Does it have to sound good for you to like it?

If it’s not Karajan, forget about it. This from a jazz guy!

Years ago I performed a series of music/spoken-word concerts with a local symphony orchestra. The conductor walked me through the music on a boom box. At the time I thought it odd that a musician wouldn’t have a nice stereo, but then I realized that 1) his peripatetic lifestyle probably wouldn’t have room for such a thing and 2) why would you bother with an expensive stereo when you stood in front of 60-plus live musicians every day? ;-)

Exactly! We “audiophiles” (frankly, I hate the term) need to stop getting so defensive at the suggestion that very expensive audio equipment and the obsession with all its trappings are necessary for the appreciation of the music. It is not. It sure as hell is a lot of fun to have a great sounding system and play with its setup, but whether we want to admit it or not the obsessive pursuit of highest end sound can also be a major distraction from focusing on the music and all of its nuances and riches. I believe that is all that Parsons meant with his comment. No need to get bent out of shape over it.

Parsons has videos on youtube on his home gear and speaker setup. He owns pretty expensive stuff. All his recordings sound great - at home. Perhaps because he knows home music reproduction well.

But hey - people discuss Ethernet cable performance. Surely they know networks more than any network stack engineers. Who is Alan? Just a recorder of some Pink Floyd… 

@macg19

Great quote. That is exactly what I do, sometimes.

 

I actually think it is not a great quote.

First of all, it seems to lump all audiophiles as one monolithic block of listeners, who care much more about their gear, than the music. Which I believe describes a minority of audiophiles.

I have actually met Alan Parsons several times. A great friend of mine was one of the leading experts in the world on analog synthesizers. When he worked at Moog toward the end of his life, he met Alan and they became good friends.

I actually confronted Alan on this quote while at my friend’s house, and he literally used the "no true Scotsman" fallacy on me. He said if I love music more than my gear, I am not an audiophile.

He is a great guy. And a really good musician. But he is simply wrong.

As far as using my gear to listen music, or listen to music to listen to my gear. I do both.

For the vast majority of time, I listen to music, and pay almost no attention to how my gear is performing. I am a music first audiophile.

But that doesn’t, every couple of weeks, for several hours, I can’t also have loads of fun by just paying attention to my gear, and maybe making changes to speaker placement, adjusting room treatment, changing out a piece of gear. I am temporarily a "gear first audiophile".