Audiophiles - You're wasting your money!

Having worked in a high-end car and home audio store in the late 80's to mid 90's, I can state with a high degree of confidence that wasting money is the point of being an audiophile.

“Audiophiles don’t use their equipment to listen to your music - they use your music to listen to their equipment.” - Alan Parsons

"Audiophiles, you are wasting your money!" Audiophiles: "Of course, what is your point?"

I like your approach. As a sound engineer and musician with an acoustically treated and very neutral mastering studio, I agree with pretty much everything you said. I have been in the world of audio and music since my teen years (I'm 68 now) and I've heard hundreds of combinations of equipment in people's homes and at audio shows in Montreal, Toronto, Chicago and L.A. It was VERY rare to hear good sound at the audio exhibitions. Yes, I too have known people who have spent a small fortune on home audio ($250,000 in one unbelievable instance) and yet only a small amount was spent on acoustic treatment for the room. If you want to get the most out of whatever equipment you own, you might want to consider investing in some proper room treatment. The most balanced and natural sound I can recall hearing was in rooms and studios that had been properly treated, regardless of the price of the equipment. So if you have a budget for a new audio system I suggest you include an appropriate amount for room treatment. Would you buy a Ferrari and expect peak performance on a dirt road? So why spend thousands of dollars on audio equipment and expect good sound in a compromised room? Makes no sense to me.

I always say its cheaper and more enjoyable to search for new music to love than to look for new gear to love

i was in the early stages of going down the audiophile rabbit hole.. then later decided to learn an instrument and bought a violin and took lessons.. between the two i think learning to make my own music was more satisfying to me

Thank you, Paul McCartney! Coming from you, I'll take it into consideration.

When I listen to audiophiles talk about the enormous amounts of money they spend on their equipment and the efforts they go to in order to get sound that they are satisfied with, it makes me very thankful that I do not have a discerning ear. It reminds me of time when I dated a girl who bragged that she could tell an expensive wine from a cheap wine, and because of this you could only drink expensive wines. I thought, "Well, that sucks. She has to spend a lot more money to enjoy a glass of wine than I do." I can enjoy music on modest, inexpensive equipment and I can enjoy cheap wine too. I've been to audio shows and I have listened to very high end systems. Yes they sound great. But the cost-to-enjoyment ratio just isn't there for me. And I'm thankful for that, because it saves me a lot of money 😊

As someone in their late fifties with tinnitus and much reduced HF response, I'm under no illusions about the fidelity (or lack of) that I'm hearing these days. But what I can tell is where a sound is coming from, so my joy now is in surround and immersive audio. I've swapped out the pleasure of ultimate fidelity for that of a spatially interesting soundstage. Sadly, this means lots more speakers and thus lots more cost, even with £80 ears. :D

I do think speakers are the main thing people should focus on as they have a wide range of difference in how they sound...

You're absolutely spot on as regards loss of hearing and the ability to tell the difference between good and better hi fi. At 73 and with many years of experimenting with different speakers, amps, record decks etc., my hearing is now about 50% and I have great difficulty determining subtle improvement let alone more obvious sonic definitions. I can still enjoy my music listening experience and in some ways with more acceptance and appreciation than I ever did when continuously listening to the hi fi and not the music. Probably this is quite a widely shared experience.

I live in Italy. I once attended a demo of Magico speakers in the best listening room (maximally sound treated) of an audio store that sold VERY "high end" equipment (meaning VERY costly). The Magico speakers cost $80,000. The DAC was the $110,000 dCS 4 box Viavaldi. The speakers were driven by top of the line D'Agostino monoblocs fronted by a top of the line D'Agostino preamp which together came to about $100,000. I don't know what the power, speaker, interconnect cables were. Nor to I know what server was being used. But I am willing to bet that they were all very expensive. So my estimate is that this system probably cost about $350,000. Alon Wolf, the owner of Magico, had accompanied his speakers and he was the one who set them up in the listening room ( who better to optimally place them?). And... the sound coming from that system, to me, was AWFUL. This could not be attributed to the quality of the soundtracks because for an hour, Wolf play from a minute to a minute and a half of one track after another and they all sounded bad... so bad, in fact, that had I not thought it too impolite, I would have left after 10 minutes. There were approximately 30 of us seated in this room listening to this demo. I am pretty sure that I am not the only one who felt this way because at the end of the demo, Wolf asked for comments or questions and NOBODY said anything. There was just silence. I felt embarrassed for Wolf, so I asked a question... whose answer I wasn't interested in... just to alleviate the tension. Later I was happy to get back home and fire up my very modestly priced, but very pleasant, system. I had already doubted that the cost of an audio system was a guarantee of great sound. This experience cured me forever of even the tendency to wonder about it. As far as I am concerned it was proof positive that there is NO intrinsic correlation between cost and the quality of sound.

I really like this approach because it respects variability - doesn't just TALK about subjectivity, but truly gives it the value it deserves. In my experience, the ABILITY to hear differences between levels of what we call audio quality are based on four things: DESIRE - the ambition to discover these differences, LEARNING - the experience of taking the time to listen, reading what others have said, PERCEPTION - the psychological changes that happen, some beyond and some within our control, and SCIENCE - the arts of acoustics, electronics, physics, etc. that truly affect what comes into our ears. It seems that many audiophiles forget that ALL THREE of these are involved. For instance, I recently attended the AXPONA audio show in Chicago. I heard some fantastic examples of audio, but I knew that being in the midst of that environment was affecting me in all 4 of those areas. i'm never entirely sure of what is changing my experience of audio, but it DOES affect it - including what I pay for my equipment. Why? I don't care. For those so-called audiophiles who focus entirely on the SCIENCE part, I notice there are very few double-blind listening tests. I'm not implying they lie, but I do think very many of the opinions are affected by the other 3 factors I listed and not fully considered because, well, those are subjective, and we can't have that amount of subjectivity now can we?

I found the difference between good & great equipment isn’t about the bass, mid & treble, it’s the hologram-like imaging & stability of the sound stage, even if the high end rolls off with age

I used to work at 2 different hifi and home cinema stores and worked in audio drama production as an audio engineer for 20 years. Often, I sold ultra high end systems to middle to upper class customers and then went to set them up in their beautiful new build house only to find their listening room is hard flooring without any acoustic treatment or soft furnishings. My initial thought every time is "What a waste of money!"

In the audiophile world it can never end chasing the perfect sound, it's why there's a decent second hand market to buy equipment. One thing I've noticed in this hobby, 'everything' tends to make a difference but there is diminishing returns seeking the next step up. It's best to do what's in your budget and at some point simply enjoy the music and not just the system.

A audiophile friend of mine used the phrase "Give a damn threshold" to describe a price threshold for audiophile equipment, it was defined as "if you can't hear the difference, don't buy the difference." Having spent my entire adult life in studio and broadcast engineering, I've always gravitated to the most accurate of references, those that were demonstrably and measurably more accurate. As a side note, I had a radio show in the 80's called Hi Tech that presented subjects like "How to Understand Specs." I also played Half Speed Mastered disks, Direct to Disk and the first Digital Recordings on air in my area. I played examples from "Bach to Rock." I even bypassed the station processing to allow my listeners on one occasion, to hear the digital sample as accurately as the FM broadcast medium would allow. I was the Chief Engineer of the station at the time and I was very careful not to overmodulate. You did not reference the importance of room acoustic treatment which is as the best speakers you can buy will not sound good in a poor acoustic environment. Any speakers in an untreated, small, square, concrete room will not present an accurate presentation of any recording. Having spent a large part of my adult professional life setting up turntables for broadcast and audiophile applications IMO all turntable, cartridge, stylus and tonearm combinations playing a vinyl source, are at best a precision approximation of the recording. Once all the wear factors are considered such as stylus and vinyl wear, not to mention the dust and static accumulation over time, anyone who prefers the "sound of vinyl" to digital recording is not an audiophile, IMO. In that case like many other older technologies that "sound better" to some, I would submit that it's a sound quality that those listeners are accustomed to. I have little doubt that some people have superior hearing and may hear differences that most cannot but should that make a difference to those that cannot? If an individual can't hear that a device is more accurate they are buying the sales hyperbole for what is usually a high price. When I was younger, I could hear 25 kHz and as a trained classical double bassist, I could determine pitch down to 25 Hz. It has rarely aversely effected my enjoyment of a good recorded performance. That being said, a truly great performance transcends whatever technology was used to capture it. I am nearly 70 and I no longer have the hearing range I had but I still have no trouble getting a decent mix and prefer to do multi-track live capture recordings. I do have a fairly extensive discography.

possibly the most sensible video Ive watched this year - it will never catch on

I went to tradeschool for electronics in highschool and we got a lot of broken electronics donated so we could train to fix them, one of such thing was a broken audioligist suitcase for testing hearing, we fixed and it would beep at different frequencies and you would press a button if you heard the beep and at the end it would even print out a graph of your ears frequency response on ribbon-paper. Testing our hearing quickly became a daily competition where we would compete and see who could hear better... we where 15 students competing and we probably tested our hearing hundreds of times over several months. The interesting thing was that the "champ" of the class was the only girl in the class and she could 100% reliably hear up to 23-24khz! Her hearing was extremely good and she would beat everyone else ten out of ten times... I wonder how "expensive" ears she had.. wish i had her earing!

I am not an audiophile but i enjoy the whole ritual of putting a record on and looking at the sleeve art. Ive got an old amp from the 80s and a £300 turntable. Its enough for me.