The Absurdity of it All

@stuartk

"But, back to my main focus, audiophilia would appear to require a willingness and an ability to rapidly shift our primary focus from one lobe of the brain to another."


Yes, this is perhaps the most unpleasant and challenging task faced by thinking adults in the world today.

How to bypass over self awareness?

I first noticed this phenomenon as a student when I became aware of the pitfalls of pursuing a path of academia - especially an arts based path, but maybe sciences too.

How was it, some of us wondered, that some untutored musicians could write such beautiful and timeless music (eg Lionel Bart) and yet some of most highly qualified professors of music couldn’t write anything interesting?

Ditto for writers and professors of literature as well.

That’s when the dreaded realisation that creation and analysis are entirely two different things!

Suddenly the self imposed prisons of academia became visible as you realised why people like Lennon and Dylan thought so little of critics. In fact it was Dylan who wrote the lines that me and my friends sometimes liked to quote to excuse our laziness.

"Your sister sees the future
Like your momma and yourself
She never learned to read or write
There’s no books upon her shelf"

Of course in real life Dylan was extremely well read, but we kind of saw his point.

Anyway I guess you could say the same for listening for pleasure and listening to monitor. As soon as you become conscious of listening it seems to detract from the enjoyment side.

Perhaps this is why so many hearken back to the days of childhood before they learned to analyse anything? Pink Floyd seem to have virtually made a career out of this phenomena. Perhaps it’s no wonder that so many artists prefer to leave this business (adult) side of things to managers so that they continue to play in their childlike creative state.

For us audiophiles this transition between the two modes of thinking sounds fairly simple when we write it down but unfortunately this journey can be virtually impossible on occasion.

I still remember the words of what one dealer wrote some 30 years ago as I was climbing on the lowest rungs of the Hi-Fi ladder.

He casually confessed that even he with his top of the range incredibly out of reach uber expensive (Linn/Naim) system had days when it just didn’t do anything for him.

That’s quite a daunting thing to read when someone is writing that about a system that costs 30 or 40 times more than yours.

A respected Hi-Fi dealer at that!

That’s quite a daunting thing to read when someone is writing that about a system that costs 30 or 40 times more than yours.

A respected Hi-Fi dealer at that!

I like your posts....

This one also....

Just a remark about the last sentence...

Hi-FI induce neurotic reactions because people dont focus on basic first and second are hypnotized by the costly gear...

In reality a "relatively good" audiophile experience cost peanuts if you stick to basic: mechanical, electrical and, most important, acoustical embeddings controls...

I proved it to myself...

Anyway my deepest regards....

cd318: 

I'm in agreement with your observations. 

I rarely "listen to monitor" except when evaluating potential purchases  I usually find upgrades very stressful although I've managed to make good choices. Having to re-establish system synergy after upgrading a component can be dicey but again, I've done allright. 

I don't have the funds to regularly channel many thousands of dollars into audio, but the mere fact that I can afford modest upgrades every so often renders me suceptible to the very same syndrome you describe affecting the frustrated audio dealer. If one "listens to monitor" (or, said another way, pays more attention to sound than to what is being communicated by the music) one can easily miss out on the simple joy of listening for pleasure. 

I find that after an upgrade,there's a "honeymoon period" during which I tend to spend more time listening, due to the novelty of "better SQ" and over time, as my ears become habituated to the improvements, I tend to listen somewhat less. Inevitably, the upgrade bug bites, and at that point, I have to decide whether to ignore it and deliberately focus more upon connecting with the music or give in to the desire for novelty, in terms of resuming the ongoing quest for "better sound". 

I guess it's actually a blessing to not have too much money to spend on this hobby. Otherwise, I can see how one could spend all one's time chasing novelty, which would evaporate more and more quickly as one increased the frequency and cost of upgrades. One could end up like a hamster on a wheel, chasing something impossible to catch. 

I guess what I'm suggesting is that it's a matter of mental discipline to manage the part of us that craves novelty and try to keep ourselves (mostly) focused upon that "child-like" pleasure, if in fact, that's one's top priority. I recognize it's not this way for everyone. 

I get the frustrations of this hobby.  The biggest obstacle these days is just being able to hear the gear somewhere.  It's not like the 70s and 80s when hifi shops were as common as CVS.  It's hard to optimize a system with limited opportunities to test and try various components.  I just revised my stereo system a few months ago.  I am absolutely enjoying it and focusing on software now.  The music is glorious and some days makes my eyes wet and some days gives me goose bumps.  And yes, there are days that it leaves me lukewarm too.  The music is the same but state of mind varies.  It took every bit of 5 months to revise my system and since I just retired it allowed me to focus much of my time on this hifi project.  I do not change gear often- about a decade or more on average.  This project started with a 2+ hour trek to a high end audio store.  I could easily hear what I was missing.  So I budgeted a good sum of monies and started the journey.  The difference this time was not having to decide between food for the month or a new turntable, preamp, etc.  I listened and researched.  It was quite the effort with some unexpected great successes and a few failures.  The key is time and effort.  Like someone else said, "if you cannot easily tell the difference then go back."  Once I get to a point that I am satisfied I am able to forget about the gear and enjoy the music.  Making decisions about what gear to buy or changes to make is exhausting and stressful- like a building project.  Once finished it is satisfying to have it and use it.

@stuartk, sorry about my delayed response. The visceral sensation is created by frequencies below 300 Hz. It is in this region that room acoustics cause the most trouble. Go to a rock concert at a large indoor venue and you get very powerful one note bass, boom, boom, boom. Go to an outdoor venue and you get beautiful bass. However, small indoor venues like Jazz clubs and larger indoor venue where acoustics were appropriately managed like Boston's Symphony Hall can give you wonderful sound.  But the small rooms we usually listen to our systems in literally choke the bass below 100 Hz. Getting these frequencies right requires clever acoustic management, a lot of power both amplifier and driver and digital room control. Very few if any speaker systems have the ability to produce bass accurately, they do not go low enough nor can they project that kind of power into a small room listening environment. I hear this all the time, "but, my speakers are rated to go down to 30 Hz." Right, at one meter in an anechoic environment. Put it in a room and you are lucky to get anything with verve below 80 Hz., virtually nothing below 40 Hz. If you try to correct these systems digitally they start distorting because they can't handle the power and many amplifiers just do not have the power to do it. To get it right you have to have a lot of subwoofer power and a lot of amplifier power. A point source system requires at least two 15" or four 12" drivers to do it with reasonable distortion levels. A line source system requires four subs 12" or larger. This will get you to 100 dB with low levels of distortion which is enough to replicate the visceral sensation you get at a concert in a room with good acoustic management. You can play a concert video and feel like you are at the concert and in many ways it is even better than a real concert. You get much better visualization of the musicians, the sound quality is actually better than at most large indoor concert venues and you do not have to deal with parking and crowds.   

cd318, what is going on is we are being screwed, all of us, every last one of us. Our money is being forcibly removed from our pockets and spent on maintaining political power and accumulating wealth usually to make corporations and certain voting blocks happy. We should all be fighting together to stop this. They are getting us to fight instead with each other. We need term limits and campaign finance reform fast before we become a police state. Humans need a reason to perform. Without that reason they devolve into apathy. The second amendment is not about guns. It is about keeping our government at bay. Watch what happens when they are not scared of us any more.