She's partially right for sure, but there's some fun in the OCD practices, and the rest of the story is that your tinkering does produce positive results, but she is not tuned in to fine sonic nuances, because it's not her area of interest.
Audiophilia: Is it the pursuit of audio excellence or just a desire to tinker.
So my wife made this observation after I spent a couple hours fiddle farting with cables, connections and speaker placements. She said is this hobby/obsession your desire for audio excellence, or just you like tinkering with stuff, tweaking your system and feeding your OCD?
She said you try this and try that and guess what it all sound the same to me. She really knows me and my OCD.
Enjoy your Sunday.
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Personally I feed this need by building. Whether it is speakers or cables, I find it more satisfying to make something than buying something. I encourage all audiophiles to at least once in their hobby lifetime to build at least 1 speaker kit. They are affordable and rewarding in ways far better than being armchair critics. |
I like to fiddle with my stuff to see if I can improve its sound in some way. Over the years the experimentation has had very positive results, if not in the actual sound, at least in my listening skills. But I rarely go to market for new stuff. My last major purchase was speakers I bought 10 years ago. I got a big attic and lots of stuff. |
@erik_squires I agree and get the same levels of satisfaction doing overhauls on old Cummings and Cat diesel engines for friends. I may get a kit from that fellow on youtube GR Research. @roxy54 You have met my wife 😄 No you are 100% right and she focuses her OCD on planning trips for the two of us. |
Most audiophiles tinker WITHOUT a method ...
And a method suppose a set of priorities ...
Then their quest for best sound is impeded by ignorance and the tentations offered daily by market conditioning with premature and often unnecessary upgrades erroneously presented as THE solution ...I commit this sin by omission for a decade myself ...😁
Upgrades are not solution EVER, save if it is done because the components are not synergetical to begin with ; upgrades done BEFORE understanding what priorities matter in audio when the components purchase has ended with a relatively synergetical system at first listen , upgrades done BEFORE understanding how to embed rightfully the three working dimensions of any system at any price , electrically, mechanically and especially acoustically , Upgrades done BEFORE this understanding are meaningless and costly and deceiving most of the times ... To justify it , people called that their "tastes"... There is no RULING taste concept in acoustic ...It is a marketing trick ...
Then instead of tinkering randomlessly we must read basic acoustics and think about the way to decrease the vibration /resonance level , the ways to decrease the signal/noise ratio and shielding about EMI etc ...
Study, experiment and dont buy BEFORE understanding what you had done right or wrong with a basically synergetical not too costly system first ...
Psycho-acoustics science regulate the gear and the correlated audio experience minimum acoustic satisfaction levels and the optimal one ... Learn some basic ... Forget reviewers speaking about upgrade when you had already a basic system ......
Objectivist as subjectivist are dead wrong because they focus on gear pieces , be it with objective measures or subjective branded name products with higher price tag dont matter ... We must focus on acoustics science and no it is not merely about room acoustic panels here but about the scientific concepts and experiments proposed in acoustic basic ..
Vibrations will affect your experience ans signals noise ratio too at any price anyway ...
It is better to be creative and being the source of our own happiness in audiophile experience then being a passive compulsive customer hypnotized by price tag and perpetually frustrated ...
Take one experiment and one problem at a time and had fun without purchasing anything ... Dont buy costly tweaks replicate them in your own way ...
Pick the only method : Electrical, mechanical and acoustical controls experiments ... What i call " embeddings" to be understood...
Guess why objectivist as subjectivist put times to times a "tin foil hat" on me ?
😁😊
When you are done as i am right now, the time to upgrade if you want too is there , now you will know why, how and with what as i do ...
But my low cost system is so good i dont bother with the nerxt meaningful upgrade which can only be a BACCH filters system coupled with a better dac ... I will stay headphone based with it because my low cost speakers are so satisfying right now that even if they can be upgraded easily i am not tempted to do it ... As you see i know exactly what to do next ... I learned it in evaluating acoustic factors in the audio experience by the way i learned how to control them to some degree , and the improvement of the S.Q. ratio with price ...
By the way "excellence in sound" exist at all price levels in the limits prescribed by the design potential of each component and his right or wrong embeddings and synergy with the other components in some environment .. ...
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Very good question indeed ...
--Without a method it is very often an OCD motivated oscillation between the research of good sound and the fun of tinkering and the appeal to false solutions (costly cables ) or premature or badly oriented upgrades ......
--With a method the tinkering begun to be organized and end with the chosen components ,which cost the owner is able to afford, when the minimal acoustical satisfaction threshold is reached and all working dimensions are under relative control ...
An upgrade on a completely new level is possible then but not sometimes seen as necessary because system well embedded punch higher than we think ... When we are immersed ( and immersive is an acoustic concept with a specific content ) in the soundfield we dont think upgrade even if it is always possible to go higher ... ( minimal acoustic satisfaction threshold is not a stopgap at all by the way because between each component working optimally there is a coherence between each acoustic factors in quality that is impossible in non well embedded system this is optimal synergy for some design quality level ) Just my 2 cents and own experience ... |
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I do not doubt your dedication and own cautiousness at all ...Your questions is only a good occasion to think about the essentials ... My post are only for newbies here to think about a possible "method" ...
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@mahgister it was all in good humor not a dig friend. 🙂 |
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People immersed in this pursuit almost always believe there is something we can do to get "better" sound. Sometimes the means becomes the end, but I think the OP describes the difference between the relatively few who are very serious about this hobby and everyone else. I enjoy my system and have invested a good deal of time and money to improve it over the years. For me, spending a couple of hours in the evening, just listening to music in the dark with no distractions is a very relaxing, rewarding experience. But for most of my friends, music is a background thing. They may listen while they are working out, or have music in the background, while they are doing other things. For this kind of listener, upgrading components, or tinkering with the set up is not going to produce much of a difference in terms of the quality of experience. So they don't really get the point of it. For those of us who enjoy spending extended periods of time, focusing on only the music, even a relatively slight improvement will be satisfying. I think maybe that's the difference between audiophiles and the rest of the world. |
....always have had a ’bent’ for technical things, but have either been employed at depicting, designing, and creating physical objects that had a specific concept and use.... Varied from the architectural ’crafty’ through current large scale ’hewn objects’ for the delight and play of children; yours, your angel grandkinder, and the neighbors’ bratty bunch....😏 Audio, other than in the enjoyment of music of many stripes ’n stars and logotypes, has been a ying to the yang...or the reverse, if I’ve got the polarity wrong... ;) ADD, OCD, nightowl noddles, cast-off silk purses into dB-inducing devices: "DIY’ng the improbable with not-so-much of such." |
I had just made a post in the Home Theater section that dealt with problem solving. I find it much more necessary to figure out what goes wrong in a system that complicated. There is some satisfaction when I solve the issue but it isn’t my idea of a fun way to spend an hour. |
A true passion will often encompass different areas of our personalities. We will want to indulge all of our senses, as well as our sensibilities. We trade in profound nuances! Obsessive tendencies are probably common. It is difficult to put tangible goals on a desire to experience. Some talk of 'endgame' gear, to me that doesn't compute, unless they mean by death, which is probably when I'll stop trying to pursue better sound. |
the answer: |
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why would you thank me for that??? |
It's obviously a personal thing. At first I liked the tinkering part out of necessity to get the sound I strived for and that can last for years. Now that I have the sound my ears wanted, I no longer tinker, at all, I just sit and listen with satisfaction. Only tinkering I do any more is looking for new music on Qobuz :) Audio life is much easier now, got rid of OCD without therapy. |
@cey No she just has the misfortune of being married to me, a gear head, audiophile, engineer. So she is most definitely a casual observer, and the center of my universe along with our children. I am deleting and doing over my post also as I was being overly sensitive and have not had my coffee yet.
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Being an "audiophile" creates the perfect storm where a profound appreciation of music meets childlike curiosity about how things work, and how to make them better. They say "you can’t blame a compass for pointing north." And you can't blame an "audiophile" for trying "one more thing" to improve the performance of a system. My granddaugter asked: "Grampa, why are you always working on your old cars?" Me: "Because I’m always fixing things that aren’t broken." Enjoy the music. And, those zeros and ones, dampening factors, air gap flux densities, Litz inductors, etc. |
@jacobsdad2000 the problem was my negligence not your reaction--i thoughtlessly jumped right into the discussion. all the best buddy. happy listening and keep that WAF high! |
@hilde45 plus 1 While there’s music playing 4-5 hours a day, I try to sit with my eyes closed and truly focus on my system. Sometimes I sit and smile and sometimes I get up and change something. My real Itus, is reading all the reviews and watching YouTube videos and wondering how different products will fit sonically into my rig. |
@curiousjim I try to sit for at least 2 hours in the evening and truly listen, not background noise, but spin up some LP's and fire up the tubes and really listen. Helps me to power down after spending the day fixing the world's problems, well at least the problems in my world. 🤔 |
Easy question! It's different things for different people. Personally, I've always found it odd or difficult to think of what we do as a "hobby", per se. For some, especially those like The Princess and the Pea, who just can't stop tinkering with their systems, I suppose it's more like a hobby. Regardless, the common thread, I think, is a powerful love of music. Some folks are content listening to tunes on a car radio, transistor radio, etc. and probably think audiophiles are nuts for spending the amounts of money we do on our sound systems. This doesn't mean they don't like music. They just don't care as much as we do about the quality of the reproduction of that music. I don't trust anyone who claims not to like music! |
I am amazed by the fact that many people had not discovered that there is a difference between tinkering at random or doing it with a method ... When you do it with a method you reach an optimal threshold acoustically some day and you are done with these level of design/cost components you were using ... You are happy with them... You can then upgrade or not ...The cost will be very high compared to what you have now well embedded .. Most of the times you dont want to upgrade as an obsession because when the success was reached when a method of embeddings controls is applied with many low cost components but synergetical good one , you are in ectasy listening music in an acoustic immersive experrience ... Why upgrading now ? The cost will be very high , in my case 700 bucks headphone/speakers system to a 10,000 probably more 15,000 bucks more for improvement mainly with better dac and BACCH filters and new speakers ... I dont even dream about it because i am in ectasy every evening ... Am i deaf and easily satisfied ? Trust me i am not acoustically easily satisfied then , my system cost is not a stopgap ...The solution is buying the good basic synergetical components and after that a method to solve embeddings control problems , nevermind the components cost...😊 Tinkering at random and upgrading at random in buying spree is not and was not my hobby save the 10 years during which i learned the hard way what i must learn to create my acoustic heaven ...The first in my 72 years old audio journey .... My situation improved the day i begun to read about acoustics and the day i dare to try to modify my 9 headphones because they were all artificial sound nevermind their types and i tried to experiment in my room ... |
No question about it. The more devoted to tinkering the stronger the audiophile mania. I'm an easy one to explain. I am a tool freak and have been building stuff since I was 13. But, how do you explain a guy that has trouble with a screwdriver tinkering away with whatever they can manage? I know several of them. There are levels of tinkering from fiddling with speaker placement to building your own loudspeakers, all with the goal better sound. Where does this come from in us? What evolutionary process developed this instinct? Certainly, if you hear better you can pick up your enemies earlier trouncing through the forest. @mahgister can pick up a mole at 50 yards. |
It is not that i can pick up a mole at 50 yards... It is not true... 😊 You mock me or over estimate me .... In the two case i like your humoristic way to say it ... Learning a bit more dont make you better than others for spotting mole at some distance ... It is the fact that i did not pursuit my tail confusing it with a mole near me ... I did not confuse playing at random and tinkering with solving problems at some moment in my journey, lately Alas! ...I did not confuse the price tag of the gun with the identification of the mole ...And my goal was enjoying a meal made of this mole not playing with a costly gun ...😊
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@stuartk No Christy my wife framed it that way. I know semantics but I do see it as both also. Okay break is over. |
It's both and something else too. It's a lot of fun to tinker, learn, design, and grow in the hobby. Add to that the love of music faithfully reproduced and !Viola! A payoff for your hard work. Most HiFi guys are aesthetics- lovers of beauty, symmetry and perfection. Some call this snooty or uppity but the pursuit of excellence demands dismissal of the imperfect. This can be offensive to the folks who's patron saint is Mediocrities.
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There is three basic areas about which we can experiment ... Tinkering is a more uninformed play than systematic experiments ...We must study a bit here not just play... Electrical , mechanical and acoustical are the three areas to adress for any system at any price ... When all we can do in this areas is finished our system has reach his potential ; before that our system nevermind the cost would not be able to reach his potential best S.Q. No singular upgrade will replace the necessary experiments to embed rightfully the components not even the upgrades of all components can do the job by purchasing his way to the top S.Q. 😊 Money cannot replace studies and experiments ... Sorry ... No measuring tools can magically do the job ... Even the best designed digital tool ever in my opinion , the DSP based BACCH filters cannot replace electrical, mechanical and acoustical embeddings ...And my only future upgrade will be the BACCH filters ...
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@stuartk thanks. |
Changing a cartridge for a way costlier one is not "tinkering" nor it is an embedding control device it is an upgrade of component ...😁 Tinkering is often like walking with your hand without seeing ... We must learn how to control the main three working dimensions of a system... And a search for excellence in sound which never end is not a search for excellence in sound but in most case a mental disease or an obsession ...Any study and set of experiments in acoustic end somewhere ...Any speakers building end somewhere etc ... I listen music now without being frustrated ...I guess i am no more an "audiophile" or perhaps i am an informed one ...😉
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Can't you give it a rest? Your response is not even germane to the OP. |
Sorry but @erik_squires is spot on here ... We must LEARN something ... We must become creative ... We must study acoustics... And acoustic is not merely buying GK acoustics panels sorry ... It is your own post accusation in one line which is not " germane" to the thread matter because it is an ad hominem attack with no content ...The post of erik is a good proposition to learn something out of a BLIND tinkering often motivated by obsession ... And the poster you attacked is a positive contributor by the way more than most here ... Then can you give it a rest and spare us your one line attack ?
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That’s funny because the OP actually weighed in:
As to being germane, I think building and tinkering are very closely related. But as for "giving it a rest" ... no. I find that we, stereophiles, are made better by having more builders and tinkerers. The entire concept of being an audiphile and stereophile was built by tinkerers and builders before there were buyers and sellers. I’m not here to sell a brand or tool but to encourage the visitors here to think about getting dirty with sawdust, solder and tools now and then. Our community is made better for it. That can’t be bad, can it? 😀 |
@erik_squires I welcome your comments and opinions, and agree wholeheartedly that getting ones hands dirty is good, good for the audio soul. |
I think it's different for everyone, as everyone is different. One thing I don't think is discussed enough or often is how the "hobby" or journey can basically just be an addiction for many. An unhealthy one that consumes way too much time, energy, and thought. Money could be added to that list as well depending on the situation. Chasing something that doesn't exist or a feeling that can never be satisfied is not a healthy lifestyle. Researching and obsessing over the next piece to replace the last piece that consumed your mind before purchase. I wasn't trying to be a bummer to the thread and certainly my opinion isn't geared toward all "audiophiles". Some of y'all may even be thinking wtf is he babbling about? My take was something that came to mind when I saw the title of the thread. Reminded me of a time when I came to the conclusion that maybe I invested too much of my time and mental energy into something that isn't a big deal in the grand scheme of life. So just my opinion. |
