I agree Al and that’s why I decided to share the review of the Elba here in another thread. I just didn’t expect it to get much traction here and that’s not a knock in any way.
It can be quite intimidating to come to a forum and see intense discussions about $200k speakers and $50k amplifiers consistently. You kind of feel like a tadpole in the middle of the Pacific. I steered away from here and a few other forums for a while until I felt I had the knowledge base to actually contribute.
What’s best forum is a fantastic place. There are a lot of things in its DNA that make it difficult to attract the millennial audiophile though, for better or for worse.
I also see a growing trend in my generation to completely dismiss such things as cables even when differences are heard. Maybe it’s the information generation, but it seems like most of them don’t know how or don’t want to actually trust their ears.
I’m impressed with your thoughtful reply. You raised some very good concerns and although by no means do I want to suggest that my comments reflect those from all members in my age group (I’m 68), here are a few thoughts you might find worth considering.
Of course budding audiophiles most likely don’t have the resources to pursue some of the uber gear that more affluent members do. I know I certainly didn’t when I was your age. But being able to afford costly gear is different than admiring great gear and aspiring towards improving my system as my resources allowed. I think that’s a worthy approach for any audiophile and in that context, reading about what others find to be good, better or even best, can be useful indeed.
When I was younger, I took apart almost all so called “audiophile” gear and tried to make it better with what were often low cost or reasonable cost parts modifications. It was what I could afford. It didn’t take me long to figure out that non-inductive Vishay resistors or Black Gate capacitors often made significant performance improvements to some of my gear over factory parts. Changes like this only came about because I would read about these improved parts from other hobbyists and soon learned that “the best” was often not outrageously expensive at all. The same is true of certain tubes in a given applications. Here, as in other contexts, the word “best” can often be a rather meaningless descriptor. More likely, it was learning what others considered the strengths and liabilities of certain component parts, and then try things for myself to figure out if they worked for me. The point is, aspiring towards “the best” (again, not necessarily a great term) did not necessarily mean buying something with a lot of zeros in the price. I suspect for many of us, similar activities of incremental improvement was the essence of the hobby (which complemented the enjoyment of the music we played on our gear, which was the “other” half.)
I would add that for me, frugality still reigns supreme. I can certainly afford fancy cable lifts that raise the cables off the floor and cost several hundred bucks for a set. But I prefer over-sized rubber laboratory stoppers that do it for about 75 cents each. "Best" does not have to cost a lot of money. I have seen that over and over from some of the tricks I learned on this forum.
Although I and others may be fortunate so afford some gear that indeed costs a lot of money, that is a clear distinction from aspiring to better gear and sonic improvement as one’s journey continues along the audiophile road. The aspiration part does not require unlimited resources. Neither does admiration. Seeking to learn from others who have a wide range of gear, experiences, and musical taste is not the province of any particular age or resource capability. To equate that with being a young audiophile with limited funds, which seems to be your premise, is therefore something I find troubling.
I do understand however that the millennial generation came of age with the tremendous benefit of having great music portability and access at the expense of truncated bandwidth (i.e. MP3) to enjoy that music, and perhaps this has unwittingly placed a burden in which their favorite medium is predisposed to the bias that you seem to suggest, which is that the goal and purpose of this forum is to aspire to the BEST but only at an expense that makes it hard for millennials to get there. Moreover, the idea that many of us would not take the thoughts of our younger members seriously has no merit as far as I can tell. After all, you guys probably have somewhat better hearing than we do, so why wouldn't we want to hear about gear according to what you folks think?
I hope you and other young audiophiles will continue to be enthusiastic participants on the WBF. We all have much to learn and share.
