Audiophiles

[nudist18]

So, who here has a hobby collecting audio equipment? Mostly the high end, sonically accurate stuff? Also, if you aren't one of those people, explain why? Is it the price of the equipment such as headphones and amps? Or is it just not that important? Give me some insight folks!

[Dan]

So, who here has a hobby collecting audio equipment? Mostly the high end, sonically accurate stuff? Also, if you aren't one of those people, explain why? Is it the price of the equipment such as headphones and amps? Or is it just not that important? Give me some insight folks!

Because audiophiles can't make the difference in blind test between expensive monster cables and coat hangers, because manufacturers sell the same equipment as both high-end and mid-range, you just have to remove the foam they put to dampen the sound in the cheaper one to get the high-end model and because the human ear isn't that sensitive so the difference doesn't matter much.

In short, I believe you are buying a very expensive placebo.

In the event that I am wrong and there is an actual difference, behavioral economics demonstrated that my happiness with better sound would be short-lived and that in a few months at best I wouldn't enjoy my better equipment more than I enjoyed the old but now I would have to keep spending that much money or suffer a decrease in happiness. This is also the reason why I don't care yet about HD/blu-ray.

[brandon]

To my ears, there is an enormous difference between horrible compression such as satellite radio and CD, and there is a difference between a live broadcast and a recording.

There is certainly a difference between my excellent speakers and my merely decent speakers.

I doubt that Monster cables would make a difference over a short distance except for extremely loud music. If they are well shielded, they would keep out interference.

[Dan]

I doubt that Monster cables would make a difference over a short distance except for extremely loud music.

Monster cables make no difference over short or long distance with soft and loud music. If you bought an expensive power cord for your computer, it wouldn't run faster either.

To my ears, there is an enormous difference between horrible compression such as satellite radio and CD, and there is a difference between a live broadcast and a recording.

Of course. There's also a difference between the sound that comes out of your phone and the sound that comes out of your CD player. There's a difference between equipment you can buy at the dollar store and more expensive equipment.

There is no meaningful difference as far as human perception goes between good equipment and very expensive equipment. There's no meaningful difference between a raw picture and a good quality JPEG. There's no meaningful difference between a good quality MP3 and a FLAC file.

Things aren't better because they are overpriced. Now if only the management at the company I work for could understand that, I wouldn't work with crappy software that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars.