As we begin a new year (Happy 2024, WBF!), it might be an opportune moment to refresh ourselves and ask ourselves some really important and basic questions. Think of this as a New Year’s resolution for WBF members.
So, the question is: are you an audiophile or a music lover? Perhaps a bit of both (or as we mathematically inclined geeks would put, you are a “convex combination” of attributes that define an audiophile or a music lover). So, what defines an audiophile? What defines a music lover? Are these fundamentally incompatible? Perhaps not, judging from the many hundreds of posts on WBF, people really dig music, but they also love to horse trade with their equipment, seeking to extract every nuance of music from their grooves, tapes, and streaming bits. So, let’s define these terms.
An audiophile is someone who:
1. Spends far more on his/her system than on their music collection.
2. Spends far more time listening to their system than listening to live music.
3. Spends far more time listening to other people playing music than creating music themselves (like playing a piano).
4. Thinks that increasing the bit rate or depth of a digital recording improves its sound.
5. Thinks that stereo or multichannel audio is fundamentally better than mono.
6. Thinks that recordings made in the digital era, or on DSD, or DXD, are fundamentally better than recordings made 60-70 years ago.
7 Doesn’t listen to any music recorded before 1960.
8. Only listens to music sitting in his/her listening room centered between the speakers.
9. Cares about obscure audiophile terms like soundstage, depth, height, transparency, blah blah.
10. Wants to hear the subway trains roll under Kingsway Hall on their favorite recordings (Harry Pearson, hope you can hear me still!).
OK, with that out of the way, let’s turn to a music lover. A music lover is someone who:
1. Is perfectly happy listening to a boombox or an FM radio station or gasp, even shortwave radio (as I did many decades ago as an undergrad!).
2. Has no clue whether a recording is in mono or stereo, or whether it is recorded as an MP3 or DSD 512.
3. Goes regularly to live performances (opera, symphonies, chamber, jazz, popular music, folk, country, …).
4. Can‘t for a moment sit still in a chair listening to music, but must bounce around in the groove, digging the music.
5. Cares two hoots about soundstage, transparency, height blah blah.
6. Has their dealer set up their system, and never touches it again!
7. Tends to hang on to their equipment for 50+ years, only replacing it when it absolutely fails and even then grudgingly.
8, Actually can read music scores, and tends to get bogged down in the minutiae of whether the composer wrote something in C minor or C major.
9. Argues vociferously whether the best conductor was Toscanini or the best singer was Caruso, both of whom recorded their albums in mono on 78 rpm discs.
10. Has no clue at all what high end audio is, until they accidentally hear a high end system, and then WOW!
OK, WBF. What are you? An audiophile or a music lover?
So, the question is: are you an audiophile or a music lover? Perhaps a bit of both (or as we mathematically inclined geeks would put, you are a “convex combination” of attributes that define an audiophile or a music lover). So, what defines an audiophile? What defines a music lover? Are these fundamentally incompatible? Perhaps not, judging from the many hundreds of posts on WBF, people really dig music, but they also love to horse trade with their equipment, seeking to extract every nuance of music from their grooves, tapes, and streaming bits. So, let’s define these terms.
An audiophile is someone who:
1. Spends far more on his/her system than on their music collection.
2. Spends far more time listening to their system than listening to live music.
3. Spends far more time listening to other people playing music than creating music themselves (like playing a piano).
4. Thinks that increasing the bit rate or depth of a digital recording improves its sound.
5. Thinks that stereo or multichannel audio is fundamentally better than mono.
6. Thinks that recordings made in the digital era, or on DSD, or DXD, are fundamentally better than recordings made 60-70 years ago.
7 Doesn’t listen to any music recorded before 1960.
8. Only listens to music sitting in his/her listening room centered between the speakers.
9. Cares about obscure audiophile terms like soundstage, depth, height, transparency, blah blah.
10. Wants to hear the subway trains roll under Kingsway Hall on their favorite recordings (Harry Pearson, hope you can hear me still!).
OK, with that out of the way, let’s turn to a music lover. A music lover is someone who:
1. Is perfectly happy listening to a boombox or an FM radio station or gasp, even shortwave radio (as I did many decades ago as an undergrad!).
2. Has no clue whether a recording is in mono or stereo, or whether it is recorded as an MP3 or DSD 512.
3. Goes regularly to live performances (opera, symphonies, chamber, jazz, popular music, folk, country, …).
4. Can‘t for a moment sit still in a chair listening to music, but must bounce around in the groove, digging the music.
5. Cares two hoots about soundstage, transparency, height blah blah.
6. Has their dealer set up their system, and never touches it again!
7. Tends to hang on to their equipment for 50+ years, only replacing it when it absolutely fails and even then grudgingly.
8, Actually can read music scores, and tends to get bogged down in the minutiae of whether the composer wrote something in C minor or C major.
9. Argues vociferously whether the best conductor was Toscanini or the best singer was Caruso, both of whom recorded their albums in mono on 78 rpm discs.
10. Has no clue at all what high end audio is, until they accidentally hear a high end system, and then WOW!
OK, WBF. What are you? An audiophile or a music lover?
