How do people in general listen to musical reproduction and value what they hear? Hard to say, because not even all men are "audiophiles". So why ask this question with regard to women? Seems rather pointless to me.
my 2cents is that "audiophile" is some kind of religious way of pursuing more than life-like musical reproduction.
Subject open for investigation...
my 2cents is that "audiophile" is some kind of religious way of pursuing more than life-like musical reproduction.
Subject open for investigation...
Rock, Pop, Appalachian folk music, Blue Grass, Country, R&B, .......
According to this British article, the ratio is 3:1 in favor of men in classic music.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-e...ere-are-all-the-female-musicians-8343938.html
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I think you will find the ratio is 3:1 for ONE orchestra. You will also notice that they say in youth orchestras the mix is 50:50.
Plenty of women in all those genres as my CD collection will attest. Now if you take a band with a female singer and male guitar and drums you might say that only 20% of musicians are women, but to me that is not a valid view.
What is of more interest is to look at how trends are changing over time.
Plenty of women in all those genres as my CD collection will attest. Now if you take a band with a female singer and male guitar and drums you might say that only 20% of musicians are women, but to me that is not a valid view.
What is of more interest is to look at how trends are changing over time.
If you read the article you will find that it asserts that most orchestras show the disparity although some in the USA are much closer to 50:50.
Ok, Bill, now I think I understand the disparity in our points of view. I look at a Contra band with a guitarist (male), fiddle (female), and percussion (male) and see 2:1. I count total men to women, not lead singers.
With regards to youth orchestras, it might be a 50:50 mix today, but how many will continue? Will a higher percentage of men still be performing in 30 years?
Here is another interesting article which I think is well worth the read:
The Power List: Why Women Aren?t Equals In New Music Leadership and Innovation | NewMusicBox
Skip to the bottom for a summary.
Ok, Bill, now I think I understand the disparity in our points of view. I look at a Contra band with a guitarist (male), fiddle (female), and percussion (male) and see 2:1. I count total men to women, not lead singers.
With regards to youth orchestras, it might be a 50:50 mix today, but how many will continue? Will a higher percentage of men still be performing in 30 years?
Here is another interesting article which I think is well worth the read:
The Power List: Why Women Aren?t Equals In New Music Leadership and Innovation | NewMusicBox
Skip to the bottom for a summary.
Important not to mix the topic of this thread with why a lot of women change their priorities when they raise a family. Sometimes its by choice, sometimes (often) not as opportunities become more limited. Rapidly you head down the rabbit hole of male dominated society, glass ceilings and social injustice which breaks the rules here!
As a father of 4 girls I am glad things are slowly balancing out.
But on topic, I am just glad my wife loves good music and a good system to listen to it on. Her sister has just started on getting decent stuff and hates how much better mine sounds. Music is a central part of family life. Outlier? Maybe but as I don't like football I am an outlier for UK males anyway 😛
Aside: San Francisco used to host the worlds only all-female mariachi band !
As a father of 4 girls I am glad things are slowly balancing out.
But on topic, I am just glad my wife loves good music and a good system to listen to it on. Her sister has just started on getting decent stuff and hates how much better mine sounds. Music is a central part of family life. Outlier? Maybe but as I don't like football I am an outlier for UK males anyway 😛
Aside: San Francisco used to host the worlds only all-female mariachi band !
Yes it is. There are many dogmas in hi-fi that are ridiculous from the point of view of an engineer. A short list is
1) Capacitors
2) Tone controls 😱
3) Anything beyond the bare minimum speaker crossover
4) Op amps
The less someone knows about engineering topics, the more enthusiastically they will defend the dogmas surrounding these topics. It is exactly like another topic which is verboten to discuss here.
May be a bit crass but most of the musicians I know started to play because it got them laid. For women to get laid it is enough to be a woman, us men are not that choosy. ;-)
My wife plays classical guitar and piano.
If she wants to listen to music it could be through a transistor radio with a 2 inch speaker. She would be fine with it.
If she wants to listen to music it could be through a transistor radio with a 2 inch speaker. She would be fine with it.
Correct... the "dogmas" are proof of the religious nature of the disorder. The mechanism behind dogmas is to prevent people from research and open debate based on objective findings or common sense.
That is exactly how dogma perpetuates. And dogma seems to be growing in popularity lately.
But at the root of many dogmas lies a kernel of truth. In the case of coupling capacitors, haphazard application will indeed degrade the performance of a linear circuit. But is so easy to make them work without degrading the circuit, if you know how.
Tone controls can most definitely muck up the sound in ways that the hi-fi dogmatists don't comprehend. But the truth is that almost any audio setup, unless it's an incredible collection of gear that's used in an anechoic chamber - can use a little help from tone controls. Psychoacoustics throws us another curve ball. How many people really understand this stuff? So don't feel like a heretic if you want a little bass boost or maybe think that your speaker sounds better closer to the wall.
Crossovers can compensate for many shortcomings of various drivers. How many dogmatists understand resonances and impedance? The truth is that speakers are very nonlinear and introduce so much distortion that if they published the figures in advertisements the average consumer would reel in horror.
And many circuits work much better if buffered. What is the logical choice for a buffer? An op amp, of course. 😱 Oh, the heresy. Look at how many op amps are inside of old school mixing boards - 5532's usually 😱 and dozens of them . It can't be so - I must ram my head somewhere dark!
This was covered in a recent podcast, which one I forget. Many orchestras are transitioning to 'blind' auditions in which a screen separates the applicant from the judges. It led to a substantial increase in the number of females hired.
On the contrary side, Freakonomics also did a recent deep dive into the gender wage gap with Claudia Goldin of Harvard: The True Story of the Gender Pay Gap - Freakonomics. She concluded women generally prefer a different work/life balance, which may explain some of the observations of the other article.
Very clever argument, thanks.
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Essentially the text say that the primitive man contribute to the survival of the group, due to your bigger musculature, with the hunting, and need develop some skills: to keep immobile and in silence, to fix your attention in one only target, and mathematical ability for calculate the trajectory of the prey and the weapon for to throw well. Perhaps the same skills are used in the listening: usually the listen is in silence, no make other things, and the music have a mathematical structure.
The women contribute to the survival of the group in different way, and developed different skills: as better ability with the language (your brain area of language have the doble size of the area of the man) so speak much more, don’t like silence; or maintain your attention in several things, no only one. Perhaps this can explain as the listen of the music is a activity almost exclusively masculine.
A friend, Anthropologist, say that have sense, very difficult of demonstrate, but have sense.
This is a translation with Google, I hope that can be understandable:
[Another issue that has always caused me surprise is the absolute rejection of women towards music. I'm not the only one, this has often been mentioned in magazines Audio, as when L'Audiophile decided to make a survey of its readers and was answered by 100% of men, not a single woman, also in some editorial Audioamateur and the term WAF (Wife Aceptance Factor: Factor Acceptance of Women) is universally used.
The relevant term is Universal' that`s not happening in some places and not in others not, has no cultural dependence, appears rather to be an intrinsic characteristic without any external influence.
This was a fact for my unknown until the Audio became my profession, hitherto assumed (wrongly) that everyone liked to listen to music, an activity that can only be described as pleasant, I could never imagine that something like this could cause discontent anyone.
And now let it. For all we know life originated in water, playing first took the form of cell division (mitosis) and after sexual reproduction (genetic recombination), in the latter females were benefited in their genetic economy added. Because of the huge size difference between eggs from the female and the sperm of the male, the latter was forced to remain in the place that had been wrought on, as if he wanted to ensure fertilization should prevent sperm could be dispersed by a stream, the child cluelessness male female left the area for other males that could impregnate their spawn and thus increase the spread of genetic, because the large size of the eggs and the fact that maintain stuck together they ensured that they would not be affected by water currents.
Life at some point moved to the mainland and this change of environment, because of the relationship cube / square, forced fertilization and gestation were maintained within the body to ensure the survival not only sperm but also eggs, because in this new environment, its size is not enough to survive on the outside, as in the water.
This reversed the genetic economy, now in favor of males. Is now female who has no choice but to stay in place where the setting actually transports within and throughout the length of gestation may not be impregnated again, on the other hand is effected is the male which, freed from this work, you can find new females to which impregnate and increase genetic gain.
In addition, the extreme neoteny (preservation of children's characters) that allows humans to extend their period of learning throughout his life, and because of a degree higher than that of any other animal encephalization produces embryos whose head is one-third of their body size, requires females of the human species particularly high consumption of resources and requires a series of changes in its structure which places it in certain aspects of physical handicap.
The human male is not subject to the consumption of resources, allowing you devote to developing greater body mass which enables him to greater physical effort. As a result of this conduct females take more care of offspring, remaining grouped and contributing to sustaining group activities involving minimal risk and reduced physical strength, such as browsing.
The human male, being better equipped for it contributes to the survival of the group with riskier activities and physical exertion such as hunting. The exercise of this activity forced the development of certain skills necessary for their performance successful, be able to keep still and silent for long periods of time to stalk prey undetected while maintaining focused attention in it without deflecting a moment, which would have allowed the prey fled without being noticed, and besides all this a powerful and fast computing power to allow him to predict where would the dam at any time in his career for, more computing capacity, to match the trajectory of weapons at that point.
Those same skills that evolution forced develop appear to be those used for music listening: stand still and silent long periods of time, keep the focus on a single event and, since music has a mathematical structure, use calculation ability not only to understand but get rewards and pleasurable sensations similar to those obtained with success in hunting.
Probably because of having to spend long periods in silence and with a relationship with the rest of the small group to eye contact, the human male was reduced the size of its language area, half that of females, women emit an average of 30,000 words a day, an average of 15,000 men. Women to stay grouped and closer social contact made greater use of language.
Moreover females tend to keep their attention on several things, not entirely focused on one goal as males. About this has made a curious experiment, tickets were thrown from the roof of a room that had gathered adolescents of both sexes, with the promise that all the tickets they got to catch with your hands before reaching the I usually would for them, the result was rarely some women managed to catch one, when for men posed no difficulty filling their hands as they focused on one and then catch him in another and so on women to not focus on one goal, but keep your attention on the set almost not getting results.
In addition, generally speaking, it is stated that men have a greater mathematical ability rather than women. It is well known that for a substance takes effect there needs to be a receptor for it, if that instant computing power is required for music becomes something pleasurable and women have a lesser extent, it is logical that their interest for music listening is less or practically nil.
Thus, this kind of division of enforced functions by evolution, appears to be the cause of the fact that men are by prone enjoyment of music (when using for it the same developed hunting skills) nature and women do not have this trend have been forced to develop other more useful skills in other fields, being logical then its universal character and not tied to any kind of cultural influence.
Clearly I'm not Anthropologist (and, as if had not noticed) and my lack of knowledge in this field is what led me to this kind of solution. Chances are you have used one or more erroneous assumptions that alter or invalidate MI reasoning? or, more simply, because there is a certain and appropriate response to the facts, if so and someone knows at least I am interested in knowing.
And if someone else has developed its own questions and answers, please, that puts that's why there are such forums, will become very interesting.]
In English, it's still completely ridiculous. It makes me wonder how many women you know, or in which century you were born.
I've met/known several women who were very much into music, playing instruments, and quality audio gear.
Two of them asked me for technical advice on what to buy, as did a former g/f.
This personal friend both plays cello, sings in a choir, and has a really decent stereo set at home, or at least better than what most at this forum have.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/els-grijseels-2468b09a
My g/f sings all day, loves music, knows every lyric by heart, and doesn't have a problem with me owning outdoor loudspeakers with a >>$10k msrp as they sound good to her ears.
Single downside of her is that she listens to everything at a volume setting that turns me deaf, and the neighbors annoyed.
Women just don't feel like wasting their time, neither do some men
Me, I weigh 260lb at the moment, know half a dozen ways to kill a person in seconds, and a dozen ways to hurt someone for days on end.
Plus I can read/write/speak an abundance of languages, some flawless, I can do any accent within a week, and I find it hard to be quiet in public, ask anyone.
De nada.
I've met/known several women who were very much into music, playing instruments, and quality audio gear.
Two of them asked me for technical advice on what to buy, as did a former g/f.
This personal friend both plays cello, sings in a choir, and has a really decent stereo set at home, or at least better than what most at this forum have.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/els-grijseels-2468b09a
My g/f sings all day, loves music, knows every lyric by heart, and doesn't have a problem with me owning outdoor loudspeakers with a >>$10k msrp as they sound good to her ears.
Single downside of her is that she listens to everything at a volume setting that turns me deaf, and the neighbors annoyed.
Women just don't feel like wasting their time, neither do some men
Me, I weigh 260lb at the moment, know half a dozen ways to kill a person in seconds, and a dozen ways to hurt someone for days on end.
Plus I can read/write/speak an abundance of languages, some flawless, I can do any accent within a week, and I find it hard to be quiet in public, ask anyone.
De nada.
Well you're right Jacco. We are intelligent, complex beings that are capable of being whatever we want to be.
I have the physique of a caveman - I can hardly find jackets that don't bind around my shoulders and wrists. I have huge, strong, clumsy hands. (Sorry, no sloped forehead - I'm a hybrid.) But I love cats. I am the Pied Piper of cats. I am an avid gardener. I have houseplants that I've grown for 40 years. I do bonsai. And if someone thinks that this makes me queer, I don't care.
But anthropologists are correct too. If men and women weren't a lot different, then we wouldn't be here today. Evolution would have eliminated us a long time ago.
I have the physique of a caveman - I can hardly find jackets that don't bind around my shoulders and wrists. I have huge, strong, clumsy hands. (Sorry, no sloped forehead - I'm a hybrid.) But I love cats. I am the Pied Piper of cats. I am an avid gardener. I have houseplants that I've grown for 40 years. I do bonsai. And if someone thinks that this makes me queer, I don't care.
But anthropologists are correct too. If men and women weren't a lot different, then we wouldn't be here today. Evolution would have eliminated us a long time ago.
We all are unless your heritage is purely black african:
Most of Us Are Part Neanderthal by Steven Mithen | The New York Review of Books
Way to go. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AaPHGytm1M )
In my first year at polytech, half of my fellow freshmen hanged themselves on the math exams (12x). Exactly as the math teacher told us in the first minutes of the very first class.
All in my year were the best at math in high school, and exactly as the teach said, that meant zilch at polytech-u.
In high school, 3-quarters suck at math, goes both for men and women.
Nowadays, girls score higher grades for math/physics/chemistry than boys.
The larger part is pre-conditioning, girls aren't destined for dolls and kitchen sinks nowadays.
Sure anthropologists are right in some things. I can do one thing to perfection, make me do two things simultaneously and I make a mess of both.
Women can keep 10 things in the air, though not one in an impressive way.
(Cats ? I absolutely adore cats, plus women, and most things queery)
Being anthropological, it doesn't need much smarts to go out and try and kill things with fangs and teeth armed with clubs. Needs more smarts to persuade someone to go out and kill them rather than stay in the safety of the cave 🙂.
Personally I am happy with the concept that women, given the chance are more intelligent than men. Also happy with the concept that men do dumb **** that women would not consider sane, but find sexy when young.
Sadly the thread has descended from discussion the apparant lack of female audiophiles to 'why my wife doesn't get my hobbies'. But it has flushed out that at least a few of us are lucky in love 🙂
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