Am I audiophile tone deaf?

..an extreme audiophile definition http://www.kenrockwell.com/audio/audiophile.htm

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Likewise, since the late 1980s, the dedicated mainstream home audio equipment world has gone away. No one except a few dedicated music lovers have any interest in big speakers. No longer are magazines like Audio, Stereo Review and High Fidelity on newsstands for the general public; they all died in the 1990s as the world went to home video.

This leaves the music world back where it's never been: only populated by a few hard-core music lovers like myself, and the occasional odd audiophile.

Audiophiles are what's left after almost all of the knowledgeable music and engineering people left the audio scene back in the 1980s. Audiophiles are non-technical, non-musical kooks who imagine the darnedestly stupid things about audio equipment. Audiophiles are fun to watch; they're just as confused at how audio equipment or music really works as primitive men like cargo cults are about airplanes. An audiophile will waste days comparing the sound of power cords or different kinds of solder, but won't even notice that his speakers are out-of-phase. An audiophile never enjoys music; he only listens to the sound of audio equipment.

Since sound and music perception is entirely imaginary (you can't touch or photograph a musical image), what and how we hear is formed only in our brains and is not measurable. Our hearing therefore is highly susceptible to the powers of suggestion. If an audiophile pays $5,000 for a new power cord, he will hear a very real difference, even though the sound is unchanged. Audiophiles do hear real differences in power cords when they swap among them (the placebo effect), but just don't ask them to hear the difference in a double-blind test.

Thank God I'm not an audiophile. Just like a pedophile, the word audiophile is defined as someone with an unhealthy attraction or interest in something; in this case, it's audio equipment, but not music. An audiophile and a music lover are two entirely different people.

Audiophiles adore audio equipment, which is completely unrelated to enjoying music. In the good old days, music lovers only played with audio equipment because they had to, while audiophiles today would rather listen to their equipment than to enjoy music.

A music lover will stop what he's doing and stay glued to a favorite piece of music even if it's coming over a 3" speaker or a public-address system, while an audiophile almost never enjoys music, even if played on a $100,000 hi-fi.
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^^ looks like almost textbook Narcissist - clicked link expecting to see the opening self-aggrandizement and wasn't disappointed.

My grandma was Henry Steinway's personal secretary from 1942-1973, and my parents are accomplished musical performers who met in a chorus. I've been designing my own recording equipment since the third grade, and been training and performing music since the fourth grade.
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You missed out the most important bit of the whole article ;)
 
spoffle said:
Did you just strawman the article? I think you did.
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Did not think his criticism of article/author was out of place ;) - but the article summarised some of the behaviours the word now means ... lol - used to subscribe to hifi-choice

Indeed, I was not sure whether lowrider007 had used the word in an ironic fashion "I spent more money but cannot hear the benfits 'they' promised"

( I need to get that abx comparator s/w running for genuine blind comparsion of recordings/codecs - if only setting up auditioning of kit was as simple, to avoid that buyer remorse)
 
jpaul said:
Did not think his criticism of article/author was out of place ;) - but the article summarised some of the behaviours the word now means ... lol - used to subscribe to hifi-choice

Indeed, I was not sure whether lowrider007 had used the word in an ironic fashion "I spent more money but cannot hear the benfits 'they' promised"

( I need to get that abx comparator s/w running for genuine blind comparsion of recordings/codecs - if only setting up auditioning of kit was as simple, to avoid that buyer remorse)
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It is an interesting one - I know people who regularly do spend a lot of time swapping between cables and evangelising cables in the £100s which 99% of the time is completely nuts but comparing solders might not be as silly as it sounds voltage noise/error can be a factor around the joints of different materials - common types of solder like lead-tin in respect to common metals used for conductors can be around 3-5u V/°C while some more exotic stuff can be lower than 0.5 which potentially can make a difference around the input and feedback loop of an amplifier - look at the lengths nwavguy went to reduce Johnson–Nyquist noise in the O2 amp - and that is a guy that did display graphs, etc. with actual science behind them to back up his claims.
 
Rroff said:
It is an interesting one - I know people who regularly do spend a lot of time swapping between cables and evangelising cables in the £100s which 99% of the time is completely nuts but comparing solders might not be as silly as it sounds voltage noise/error can be a factor around the joints of different materials - common types of solder like lead-tin in respect to common metals used for conductors can be around 3-5u V/°C while some more exotic stuff can be lower than 0.5 which potentially can make a difference around the input and feedback loop of an amplifier - look at the lengths nwavguy went to reduce Johnson–Nyquist noise in the O2 amp - and that is a guy that did display graphs, etc. with actual science behind them to back up his claims.
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I expect you'll be taking your findings to James Randi then?
 
What findings? those are industry measurements by experts.

EDIT: Oh you think I'm talking about cables? I'm talking about the circuitry around the feedback loop in an amplifier - the article linked above passingly takes a swipe at it while decrying people for not being engineers which is kind of an own goal.
 
No those people are just nuts - I have no idea if solder in relation to cabling has any significance or not (I suspect not). The author in the article just took a broad swipe at it without specifying in what context they were criticising people testing different solders.
 
Finally,

Sorry for the delay, I've had a couple of stressful months with work, I canceled my Marantz order as had a few extra expenses come up, I had to buy a new TV which was annoying as was trying to eek out my old one until OLED came down in price, anyway first world problems aside,

This landed on my doorstep today, an Audeze Deckard,

NDGMdeT.jpg


You might of seen it for sale in MM, was quite surprised nobody else grabbed it as it had been on there a while dropping in price, in the end I it got for £350, I've only been auditioning it for a couple of hours but first impressions are very good, I can actually notice a marked improvement over M-Stage HPA-1, unlike the mdac+ which I was very unimpressed with, although I do think I came to the conclusion that the mdac+ was a DAC first and foremost and a headphone amp second.

The Deckard sounds a lot more neutral compared to the M-Stage, much better control over the bass, the bass actually slams now, I would say the treble is a little on the hot side with the Grado's but pairs really well with the K712's, a lot of people seem to describe this amp as warm sounding, but perhaps I'm used the M-Stage as this doesn't sound very warm to me, it sounds very clear and detailed with maybe just a hint of warmth on the midrange, I wouldn't want to use HD800's with this amp, I would imagine it would be too fatiguing, I have a feeling the HD650's would sound really nice on this amp, being an Audeze amp I'm guessing this might be tuned a little towards their darker planers.
 
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I saw you bought the Deckard, would have been tempted myself if I felt the need for something new.

Glad you like it, looks really good as well, love the high quality simplistic design. :)
 
Hi-Fi is like beer. When you get to thinking "this is lovely and makes me feel great, I want to and stay like this all day", the big mistake is thinking that MORE will make it even better. Just stop at your happy point and enjoy.
 
What do you make of this? Granted it is from 2013 and sparked a lot of touchy people, heh!

 
Logan is a clown with very little understanding of what he's talking about and besides, it's basically a sponsored ad for the Mayflower O2 considering the manufacturer (assembler would be more accurate) is his guest, who at that point knew not much more than Logan.
 
I think with anything some people are more sensitive to differences than others. I've changed things on my HiFi that most would not notice, but there making a different to myself and others.

It's the same with car handling and suspension, I've got a Honda Integra some people swear they can't feel any different from a rear strut brace being added, I can feel flex being removed and the rear dampers working a little harder, then others say no difference. As said some people just not sensitive or understanding to things.
 
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