Analogy.

A blog for audiophiles about more objective topics. Measurements of audio gear. Reasonable, realistic, no snakeoil assessment of sound, and equipment.

archimago.blogspot.com

After reaching technical perfection we crave something more. It may be GAS, it may be certain esthetics or simply love for over engineered equipment. Or pride of new shiny thing.

indeed that's what i thought was the case. The want for something specific (a specific type of speaker) is what drives some/most in this hobby. I personally am not an audiophile in terms of gear collection, just in it for good audio.

Though I understand people's reasoning behind their desire for "more", it's crazy that they usually find billions of flowery, random words instead of just saying "it's good" "i like it" or something else. It's what stumps me most honestly, when someone likes something, no matter how crude it may be, they go to unusual lengths to justify it as if the justification is going to make its quality more apparent to them or something lol. An interesting observation i made of the numerous types of people i've seen.

Thanks for the great comment and the link.

 

[xbitwise]

Though I understand people's reasoning behind their desire for "more", it's crazy that they usually find billions of flowery, random words instead of just saying "it's good" "i like it" or something else. It's what stumps me most honestly, when someone likes something, no matter how crude it may be, they go to unusual lengths to justify it as if the justification is going to make its quality more apparent to them or something lol. An interesting observation i made of the numerous types of people i've seen.

Very true. I think, in mass, we humans are not very rational beings. We want to be seen as such so we go great lengths to invent justifications of our not so rational choices. Also, in current era of seeking maximum performance and optimization of everything, not many people have a courage to simply say, “ I just like it” without feeling ashamed.

 

[Jiraya369]

Very true. I think, in mass, we humans are not very rational beings. We want to be seen as such so we go great lengths to invent justifications of our not so rational choices. Also, in current era of seeking maximum performance and optimization of everything, not many people have a courage to simply say, “ I just like it” without feeling ashamed.

excellent observations my friend, i'd also like to add that unlike in the past, prestige is more readily available now so people feel the need to chase it more. Add social media on top which makes seeing others easier and also makes it easy to share your thoughts, you just start to see how we all started straying from our ancestors' ways, it's all imo a bit too much too quick. I think we're still adapting to social media/the internet.

 

[Heinrich]

excellent observations my friend, i'd also like to add that unlike in the past, prestige is more readily available now so people feel the need to chase it more. Add social media on top which makes seeing others easier and also makes it easy to share your thoughts, you just start to see how we all started straying from our ancestors' ways, it's all imo a bit too much too quick. I think we're still adapting to social media/the internet.

Once in a while I ventilate the word of a „good enough“, as I thought it was pretty much standard in engineering. Not so in audio, it seems. Also I propagate the idea, that playback, other than w/ hearing aids, is an invitation to the mind to develop fantasies, spark imagination, is not illusion originating in an (unknown) automatism in the brain.

Both notes don‘t stick on this board. Reason may be that I’m plain wrong. Or it maybe a brain wash by advertising and following internet based self-confirmation. Stereo is about the orinigal performance, they say, and if the record doesn‘t automatically deliver, you need more perfect gear with extended expenses. So you see people sitting in front of their child‘s college money exchanged for technical heft in mannequin posture, waiting for the impossible to happen.

 

[Jiraya369]

Once in a while I ventilate the word of a „good enough“, as I thought it was pretty much standard in engineering. Not so in audio, it seems. Also I propagate the idea, that playback, other than w/ hearing aids, is an invitation to the mind to develop fantasies, spark imagination, is not illusion originating in an (unknown) automatism in the brain.

Both notes don‘t stick on this board. Reason may be that I’m plain wrong. Or it maybe a brain wash by advertising and following internet based self-confirmation. Stereo is about the orinigal performance, they say, and if the record doesn‘t automatically deliver, you need more perfect gear with extended expenses. So you see people sitting in front of their child‘s college money exchanged for technical heft in mannequin posture, waiting for the impossible to happen.

there's nothing wrong with wanting good things and even chasing them. What's wrong is doing things in an immoral way in order to get to that place, and worse yet, using shady tactics to gain public approval.

Like, i never said chasing after better stuff is wrong, it's just annoying when someone has to justify their desires by telling everyone "it was smoother" "it was more detailed" "it was holographic" "you MUST hear this otherwise you're not an audiophile" and stuff like that. And there are people who don't consider others audiophiles if they don't spend more than a certain amount, like 4000 dollars or something. It's just absurd things like that that make me mad and annoyed. People are stupid and do stupid things to justify their outlandish desires. Nothing wrong with wanting that and indulging in them yourself, as i said, but being a prick about it is wrong.

For example look at some reviewers and see how they just act like every billion dollar speaker is some piece of perfection lol. They concoct random "extra details" or "smoothness" in the frequency response out of thin air, talk about "amplifier pairing" when it's just using poorer quality amps, and more outlandish stuff. See the problem now?

 

[Heinrich]

Thanks for reminding me of my long run for a perfect stereo, logically as a show-off piece. ASR, and Erin to give credit where credit is due, transformed my experience entirely. The more recent research, especially Toole, alingned the loose pieces of doubt to a comprehensible picture. At least once I have to explicitly thank @amirm!