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Why are audiophiles perceived as being wackos?

I have been pursuing this wonderful hobby of high end stereo equipment and music for almost 30 years. I do consider myself a passionate audiophile who loves to listen to music on a daily basis. The reason for this post is because it has been my experience that the great majority of people who do not pursue this hobby think of audiophiles as being wackos/screwballs because of the amount of time, money, and passion they put towards their systems. I find it very interesting that individuals who spend tremendous amounts of money and time pursuing esoteric tastes such as wines, watches, coins, etc, are considered connoisseurs or aficionados with a serious passion that is often respected even if it is not the other person's cup of tea. Another example would be people who love high end cars/boats who read all the magazines, go to the shows and invest large sums of money to purchase and tweak their cars or boats to get the last bit of ultimate performance out of their prized possessions. So I don't believe the negative viewpoint towards passionate audiophiles revolves around the amount of money that they can invest in their equipment. So my question for all you GON members is what would be your explanation for people outside our hobby having such a negative or condescending attitude towards our passion, where they infrequently would not have the same attitude towards other people's hobbies and passionate but unique pursuits? It would be a pleasure to hear about your experiences and what your explanation would be for this phenomena towards our hobby.
teajay
sns
3,003 posts
 
Cwlondon has it correct in that marketing plays a large role in creating wants/needs. Our culture is absolutely inundated with purveyors who influence and anticipate our every need. Material items that were previously uneeded or not even thought about suddenly become necessities!
I can just about guarantee you that if a huge marketing campaign equating Dale Earnhardt Jr., Nascar, and beautiful women with high end audio were undertaken the masses would begin to see high end audio as a cachet item, and perhaps a necessary possession. This type of campaign spit out at the masses in endless repetition over many months and years would result in the mass delusion of believeing high end audio as necessary as 4,000 square foot houses, $40,000 cars, $20,000 boats, Budweiser beer, pizza, Pepsi, etc., ad nauseum. If you couldn't afford it now you could certainly aspire to it. Hell, they could even set up mortgage like accounts for those that wanted $100,000 systems, 4 or 5% 30 year loans for stereo equipment. Every house on the block could be shaking from the boom, boom, boom from 30" subwoofers. The sudden realization hits me that perhaps I wouldn't like this world ;-), I think I may have to find another obession!
wellen
19 posts
 
An audiophile is (almost) definable as someone willing to go to great lengths/expenses to achieve improvements in sound quality that are very subtle (compared to, say, the difference between hearing a junk "shelf system" literally on a shelf and hearing the same system properly set up in a correct configuration for actual stereophonic sound reproduction) - and in some cases, frankly, of dubious reality. Moreover, many of us obviously enjoy some sort of element of wackiness, whenever we proudly describe to others these aspects of our system (e.g. my "audiophile grade" electrical outlet).

Even if *music* has the universal importance that many audiophiles somewhat optimistically suppose it does, that is obviously not the same thing as *audio* having any importance. For most people, the job of an audio system is simply to produce a *recognizeable tune*. That's it. If they can hear enough to be able to hum along, the audio system is doing its job, and doing it entirely. The concept of doing it better is almost meaningless to them, and so the concept of spending large amounts of time or money to make it better is bound to seem bizarre.

In my experience, fairly few people have ever, even one time in their life, used an audio system for its theoretical purpose, to create a *sonic illusion* that you are hearing a musical event in some other acoustic space. I don't know how many would have any sort of "revelation" if they did, but until they do, we can all expect to be thought of as wackos.
coffee_nudge
120 posts
 

Maybe because most words that end with "...phile" typically describe "wackos" of some sort. ;-)
fatparrot
1,314 posts
 
Selective and biased perceptions!
chadnliz
3,736 posts
 
I was thinking the same about the "Phile" tittle, and I agree Coffee_nudge
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