What makes you Passionate about Audio

[PortaStudio]

Hello everybody,

I was checking out videos on audio CDs and was blow away how passionate some people are about this physical format. While I am not that much of a CD enjoyer, I can respect the passion. Myself, I am more into creating audio, audio technology and quality, but what makes you passionate about audio?

 

[VMAT4]

Choice? With home audio I can listen to the music that suits me. From Bluegrass to Classical, it's all available through streaming. I find FM in my local to be a vast wasteland. And, why not have the highest quality reproduction I can afford? Music isn't only entertainment, it's an experience, sometimes very emotional.

 

[AudioKC]

but what makes you passionate about audio?

Basically the result of technological achievement and the music that I listen to. if you asked me, why I buy some time CDs, it's a form of recognition of an artist or band or sound engineer for their performance, to have it in a "collection" and listen to it on CD from time to time.

 

[kemmler3D]

I have always been fascinated with sound, especially synthesis - as a kid, audio was very mysterious and I wondered how this or that sound could be created, particularly the new and wild timbres and rhythms and distortions coming out of 90s electronic music.

My dad had (still does) a decent stereo setup, and while I understood why each piece of gear was needed, I didn't know how they worked, they may as well have been magic - likewise fascinating. Things really took off when we got a family computer and I could start to manipulate audio (totally at random, at first) with software.

Now I know quite a bit more, but it still amazes me how much depth and interest we can create from a simple 2-dimensional signal. All you need is amplitude and time and you can create whole universes of abstract (or otherwise) art.

So to me, the means of producing and reproducing these works are also important and interesting.

 

[LouB]

Hard to put into words but it's the "sound". Whether it's 8 violins, a stunning vocal track, or well mastered Rock/Jazz studio album. I love music I played in a band for 20 years. But when it get's to being passionate about home audio the system needs to present the music so I can feel it without being super loud & pretty much distortion free and when cranked up it remains distortion free. So in the end it's about the gear. I could care less if it's streamed a CD or vinyl the format means nothing to me.

 

[Curvature]

The abstraction of the speakers and music. Every single song is a fantastic impossible world.

 

[MaxwellsEq]

I've always been in awe of people who write or compose music, whether Mahler or Steve Howe. New (to me) songs or music are some of the greatest gifts I can receive. I want to enjoy the music with as much truth to the creator as possible.

 

[TonyJZX]

i enjoy competance in engineering and the result of that is enjoyable music... i'm not saying 'accurate' music

you can have a megadollar 'transparent' system that you may not enjoy

if you like the wonkiness of tubes and horns then go for it

we live in an amazing time in music

we cam set up a system of dac speakers amp for very little money... add your source and you can get the kind of music you like in literally a few minutes

i lived in an age where it used to be FM radio and cassette... i remebmer taping off radio! taping off CD was luxury!

you can also get HD media and display it on very decent screens and surround sound for also not much

 

[Anthony LoFi]

This thread asks "What makes you Passionate about Audio".

Something in my DNA that drives me to the pleasure of listening to music.
I crave music. Not all music, just the performances that gives me those free endorphins.

Its the best experience I can have with my clothes on.

I started listening to sound on valve radios.
Then the portable transistor radio, the home portable tape deck, the first turntable.
Cassettes at home and in the car, then CD.
Then MP3 players and the last physical media, music DVD's.
Now Spotify, my Mac digitised music library, my L.P.'s , CD's and DVD collection through a minidsp, Hypex amps and my speakers (stereo)

I am so fortunate to be able to listen to all the music I want and still get the same thrilling excitement I did 50 years ago listening to Machine Gun by Jimi.
Lifes wonderful.

 

[sergeauckland]

I came into audio when I was given a record player for my 11th birthday. From then I was fascinated by how the equipment works, and wanted to learn more. By the time I was in my mid teens, I was modifying or building my own amplifiers. This led to a degree in Electronics and a career in Broadcast Engineering.

From that point of view, my fascination with audio was based on the equipment, and how it worked, especially as at the time, achieving transparency (the goal for all audio reproduction) was still quite hard.

The music was just ever present, it was always there, and finding better ways of reproducing it drove my interest.

What has changed for me was that since the late 1970s, and especially with the introduction of CD in the early 1980s, that transparency had been achieved, so from then on, my main interest has been the music, as the equipment was no longer an issue.

In effects, I now have two hobbies, that of listening to music, without any care about the equipment as it's Good Enough, and repairing/restoring vintage audio equipment for the fun and satisfaction of keeping the old stuff going.

S.

 

[notsodeadlizard]

If we talk about the formation of your audio system from ready-made components, then this has long been a very boring entertainment.
You just evaluate your budget and buy what you need from good brands, keeping reasonable proportions based on the principle "your system will never sound better than your speakers".
Then you enjoy listening to music.

Everything becomes somewhat more interesting if you are fond of audio collecting, and if this collecting has some kind of systemic character, and is not a chaotic buying of any dull junk. I know Quad collectors, for example. I know collectors of great audio designers' products (by James Bongiorno, for example). Preserving and restoring the beautiful designs of the past is a worthy hobby.

Well, the most interesting begins when you start doing something for yourself. And listen to the results. This is what's really interesting.

 

[MattHooper]

My dad was a musician and audiophile. I became a musician and audiophile.

I've long had a fascination with sound. When I was young I used to carry around a tape recorder and just go on little journeys, could be around the neighborhood, or to the local ravine or whatever, and just keep the tape recorder running. Then I'd listen back to it at my bedside at night. I found it so fascinating listening to just the audio, and also how the sound reminded me of all the moments of "being there" that I would have otherwise forgotten.

When my dad one day brought home KEF 105.2 speakers (with the robot-looking modular midrange/tweeter) and Carver "sonic holography" preamps/amps, it blew my mind. Imaging! Soundstaging! Timbral reaslism! Wow!

So it all seemed pretty natural.

However I wasn't a STEM-subject oriented person. I was more an artsy-fartsy, in to sound from the experiential stand point - I was never inclined to the technical side, interesting in building amps, speakers or whatever. So it makes sense that my career ended up in sound, but in a creative position, sound design, not the tech guy behind the scenes fixing and building the equipment. The equipment is a tool for me to manipulate the sound in my work.

Likewise, I like manipulating sound via the equipment I purchase for my music system, in the ways that suit my personality. I still don't have any desire to get in to the technical weeds enough to go DIY, and mostly leave the measuring stuff to people who have the interest and experience. I'm not going to go making strong technical claims that are outside my knowledge.

I do bring an analytical bent to audio, but it has more of a philosophy base - analyzing the coherence of inferences, arguments, concepts 'n such, more than strictly technical claims. Generally, I want to avoid believing B.S. in audio, as anywhere else, so a site like this is very helpful.

 

[egellings]

I like to home brew my amplifiers & preamps and then listen through them. Of course, the main passion is the music that comes through them. I mean, that's what they're for.

 

[Zensō]

I’m passionate about music first; my passion for audio flows from that.

 

[egellings]

I’m passionate about music first; my passion for audio flows from that.

So long as both parts get there, that's what is important, regardless of arrival order.

 

[Timcognito]

MUSIC of course, technology is a pain. That's why come here to have you guys do the work for me. But there is a lot of talk about accuracy and not enough about music. So I stream for that.

 

[Multicore]

MUSIC of course, technology is a pain.

Spot on. Today trying to listen to music often ends up being an exercise in IT support. I feel like most of the second half of my life has been wasted on IT support so I resent that listening to music is like that now. Organizing audio files on computers, servers, networks, phones, tablets, streamers, ... and most of that needs rebooting from time to time, if not active debugging. What a drag. And then when there's a pause in a piece of music because a network buffer ran dry, it's infuriating. And I didn't even mention the abysmal user interfaces on the apps. Omg they all suck so hard.

Hooking up a CD player to an amp and speakers was something I did once when I changed apartments. And then I just had to put disks in.

 

[computer-audiophile]

Since I was ten years old, I have been fascinated by music, physics and thus also by the HiFi technology that emerged in the sixties. Already in 1963, as a boarding school student in the monastery Maria Tann in the Black Forest, I tinkered with tubes and built amplifiers from the parts of old radios for our beat band, where I played the bass or the solo guitar.

In our music room at boarding school we already had Dual turntables, Klein & Hummel amplifiers, Telefunken speakers and Grundig tape recorders which were not cheap. There was also a good collection of records with classical music. This made me want to have equally good equipment at an early age. I then began to work my way up the HiFi hierarchy. It was to become one of my most important hobbies.

 

[CapMan]

Different angle for me - using Roon has been transformational in how I digest ‘Audio’. I love that it takes me on a journey every time I open the app. I learn about artists, find new music and the Roon Radio algorithm can take me to musical places I never knew existed.

I’ve had my love affairs with gear; boutique turntables, valve amps, silly tweaks .. blah blah blah, but now the equipment is a long distant second to the music itself. As long as the reproduction it’s not awful I’m happy. I can listen to the Sonos Play 1 in my office or stereo in the car, doesn’t matter to me.

I just want to engage with the music. HiFi and technology should always be enablers to capture the performance - but they are part of the journey, and definitely not the destination

 

[mps]

Hearing Quad ESL57s. I never knew stereo could sound like that. I’ve had them for 30 years and still feel that way