Sadly, I agree. But I think that audiophiles are an exception. For most people, music is "background"; something not to be paid much direct attention to while one is doing something else. Even dance music fits this model, more or less. But audiophiles tend to sit and listen critically, while doing nothing else.
This is good, except for the critically listening part. Audiophiles do tend to listen critically a lot, the signs and symptoms are everywhere, and it can be a big problem. Because critical listening is at odds with attentive listening.
Not to be tendentious, but critical listening is actually, you know, critical. Actively seeking faults. Typically, since most audiophiles aren’t all they’re cracked up to be its simple stuff like frequency response. For the more advanced ones its imaging, depth, palpable presence, dynamics, detail, stuff like that. This site is positively infested and overrun with critical listeners. Not a lot of religious let alone musical enjoyment in that. So little in fact we even coined a term
audiophilia nervosa for those who cannot simply enjoy music for being obsessed with every little fault real or imagined.
Another sign of lack of deeply attentive listening, the prevalence of streaming. That’s collecting. Streaming is the ultimate absurdity of collecting, letting you live the fantasy of access to literally everything while in reality owning literally nothing. The fact of the matter is listening takes time. Time during which your attention is focused on nothing else. All the hours in all the days from birth to the day you die are nowhere near enough to listen to all of that even if run 24/7/365. There’s more than 24 hours of music recorded in a day. This you are going to listen to? How? Five at a time?
Right. Can’t do it. Can’t sit and pick it all apart either. What I can do is what I do do: get it all nice and warmed up, put on something really good, sit down kill the lights lean back and right about then the needle drops and the religious experience begins.
