I once spent 2 hours debating an audiophile friend about the meaning of audiophilia. I mean I just didn’t get it. Why would someone pay $tens $upon $thousands on a piece of equipment when most of the hairs of most peoples’ ears aren’t sensitive enough to distinguish hi-fi from wi-fi.
So I posed a counterfactual: let’s say you do a blind test between a recording of an acoustic guitar and a real guitarist. What if you can’t tell the difference? It didn’t matter, he said. It doesn’t matter at all. No, I didn’t get it.
So I went on and on and on until finally it clicked. An audiophile does not buy equipment for the subjective experience of listening. An audiophile is interested in equipment for the objective knowledge that the sound wave is reproduced as exactly as possible given all available human technology.
So for a cool $6 million, this home entertainment system could be had that ought to reproduce the original quite well:
Sorry, that ain’t audiophile. And you don’t get it. Audio is very much like wine, literature, baseball and many other forms of connoisseurship. With education, training, and experience one can develop skills which enhance one’s enjoyment of the subject.
Their are assholes who don’t know soundstage from timbre, who don’t notice distortion, and get off on room shaking bass, but like to call themselves (or are called by others) audiophiles. There are also assholes who drop a thousand bucks on a bottle of wine who don’t know a Burgundy from a Bordeaux. Neither asshole invalidates the subject.
A reasonable definition of an audiophile is someone who loves music, and who wants to hear recordings sound as much like real live music as technically and financially possible. We notice that the band has a bass player. We want the cello to sound like a cello. We want the singer to sound like a human. And we can tell the difference.
Hi Seamus,
Your definition totally makes sense to me. I totally believe that if you can hear the difference, then by all accounts, pay for it.
I think I confused the point I was trying to make above. What I didn’t get was that there was a point beyond “hearing” it. Let’s save you have system X for $20000, and system Y for $100000. Is there a point where the difference between system X and system Y is indistinguishable for a human ear? For argument’s sake, let’s say there is no subjective difference. My friend still insisted that he wanted to plump for the more expensive system.
Well, what surprised me until I realized that for him, the objective knowledge of audio fidelity was the more important thing, whether he himself passed a blind test or not.
I discovered your website and its awesome. They have this weird theory in economics where vendors can prey on consumers lack of information to basically rip people off. For instance, there was a jewelry shop with this awkward looking turquoise necklace that if he put it in the $5 drawer, no one would give it a second look but if he charged $1000 for it and prominently displayed it, it sold out in a day. Same thing but some don’t know the value and just believe that more expensive means better. Essentially, Seamus’s idea is known to sellers and they can take advantage of it, especially in areas not well defined marks of quality like jewelry or wine or stereos.
