Audiophile demographics?


Why are there a disproportional number of male audiophiles?
Not sure if this is a silly question, but speaking for myself, I have never met a female audiophile.
I am sure they exist, but their scarcity begs the question as to why.
Is it merely that men have more of the "mine is bigger than yours" mentality, do men love gadgets and tools or is it something more sinister?
128x128tony1954

Showing 2 responses by fleschler

My wife is atypical music lover.   She graduated Stoney Brook as a biology major.  Major sports fan and an athlete.   When I met her, she had a few hundred rock and pop LPs in excellent condition (now  shared).  However, she only loves the opera live and will not sit and watch an opera on video.  She allows me to select the music (too many rock concerts when she was young and now she hates excess highs such as flutes and piccolos).   She is very helpful in assessing changes in our main audio system (very sensitive to sound).   She bemoans the fact that I've made her into an audiophile in terms of assessing the sound quality instead of just listening to the music (I have no problem listening to 78s and imperfect recordings as long as the performance is worthy).  So, I'm fortunate to have a wife I can share music experiences with but who isn't interested at all in equipment (she does appreciate the custom music listening room which is 98% isolated from the video family room on the other side-total isolated in the video room).  75% of her sports viewing time is not shared as I prefer to listen to music.
@artemus_5 Unfortunately, much of the rock from the 80s and 90s that she wants to listen to is not well recorded or mastered so she criticizes the system. The 60s and 70s rock is preferable. Prong, Osborne and Metallica sound more like noise than Allman Bros, Steely Dan and Led Zep. She doesn’t appreciate Yello which sounds spectacular. 78s are more enjoyable to me than Osborne. My high end audio system in my custom listening room can make most music sound good to great but some music is just too much like noise for me. Actually, the 2nd system (better than 95% of audiophiles systems) has 3 10" woofers and are tighter and punchier so that her rock sounds faster. When I pick the pop or classical music (she gets bored with jazz) she just sits and enjoys it. I appreciate her input though as to system changes though. I have 25,000 LPs/7,000 CDs/7,000 78s to choose from.