Are you a music lover or an audiophile?

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SachinChavan said:
the focus of our audio odyssey shifts from music to sound - gradually but surely. And the inner motive shifts from joy to excellence.
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Very keen observations, Sachin, and I’m totally with you for the most part.
However, I’m not sure if ‘excellence’ is the right nomenclature.
There is definitely a joy in making your system sound ‘better’, and hearing your music they way you really want to.
The shift that you talk about is spot on. But I feel it’s a shift from joy of listening to the music, to joy of listening to the system.
 
coaltrain said:
Very keen observations, Sachin, and I’m totally with you for the most part.
However, I’m not sure if ‘excellence’ is the right nomenclature.
There is definitely a joy in making your system sound ‘better’, and hearing your music they way you really want to.
The shift that you talk about is spot on. But I feel it’s a shift from joy of listening to the music, to joy of listening to the system.
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Coaltrain, there’s a simple litmus test to decide if it’s the ‘joy of listening to the system’ or ‘striving for excellence’. Once you get the sound that pleases you, do you find yourself putting a stop to the improvement (say for the next six months at least) and settle down to listening to the system? Or with a week or two you find your mind spotting the gaps in what you liked before and looking for ways of improving further? Over the last few months that I was overtaken by the sound (over the music), it was the latter for me.
 
Fiftyfifty said:
Yes, I fully agree about the monos sounding good. I find their stereo recordings, even the later ones like Sgt. Peppers and Abbey Road have a strange kind of unnatural separation. I first thought I had bad pressings.
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They were mixed in 60's with 60's idea of what stereo should sound like. The Beatles spent days mixing and producing the mono cuts and hours producing the stereo cuts.

The newer mixes of Sgt Pepper and The White Album sound different, and what stereo should sound like today. They most recent mixes of Sgt Pepper and The White Album are produced by Giles Martin, son of George Martin, using 60's equipment where possible.
 
Fiftyfifty said:
Love to hear from others
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As per Cambridge Dictionary: "Audiophile is a person who is very interested in and enthusiastic about equipment for playing recorded sound, and its quality".
As per Merriam Webster Dictionary: "Audiophile is a person who is enthusiastic about high-fidelity sound reproduction"

So with regard to Audiophiles, Americans and Britishers are almost on the same platform. It is about hi-fidelity sound reproduction. Neither of the top two dictionaries mention if Audiophiles actually enjoy music, which is indeed a sad part.

Music enjoyment is a very personal aspect, and is neither restricted to non-audiophiles or audiophiles.
It is just that audiophiles apart from enjoying music, are also analytical about the equipment they use for reproduction and try to achieve more fidelity (which again can be to some extent subjective).

Since I am into lots of editing work late into Fridays and Saturdays, I do listen for long hours into the night for at least 2 days in a week.
I am indeed an audiophile, but do not allow that to be totally outweighed as defined in the dictionary to over ride my enjoyment.
I do take a pragmatic approach keeping in mind the financial limitations and do a lots of DIY to scale that limitation.

Here are some other reasons I am an audiophile:
Cables do make a difference
Speakers are and can be voiced to suit a particular taste in music
Speakers, amplifiers, preamps and DACs can affect the music reproduction quality
Source quality is very important
 
SachinChavan said:
So to summarise, it’s not the absolute quality of the sound of their system that defines audiophiles, but their continuous striving for excellence in the sound by researching, experimenting, fine tuning, upgrading, revamping et al.
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This type of person is definitely an audiophile. However there are audiophiles who upgrade only in phases. You can test and setup a system and forget the hardware for couple of years. When you have the urge to upgrade because you experienced something better or more meaningful, you can go into testing mode to make the change happen. I know many audiophiles like this. I am guilty of this behaviour as well. This is the only way for me to focus on music. Constant upgrades will keep you in the sound testing mode forever.

I also happen to know some folks who are very educated in acoustic principles and work with acoustic treatments and proper system setup/choices to achieve outstanding sound at a fraction of the cost. They are also audiophiles.

Striving for excellence in sound quality is an audiophile behaviour. People approach this in different ways though.
 
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Kannan said:
... Neither of the top two dictionaries mention if Audiophiles actually enjoy music, which is indeed a sad part.
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As long as they are enjoying it why be sad for them..they are happy :) . If someone just wants to listen to movie dialogues from an LP and be happy , then so be it !

Maybe we do not need to put people in a box and label them with terms like Audiophile/Music lover..there are so many variants/permutations almost as many as there are people in the hobby. At least for me, it also changes based on ones mood !
 
Visiting USA, had a chance to listen to a Spyrogyra concert at Yoshi's Oakland a few days back . I was surprised that my simple harbeth based home audio , matched the world class jazz club tonally , however Yoshi's sound was far more dynamic .Probably ,my audiophile pursuits helped me as a music lover to enjoy the concert more as instead of being overawed by the sound , I was on familiar ground and could concentrate on the finer points of the music.
 
himadri said:
Visiting USA, had a chance to listen to a Spyrogyra concert at Yoshi's Oakland a few days back . I was surprised that my simple harbeth based home audio , matched the world class jazz club tonally , however Yoshi's sound was far more dynamic .Probably ,my audiophile pursuits helped me as a music lover to enjoy the concert more as instead of being overawed by the sound , I was on familiar ground and could concentrate on the finer points of the music.
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Yes Himadri, I agree with you. I have been listening to live jazz at the Village Vanguard in NYC every year for almost the past 10 years, and will be visiting there again next week. I enjoy music at the Village tremendously, but regardless, I enjoy recordings made at the Village more in my home system. Yes dynamics of live music - at-least - imo cannot be matched by any home system (maybe some huge horns can get there) but for every other attribute I find home systems are equal or better.
Cheers,
Sid
 
One really dont need to be audiophile to enjoy music. If it was so, then i think our ancestors would have never enjoyed music. Real art is to enjoy music on our systems (whatever they are) without getting urge to upgrade or trying to better it constantly. Feeling content is feeling awesome.
 
coaltrain said:
There’s a similar sentiment echoed by Jason of Stereophile in the video I posted earlier. He’s interested in hearing every little detail picked up the microphones during the recording process. For him, the actual live event may not even provide the same level of musical satisfaction.
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sidvee said:
I enjoy music at the Village tremendously, but regardless, I enjoy recordings made at the Village more in my home system.
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As I said earlier, audiophiles prefer a much higher level of detail in their music. It’s not about enjoying music; everybody does. It’s about how you enjoy it. Nothing wrong with that.
 
In his cult book 'Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance' Robert Prisig describes the enjoyment and beauty of riding a motorcycle across America whilst constantly endeavouring to tune it and bring the machine up to the highest standard, each component, each stroke of the engine, performing perfectly. Must read if you haven't!
 
Fiftyfifty said:
In his cult book 'Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance' Robert Prisig describes the enjoyment and beauty of riding a motorcycle across America whilst constantly endeavouring to tune it and bring the machine up to the highest standard, each component, each stroke of the engine, performing perfectly. Must read if you haven't!
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Right book to recommend here :)
 
Fiftyfifty said:
In his cult book 'Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance' Robert Prisig describes the enjoyment and beauty of riding a motorcycle across America whilst constantly endeavouring to tune it and bring the machine up to the highest standard, each component, each stroke of the engine, performing perfectly. Must read if you haven't!
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Been a fan of the book in college days back in the late 80s. Unfortunately Robert Pirsig developed schizophrenia.
 
firearm12 said:
One really dont need to be audiophile to enjoy music. If it was so, then i think our ancestors would have never enjoyed music. Real art is to enjoy music on our systems (whatever they are) without getting urge to upgrade or trying to better it constantly. Feeling content is feeling awesome.
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Not really. Back then you heard live music in smaller settings like a darbar or rangmahal/jalsaghars. They must have been designed for acoustics. Moreover, kings and nawabs employed the musicians who had resources to work on fine tuning and innovating their instruments which kept evolving all the time. That wouldn’t have been possible without audiophile motivations. Just that they didn’t have to work with electronics and speakers.
 
My two cents. I listen to plenty of Rock, Western Classical, Musicals, some Indian classical on my hi res system. I use the same system to regularly listen to Hindustani and Carnatic music, much of which was recorded in spool tape, transferred to MP3.

Much of the low res is divine, but only lacking in resolution, which is fine. But if it is harsh, then it is not listenable, and I have to edit the files in audacity (low pass filters principally) to make them listenable. One listens to such music for something else, not resolution or fidelity. I listen a lot to Balamurali, and his voice was magnificent, even on my Telerad valve radio listening to AIR Madras relay on SW in late 70s.

But if I were listening to Pink Floyd, I would settle for nothing less then best resolution. I would look to avoid silent, compressed re-recordings (on which I wasted a few thousand bucks last year). I used to enjoy it a lot on my far lower res system many years ago, but I have aged as an audiophile, and cannot go back and enjoy that sound quality anymore. In audio we can only travel forward.
 
Kannan said:
Music enjoyment is a very personal aspect, and is neither restricted to non-audiophiles or audiophiles.
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Agree to the above.
I take my son to the hindustani classical music class, Listening to teacher , students (sometimes in sur otherwise be-sur) , tabla and sitar, has been most enjoyable thing for me yet.
 
Fiftyfifty said:
In his cult book 'Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance' Robert Prisig describes the enjoyment and beauty of riding a motorcycle across America whilst constantly endeavouring to tune it and bring the machine up to the highest standard, each component, each stroke of the engine, performing perfectly. Must read if you haven't!
Click to expand...
The protagonist has a nervous breakdown. All because he questions Phaedrus.
Just chill and listen to the music; there is always a better sounding box.
Cheers,
Raghu
 
sidvee said:
Yes Himadri, I agree with you. I have been listening to live jazz at the Village Vanguard in NYC every year for almost the past 10 years, and will be visiting there again next week. I enjoy music at the Village tremendously, but regardless, I enjoy recordings made at the Village more in my home system. Yes dynamics of live music - at-least - imo cannot be matched by any home system (maybe some huge horns can get there) but for every other attribute I find home systems are equal or better.
Cheers,
Sid
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Yes.Just returned from a Bela Fleck and the Flecktones concert at Fox theatre Oakland San Francisco. The line array system at the venue was far more dynamic but tonally there was nothing to choose between my humble home system and the venue.The second part of the concert was mind blowing.Jazz fusion at it's best.
Cheers
 
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