The article may be bigoted, but, there's a grain of truth in there, too. I used to sell equipment to audiophiles, and some indeed were less interested in the music than the equipment, and rarely listened to a whole piece.
Some, of course, were serious music lovers...
Some, of course, were serious music lovers...
The problem is htat he paints all audiophiles with the same brush.
If greater than 50% of people who qualifiy as audiophiles fit his description it would be a different matter.
I know of no such person. Although from reading on the web there appear to be enough to support that end of the industry.
From reading it appears to me that such people are a very small percentage of the overall group who could be considered as Audiophiles.
If greater than 50% of people who qualifiy as audiophiles fit his description it would be a different matter.
I know of no such person. Although from reading on the web there appear to be enough to support that end of the industry.
From reading it appears to me that such people are a very small percentage of the overall group who could be considered as Audiophiles.
It's all in how you define the term, "audiophile". He has one definition, you and I have a different one...
You and I are here because we want to listen to better quality reproduction. That lets us out of one definition.
You and I are here because we want to listen to better quality reproduction. That lets us out of one definition.
True, however someone not familliar with our hobby who reads his rant would get a completely different view of what are considered to be audiophiles.
IMHO, this is on the same level than saying a pocessor of Ferrari is a red-ophile or a car-ophile because he is more involved by the color than driving or is a fool because the road will be driven at the same speed than the limitation of the room... pardon: of the authorised speed with the same final result than transporting from A to B point !
Should such a review can interest someone ?
Better answer is no answer for me. But maybe we can argue than the life is not long enough to listen all a lover of music would do... so improve the quality to enjoy more what he is able to listen is not so mad ! We listen often the same things for a moment or come back with it also. Is it silly wanting the quality of pleasure to be improved ? For me no... and it's not listen to details than to listen to often the same music.
OK sometimes it could seem ridiculous to play all the time the same 1 minute to benchmark the audio designs or gears. But this is the price to pay for this pleasure not the goal. Would you buy a Ferrari without drive it or verify the red is the genuine one 😀 No of course !
maybe just one thing can be said, in all hobbies there are naives people or unknowledged one (I am) and some could exploit this by selling to expensive gears or printed reviews or slave their free time with free crap web reviews. But this not only in the audiophile domain and we have the absolute right to used to be a beginner or stay a beginner.
Non interesting paper, sterile provocation, bad understanding: we are not a grup, this a solitair hobby as it's hard to lend our ears to somebody. Ok view from the exterior two "audiophiles" look like fanatics before a prayer... I don't know for you but personally I'm not the one who run after a little girl with my gears, iron solder or cdpalyers !😱
The word "Audiophile" is pejorativ from the beginning in the paper and put all the people in the same recipient is writting the end of the story before asking the question !
For me the first though I had just finishing to read the paper was : the grandma is dead, Mozart was deaf... and so what... Darling one whysky more please !
Should such a review can interest someone ?
Better answer is no answer for me. But maybe we can argue than the life is not long enough to listen all a lover of music would do... so improve the quality to enjoy more what he is able to listen is not so mad ! We listen often the same things for a moment or come back with it also. Is it silly wanting the quality of pleasure to be improved ? For me no... and it's not listen to details than to listen to often the same music.
OK sometimes it could seem ridiculous to play all the time the same 1 minute to benchmark the audio designs or gears. But this is the price to pay for this pleasure not the goal. Would you buy a Ferrari without drive it or verify the red is the genuine one 😀 No of course !
maybe just one thing can be said, in all hobbies there are naives people or unknowledged one (I am) and some could exploit this by selling to expensive gears or printed reviews or slave their free time with free crap web reviews. But this not only in the audiophile domain and we have the absolute right to used to be a beginner or stay a beginner.
Non interesting paper, sterile provocation, bad understanding: we are not a grup, this a solitair hobby as it's hard to lend our ears to somebody. Ok view from the exterior two "audiophiles" look like fanatics before a prayer... I don't know for you but personally I'm not the one who run after a little girl with my gears, iron solder or cdpalyers !😱
The word "Audiophile" is pejorativ from the beginning in the paper and put all the people in the same recipient is writting the end of the story before asking the question !
For me the first though I had just finishing to read the paper was : the grandma is dead, Mozart was deaf... and so what... Darling one whysky more please !
Last edited:
Well, at least he has an opinion and he isn't afraid to express it exactly the way he sees it.
And us too we have an opinion, and that's the beauty in our lovely hobby; for the love of the music. 🙂 ...And any which way to obtain that spiritual freedom and ecstasy towards that delightful sense (hearing) is good.
Stop that distorted music! 😉
And us too we have an opinion, and that's the beauty in our lovely hobby; for the love of the music. 🙂 ...And any which way to obtain that spiritual freedom and ecstasy towards that delightful sense (hearing) is good.
Stop that distorted music! 😉
Of course there is some truth in it, and some damn fine truth at that.
And nothing's wrong in saying it the way it is.
Frank? ...Wayne?
This is maybe the problem : seing is not understanding as from the beginning his thought was maybe; hearing is not playing (the music). Can you see the false subtilitie here from the author ! He express it exactly the way he believed to understand it... all the references he gave to himself are just here to objectivive a subjectiv thought ! He is biased like our devices !
There would be diffferent level of merit : the musicians, the people who are reallly able to listen it because there are not at the end of the process (musicians,grandma who used to work for a piano maker, reccording professional, less naive hifi vendor than naive customer) which is just hearing (=you are not really able to listen to). So to be in all the process before : writting, selling, reccording, testimoning should be better than the naive waste of time, effort and money for "hearing" in relation to those first more noble tasks ... nearer of the Music !
But as you said : listening is a pleasure and as it's a pleasure it's individual. Youpla no more crap grup exist... but the alpha & omega one : listen to music.
There is a strange demonstration in this paper which want to show than the audiophile is a listener of devices only... in final a customer of expensive things who just listen pink noises and is proud of the price of the devices or is at his best a naive person. Not a real lover of music. The rest in the paper is to sweeten this demonstration IMO ! Well, is a real audiophile, a man like Stradivarius or Steinway (which are far to be the best pianos in the world) ? The rest of people just children who play to lego (l'ego !) when it's time to be able to hear (listen to) music.... pffffff.
One more whisky please.... if this one sings like he thinks... I really not buy his CD !
Last edited:
Now that I have actually read his incoherent ramblings I will say this, I don't pay for opinions, nor do I charge for them.
I don't think so. Phile just means one who loves. Nothing wrong with audiophile. It's the pedo part that's unhealthy. That is, unless your'e a pedo yourself.
Bob, I'm not really fussed by what the bloke said, as others have noted there are many elements of truth in some of the comments ...
But ... the thought came to me at the end, about where I fit in - and the term "sound lover" seems to be quite apt ... and what I mean by that is that the 'texture' of sound is what appeals to me; the equipment is merely a means to an end, it either does the job well enough or it doesn't, and if it isn't up to scratch then sort it out; "music lover" as he uses it is too specific, in that the listener is registering the music as something separate from how well it is rendered - I like a system to work well enough so that a piece completely foreign to me works as a tapestry of sounds which is pleasing to the ears, I can mentally explore it, like wandering around in a new, unknown physical place where I have suddenly been shifted to.
But ... the thought came to me at the end, about where I fit in - and the term "sound lover" seems to be quite apt ... and what I mean by that is that the 'texture' of sound is what appeals to me; the equipment is merely a means to an end, it either does the job well enough or it doesn't, and if it isn't up to scratch then sort it out; "music lover" as he uses it is too specific, in that the listener is registering the music as something separate from how well it is rendered - I like a system to work well enough so that a piece completely foreign to me works as a tapestry of sounds which is pleasing to the ears, I can mentally explore it, like wandering around in a new, unknown physical place where I have suddenly been shifted to.
The possessor of a Ferrari could indeed be a red-ophile (a lover of red) or a car-ophile (a lover of cars), but this is a poor analogy. A better automobile analogy would be a person who becomes so focused on the feel of the steering wheel or the feel of the suspension that they lose track of the road.
One of the things that I believe makes this issue so problematic for many people is the failure to see the difference between music and sound. I'll use another analogy.
A television or computer image is made up of pixels, but the image itself is not a pixel. The image that we see is not a pixel but the way in which the pixels have been organized. The image is the pattern and this includes both the pixels and the organized or patterned relations that exist between them. Thus while you can't have an image without the pixels, the image is more than just the pixels, but includes the way they have been organized or patterned (usually for some function, aim, or purpose).
Analogously music is not sounds only, but a combination of sounds and their patterned or organized relations. Thus while sound is a necessary ingredient of music (just as pixels are a necessary ingredient of a television or computer image), music is more than just sounds for it includes a principle of organization that is not itself a sound (just as an image includes a principle of organization that is not itself a pixel).
In some contexts such as audio design, for example, focus should include the qualities of the sounds (or signals) being produced, just as in the context of television design focus should be on the qualities of the pixels. But if you're sitting down to watch a movie and get so caught up in the qualities of the pixels, then it's possible that one could fail to see the movie for the pixels. Analogously if you're sitting down to listen to music and get caught up in the qualities of the sounds, then it's possible that one could fail to hear the music for the sounds. The point is rather simple, but interesting nonetheless.
Last edited:
I will add one thing, namely, that the tendency to focus on details like sound or pixel quality tends to increase the more experienced and knowledgeable one becomes in these (and other) areas.
When young kids watch a movie they tend to become so immersed in the story that the quality of the image is hardly ever a concern for them. You can show them movies with the latest computer imaging or with older stop animation and they don't care one way or the other as a rule, because they're just interested in the story. I think the same is generally true of music. Many kids pay little or no attention to the sound quality of the system they're listening to, and become completely immersed in the music.
This begins to change as our knowledge and experience increases. Put simply, the more we know the more critical we tend to become. I can sit down, for example, and listen to almost any good violinist and get tremendous enjoyment from it, but a person well versed in playing the violin might be put off by the way one musician plucks a string or another holds a note (things which I would honestly hardly notice). I on the other hand, being a philosopher (hence the name), will tend to notice subtle deficiencies in a person's arguments or unquestioned assumptions underlying a person's claims that most others will simply ignore or pass over as if nothing was amiss. If I were to point out unquestioned assumptions or flaws in a claim or an argument many people will often accuse me of being too nit-picky or playing with semantics (as commonly happens when a philosopher gets going, as it were). Most will simply find that level of detailed critique and reflection annoying (as some of the comments above attest). Similarly, someone with a great depth of knowledge in languages may be very critical of grammatical or other kinds of mistakes, things that most people pass off as unnecessary because most people are still able to understand what's being said even if the grammar is not perfect. And so on...
I want to suggest that the same kind of enhanced critical perspective happens with pretty much anyone who begins to learn more than the average person about any given subject matter, including the production of and attention to music and sound. Thus when most people are listening to music they may fail to notice subtle differences in sound quality that might drive an audiophile bonkers. In many respects it's all a matter of knowledge and perspective.
When young kids watch a movie they tend to become so immersed in the story that the quality of the image is hardly ever a concern for them. You can show them movies with the latest computer imaging or with older stop animation and they don't care one way or the other as a rule, because they're just interested in the story. I think the same is generally true of music. Many kids pay little or no attention to the sound quality of the system they're listening to, and become completely immersed in the music.
This begins to change as our knowledge and experience increases. Put simply, the more we know the more critical we tend to become. I can sit down, for example, and listen to almost any good violinist and get tremendous enjoyment from it, but a person well versed in playing the violin might be put off by the way one musician plucks a string or another holds a note (things which I would honestly hardly notice). I on the other hand, being a philosopher (hence the name), will tend to notice subtle deficiencies in a person's arguments or unquestioned assumptions underlying a person's claims that most others will simply ignore or pass over as if nothing was amiss. If I were to point out unquestioned assumptions or flaws in a claim or an argument many people will often accuse me of being too nit-picky or playing with semantics (as commonly happens when a philosopher gets going, as it were). Most will simply find that level of detailed critique and reflection annoying (as some of the comments above attest). Similarly, someone with a great depth of knowledge in languages may be very critical of grammatical or other kinds of mistakes, things that most people pass off as unnecessary because most people are still able to understand what's being said even if the grammar is not perfect. And so on...
I want to suggest that the same kind of enhanced critical perspective happens with pretty much anyone who begins to learn more than the average person about any given subject matter, including the production of and attention to music and sound. Thus when most people are listening to music they may fail to notice subtle differences in sound quality that might drive an audiophile bonkers. In many respects it's all a matter of knowledge and perspective.
Last edited:
Yes, well I do that too, I think we all do, otherwise what's the point? When we change a piece of equipment we start to listen beyond the music to how the music is being reproduced.
If we talk about musicality as the ability of a system to get you singing along or dancing around the room then any $10 ebay mp3 player can do that.
Sorry here with my bad english it's very hard to write easily.
Yes of course, my analogy is voluntary poor, stupid, second-degree because to match with the poor assertion of the original paper ("phil" writted in a pathologic sense like the original writter understand the word) !
Using here does not matter because in the eye of the writer, the goal is the red or owning the car and not to drive (or be focused on the wheel during the drive, here the audiophile is not any able to drive) which is pathologic for him. that's why my analogy.
But this is the freedom of the owner to like only the red, the car and not driving! And finally it's possible to drive the car but which is playing here it's not the goal of listen to but the money (I mean for the owner) in the eye of the writer and after he mixed all (money, moral, goal, tools for that...). That's what I wanted to express with my bad english.
Does it add to the understanding of the reason to own it... no of course, because no rules can exist, it's a personal, private pleasure and as it : it's the freedom of the owner (I mean staying in the sens of the writting).
Replace "money" word for the diyer with "time" is the second meaning of patholic behavior for the writer: what such time wasted but listen to music !
Hé it's an hobby, not a business plan. Moments of pleasure is more important than an absolute result or efficienty... or we will be able to kill an old grandma in the street to thieve her economy to buy an expensive off-the-shelf device !
What I want to say behind: audiophile is more a victim than a predator in a two cents scenario if we really follow the writer. If predator exist, it is the "Brandophile" with expensive gears. But here it stays two cents. Because if offers & demand meet each others, we are in a free world : the buyer is free to give the marges he is able to affoard ! He is not automaticly a compulsive buyer who is dangerous for him and his family !
That's why it's more a praise than a demonstration from the writer ! It's about moral not music.
Saying we, supposed "audiophils" are listening to (& if we could be a coherent grup what audiophiles aren't) just the pixel of sound but the movies is parodic and not highlights our reality.
It's on the same level to say than an enthusiast of photography looks at pixels when he shoot with him camera or look only the pixels on the photgraph after. Pixels viewing is just a little moement in the process and most of us measure the result with a pleasure lader.
We all know that the moment we are listening music at home is not the reality. But a transformed view of the reality like is a photograph. there is not a Reality (the accurate music) and a passive way to join it (listening to). Listening to is always an active moment like shooting and viewing a photograph. And the pleasure is involved as music is a artistic expression.
We are not benchmarking the devices but the pleasure to listen to. I would prefer in a two cents analogy the word of "Audioholic" but not for the device, just for the music. But it's true than Audio for people means "HIFI devices", the reality is more than audiophils are people whom involve "action" in the act of listening music. I don't know why it coulb be so parodic as "listening to" is already an active act than hearing is not (passive... but in fact it is never passiv, we know we interpret sounds... whe had to for survive long time ago)
Audiophile word is view like pocessor ( a phatologic collector) of device by the writer that's all. That's the way I understand the paper, I can be wrong. One thing is sure for me, it's not writted for the audiophiles but for the others: the people whom think it's ridiculous to pay this price for a "red" colour.
I believe at the end it's an exploit to spend time to coment this, the whisky is more important than all the writting + our coments 🙂, less trivial for me. i spend 20 years to be able to take advantage of drinking and listen to music both in the same time without one polute the other ! Which is hard as our thoughs are multiplexed in time : one after the others !
Sorry to be so long, the original writer suceess to took me hostage (all tis time wasted😀) and sorry I will not take you hostage anymore... but had a good excuse as I was hearing music when i writed this too long post !
Yes of course, my analogy is voluntary poor, stupid, second-degree because to match with the poor assertion of the original paper ("phil" writted in a pathologic sense like the original writter understand the word) !
Using here does not matter because in the eye of the writer, the goal is the red or owning the car and not to drive (or be focused on the wheel during the drive, here the audiophile is not any able to drive) which is pathologic for him. that's why my analogy.
But this is the freedom of the owner to like only the red, the car and not driving! And finally it's possible to drive the car but which is playing here it's not the goal of listen to but the money (I mean for the owner) in the eye of the writer and after he mixed all (money, moral, goal, tools for that...). That's what I wanted to express with my bad english.
Does it add to the understanding of the reason to own it... no of course, because no rules can exist, it's a personal, private pleasure and as it : it's the freedom of the owner (I mean staying in the sens of the writting).
Replace "money" word for the diyer with "time" is the second meaning of patholic behavior for the writer: what such time wasted but listen to music !
Hé it's an hobby, not a business plan. Moments of pleasure is more important than an absolute result or efficienty... or we will be able to kill an old grandma in the street to thieve her economy to buy an expensive off-the-shelf device !
What I want to say behind: audiophile is more a victim than a predator in a two cents scenario if we really follow the writer. If predator exist, it is the "Brandophile" with expensive gears. But here it stays two cents. Because if offers & demand meet each others, we are in a free world : the buyer is free to give the marges he is able to affoard ! He is not automaticly a compulsive buyer who is dangerous for him and his family !
That's why it's more a praise than a demonstration from the writer ! It's about moral not music.
Saying we, supposed "audiophils" are listening to (& if we could be a coherent grup what audiophiles aren't) just the pixel of sound but the movies is parodic and not highlights our reality.
It's on the same level to say than an enthusiast of photography looks at pixels when he shoot with him camera or look only the pixels on the photgraph after. Pixels viewing is just a little moement in the process and most of us measure the result with a pleasure lader.
We all know that the moment we are listening music at home is not the reality. But a transformed view of the reality like is a photograph. there is not a Reality (the accurate music) and a passive way to join it (listening to). Listening to is always an active moment like shooting and viewing a photograph. And the pleasure is involved as music is a artistic expression.
We are not benchmarking the devices but the pleasure to listen to. I would prefer in a two cents analogy the word of "Audioholic" but not for the device, just for the music. But it's true than Audio for people means "HIFI devices", the reality is more than audiophils are people whom involve "action" in the act of listening music. I don't know why it coulb be so parodic as "listening to" is already an active act than hearing is not (passive... but in fact it is never passiv, we know we interpret sounds... whe had to for survive long time ago)
Audiophile word is view like pocessor ( a phatologic collector) of device by the writer that's all. That's the way I understand the paper, I can be wrong. One thing is sure for me, it's not writted for the audiophiles but for the others: the people whom think it's ridiculous to pay this price for a "red" colour.
I believe at the end it's an exploit to spend time to coment this, the whisky is more important than all the writting + our coments 🙂, less trivial for me. i spend 20 years to be able to take advantage of drinking and listen to music both in the same time without one polute the other ! Which is hard as our thoughs are multiplexed in time : one after the others !
Sorry to be so long, the original writer suceess to took me hostage (all tis time wasted😀) and sorry I will not take you hostage anymore... but had a good excuse as I was hearing music when i writed this too long post !
- Status
- Not open for further replies.