The audiophiles condition

[electric beach]

I found this article quite insightful comment on the audiophile condition.

www.positive-feedback.com/Issue8/auroville20.htm

[Thing Fish]

The worst thing about having 'audiophillas' is not having the money to upgrade.

Or perhaps it should be not having the money to fritter away on meaningless crap.

Go figure...:scratch:

[electric beach]

I liked his idea of recognising and understanding that experience and development of listening critique has the flip side of "getting into" the music less - or less easily. Then consciously dealing with the situation to get more pleasure from the journey rather than having the frustration that the end game moves further away, just out of reach, the more you learn and the more your system develops.

There was a question in recent weeks here somewhere, asking whether one can learn to listen better. It seems inevitable that will happen with experience, but hold on to the innocence may be better advise.

[synsei]

What a wonderful article and the proof of it can be easily demonstrated:

The day before yesterday, courtesy of eBay, I took a trip up to Manchester in the car to pick up a pair of Atacama SL400 speaker stands for my B&W DM2's (the abundant richness of facts is relevant to this post incidentally), armed with great hope that they would further enhance my speakers abilities (oh, the irony!).

Of late I'd become aware that my system wasn't performing to my expectations and I had, either fairly or unfairly, laid the blame firmly on two components, my stands and my speaker cables, so I immediately sought to rectify this terrible situation forthwith. I ordered a pair of new Belkin cables for a very reasonable price, again from an ebay seller, and bid on and won the aforementioned Atacama's. Both items cost me well under twenty quid each. RESULT!!!.

Armed with a memory stick full of music to plug into my Renault's natty ICE system, I set off on my long Mancunian trek with high expectations, an optimistic delay dodging sat-nav, and enough 'choons' to keep a music critic in employment for at least a week (tip: To keep your sat-nav sane, don't ever utter Birmingham and M6 in the same breath whilst sitting in your car. It will hear you, promptly wipe its own memory and then gibber uncontrollably :stalks:).

My playlist for my Northern quest was comprised of a selection of cheerful ditties from the 70's and 80's by such august acts as Fleetwood Mac, The Electric Light Orchestra, Erasure and Depeche Mode (cheerful? Really? :eek:). As I slipped smoothly onto the A14 just off the southwestern edge of Kettering (anyone who regularly negotiates this particularly obnoxious section of souped up cart track will know I am being economical with the truth here), I proceeded to roar off towards the Catthorpe interchange at the speed of a lethargic racing snail, constantly battling overtaking lorries that just couldn't. This gave me plenty of time to listen to the music, and also pretend in futility that the asynchronous rapping of my fingers on the drivers door capping was actually a symptom of rhythmic symbiosis, and not, in actuality, born out of sheer frustration.

After eventually negotiating the hell that is the Catthorpe Interchange, I eventually made it onto the M6 and entered three lanes of relative nirvana (only when compared to the two lanes of unbridled hell that is the A14 of course :eyebrows:). It was at this point that I became aware of a weird, croaking, warbling noise coming from somewhere within the passenger compartment of the car. It became quite unsettling for a short period until I suddenly realized that it was my own voice attempting to sing along to the car stereo. :scratch: "When had I given it permission to perform this seemingly impossible task?", I surmised selfishly. I would have been more than happy to share my surmising with somebody else, had there been any 'somebody elses' in the car, but there weren't. There weren't even any miniature people in the glove box to do a little surmising with :(

It was around about then that my consciousness decided it would probably be best to regain control of my ears before they got bored and wandered off to explore the strange and surreal world that exists under the front seats of cars (It's a fact that the carpets under every driver and passenger seat harbour tiny insurgents who steal money from your pockets. At least, that is the shocking conclusion of the infamous conspiracy documentary and internet sensation, Loose Change. :doh:).

Once ear control had been reaffirmed, I realized with unbound joy that the sounds emanating from the speakers in my car were actually pretty good, insidiously good in fact, if my embarrassing attempts to vocalize my enjoyment were anything to go by. Now, we are not talking Audiophilia here, no siree. I entertained no thoughts of mounting the cars speakers on teeny, tiny stands attached to the door trims. Neither did I consider propping the car up on four large oak cones for better sound isolation, I reckoned the tyres would see to that quite effectively. No seriously, all thoughts of a tweaky nature fell out of my head and into the footwell (where presumably the penny pinching pocket insurgents squirreled them away to tiny carpet caves in the Transmission Tunnel Mountains), as I simply began to enjoy the 'music'. I sang and tapped my way to Manchester without a care in the world, and what's more, I sang and tapped all the way back again without a hint of audiophile angst whatsoever.

So, I asked myself the question: Why? Why, when I'm at home, do I whittle on about bass that's not quite there, midrange that's not quite in the middle, treble that's more accurately described as two and three quarters? Why indeed? My theory? I think it is because, in the car, I'm busy driving and observing the road. Most of my attention is taken up by these tasks, leaving the small part of my brain that isn't busy to simply enjoy the music. So, I've learnt a salient lesson. I will no longer take a slide rule into my listening room. Instead I will just sit down, close my eyes, and listen to the music.

Incidentally, the stands and cables sound bloody fantastic... :doh:

[Ali Tait]

Whatever you're on, I'll have a pint of it!

BTW, which Renault do you have?

[prestonchipfryer]

What a wonderful article and the proof of it can be easily demonstrated:

The day before yesterday, courtesy of eBay, I took a trip up to Manchester in the car to pick up a pair of Atacama SL400 speaker stands for my B&W DM2's (the abundant richness of facts is relevant to this post incidentally), armed with great hope that they would further enhance my speakers abilities (oh, the irony!).

Of late I'd become aware that my system wasn't performing to my expectations and I had, either fairly or unfairly, laid the blame firmly on two components, my stands and my speaker cables, so I immediately sought to rectify this terrible situation forthwith. I ordered a pair of new Belkin cables for a very reasonable price, again from an ebay seller, and bid on and won the aforementioned Atacama's. Both items cost me well under twenty quid each. RESULT!!!.

Armed with a memory stick full of music to plug into my Renault's natty ICE system, I set off on my long Mancunian trek with high expectations, an optimistic delay dodging sat-nav, and enough 'choons' to keep a music critic in employment for at least a week (tip: To keep your sat-nav sane, don't ever utter Birmingham and M6 in the same breath whilst sitting in your car. It will hear you, promptly wipe its own memory and then gibber uncontrollably :stalks:).

My playlist for my Northern quest was comprised of a selection of cheerful ditties from the 70's and 80's by such august acts as Fleetwood Mac, The Electric Light Orchestra, Erasure and Depeche Mode (cheerful? Really? :eek:). As I slipped smoothly onto the A14 just off the southwestern edge of Kettering (anyone who regularly negotiates this particularly obnoxious section of souped up cart track will know I am being economical with the truth here), I proceeded to roar off towards the Catthorpe interchange at the speed of a lethargic racing snail, constantly battling overtaking lorries that just couldn't. This gave me plenty of time to listen to the music, and also pretend in futility that the asynchronous rapping of my fingers on the drivers door capping was actually a symptom of rhythmic symbiosis, and not, in actuality, born out of sheer frustration.

After eventually negotiating the hell that is the Catthorpe Interchange, I eventually made it onto the M6 and entered three lanes of relative nirvana (only when compared to the two lanes of unbridled hell that is the A14 of course :eyebrows:). It was at this point that I became aware of a weird, croaking, warbling noise coming from somewhere within the passenger compartment of the car. It became quite unsettling for a short period until I suddenly realized that it was my own voice attempting to sing along to the car stereo. :scratch: "When had I given it permission to perform this seemingly impossible task?", I surmised selfishly. I would have been more than happy to share my surmising with somebody else, had there been any 'somebody elses' in the car, but there weren't. There weren't even any miniature people in the glove box to do a little surmising with :(

It was around about then that my consciousness decided it would probably be best to regain control of my ears before they got bored and wandered off to explore the strange and surreal world that exists under the front seats of cars (It's a fact that the carpets under every driver and passenger seat harbour tiny insurgents who steal money from your pockets. At least, that is the shocking conclusion of the infamous conspiracy documentary and internet sensation, Loose Change. :doh:).

Once ear control had been reaffirmed, I realized with unbound joy that the sounds emanating from the speakers in my car were actually pretty good, insidiously good in fact, if my embarrassing attempts to vocalize my enjoyment were anything to go by. Now, we are not talking Audiophilia here, no siree. I entertained no thoughts of mounting the cars speakers on teeny, tiny stands attached to the door trims. Neither did I consider propping the car up on four large oak cones for better sound isolation, I reckoned the tyres would see to that quite effectively. No seriously, all thoughts of a tweaky nature fell out of my head and into the footwell (where presumably the penny pinching pocket insurgents squirreled them away to tiny carpet caves in the Transmission Tunnel Mountains), as I simply began to enjoy the 'music'. I sang and tapped my way to Manchester without a care in the world, and what's more, I sang and tapped all the way back again without a hint of audiophile angst whatsoever.

So, I asked myself the question: Why? Why, when I'm at home, do I whittle on about bass that's not quite there, midrange that's not quite in the middle, treble that's more accurately described as two and three quarters? Why indeed? My theory? I think it is because, in the car, I'm busy driving and observing the road. Most of my attention is taken up by these tasks, leaving the small part of my brain that isn't busy to simply enjoy the music instead of analyze it. So, I've learnt a salient lesson. I will no longer take a slide rule into my listening room. Instead I will just sit down, close my eyes, and listen to the music.

Incidentally, the stands and cables sound bloody fantastic... :doh:


Thanks for your brilliant post. Certainly has brightened my day. :lolsign:

[MartinT]

Or perhaps it should be not having the money to fritter away on meaningless crap.

You seem a bit down at the moment, Dave. Everything alright?

[keiths]

And the award for "Gratuitous Use Of the Quote Button" goes to...

:rofl:

[synsei]

Whatever you're on, I'll have a pint of it!

BTW, which Renault do you have?

A 2011 Renault Grand Scenic 1.5 DCi Tom-Tom. Sounds like a dodgy 80's electro-pop band :lolsign: :cool:

[electric beach]

I'm of the opinion that low fidelity systems deliver the midband where most of the music resides, without the 'distraction' of misbehaving frequency extremes. Just an opinion.

If the range is balanced and the volume up enough to give the illusion of some dynamics, then I can get carried away. I heard Take 5 playing over an outdoor cafe speaker one day and it literally stopped me in my tracks. No room interaction, boomy bass or edgy treble. Just a very open sound that was rhythmic and infectious. We would call it musical. I called it quite a few names 'cos the system was nowt spesh.

[Toby]

lol, its like some sort of disease, trouble is reading forums it can be contagious :eyebrows:

[hifi_dave]

With a boom box, tranny radio or TV, you aren't expecting much and so you are not disappointed. Your 'quality filter' is set to low and you don't listen to the equipment, just the music..
I'm of the opinion that low fidelity systems deliver the midband where most of the music resides, without the 'distraction' of misbehaving frequency extremes. Just an opinion.

If the range is balanced and the volume up enough to give the illusion of some dynamics, then I can get carried away. I heard Take 5 playing over an outdoor cafe speaker one day and it literally stopped me in my tracks. No room interaction, boomy bass or edgy treble. Just a very open sound that was rhythmic and infectious. We would call it musical. I called it quite a few names 'cos the system was nowt spesh.