Reasons: 1 - I'm rational. This may sound insulting, but if you are totally honest about being an audiophile, it includes a lot of mystical thinking and taking things as facts when there's no evidence to back up the claims. Long and short of it is I don't believe in magic and I also know how prone most people are to self deception. 2 - No vinyl. I had records when I was a kid, because that (and 8 tracks) were all there were available. Then I owned a lot of cassettes. Then I started buying CD's and still buy CD's today, because I can rip them and put the music files onto my computer. For me it's all about enjoying the music and not the ritual of messing around with antique media. Having all of my music on a computer is convenient and I can listen for hours without leaving my chair. 3 - Digital vs analog. It's been proven that digital is superior. It has greater resolution, dynamic range and lower noise than analog media. With digital you are listening to the music instead of listening to the music plus whatever other stuff the analog gear adds to it. Did you know that vinyl recordings are equalized? Most real audiophiles shun equalization but have no qualms at all about the one that's in their phono stage. How accurate is it? 4 - Compressed audio. I've tried to hear a difference between a compressed and uncompressed files and couldn't. Granted, my hearing isn't golden, but I've seen similar tests taken by young people who have excellent hearing and they had difficulty discerning a difference. And a difference is just that - a difference. Is one clearly better? If you think it must sound better because it has more information (bigger file), then why do you so enjoy your vinyl records? In reality, records are a form of compression. 5 - "Entry level" amps. I've built amplifiers and I know how they work. They are supposed to provide a louder version of what they are fed, without changing it significantly. So all competently made amplifiers will "sound" exactly the same, unless they are distorting (equalizing) the music in some way. If you want an amp that equalizes the music you are listening to, why not just buy a cheaper (but perfectly accurate) amp and use an equalizer? Be honest about it! 6 - DSP. Digital signal processing. This goes back to the analog vs digital debate and is pretty much self explanatory from an audiophile perspective. 7 - No tube equipment. Again, an antique technology that really should have died out many years ago. Modern solid state can do everything and can even be made to sound identical to the distortion mills that tube amps are. Once more, if you want to EQ your music why not just be honest about it and get a good quality equalizer and do it. Better yet, use DSP. 8 - Cables and interconnects. If they are making a real difference that you can hear, then they are actually degrading the signal. And that includes audiophile quality power cords as well. 9 - Room treatment. Some audiophiles are slowly coming around to the reality that the single biggest factor that affects what we hear (other than our ears / brain) is the room. Room treatment has been showing up over the last few years in rooms where it never was before. And that's a good thing. Most are still not convinced and will spend thousands (seriously!) on a new power cord or ridiculous power conditioner while listening in what amounts to an echo chamber. When your room is untreated, half (or more) of what you are hearing is the room. Better speakers, gear and cabling won't fix that, only properly done room treatment will. And the best part is it allows you to endlessly tinker, if you are so inclined. You can add as much or as little as you like to "tune" the room to sound the way you want it to.

Your channel inspired me to build some open baffle Lii Audio F15 speakers as well as some book shelfs. That said I am also not an audiophile. One day I had a question while listening to my surround system on my tv. Can this sound better in a stereo hifi system? As a guitarist I love tube amps and despite owning several 3k+ guitars I can say my favorite guitar is a $300 knock off. Being rational I decided to build a system and add components one at a time all on a budget. My brother got me cost on some high sensitivity towers from his work and I bought a Willsenton R8. Sounded great plugging my phone straight in. I added a DAC and it sounded better. Then I bought 94% foam panels and treat my room. Wow now we are talking. I have made little tweaks to the system but am completely satisfied running music from Amazon and just having a great time. Thanks for being inspirational and hopefully your videos make you some money.

I know some audiophiles who are audiofools. They spend thousands of dollars on equipment and listen in concrete basements. I fell in love with music when I was a child listening to AM radio on a transistor radio. I love great sounding audio but good music still moves me no matter the quality of the gear.

Really looking forward to future projects on this channel. Thanks, John.

I thought one of your reasons might be hearing loss. 40 years of playing drums in bands and woodworking without hearing protection has not been kind to my hearing. I still collect records and enjoy the experience of playing a record to get away from the computer/phone. I have to wear hearing aids to hear any high frequencies though. Is perfect hearing a requirement for an audiophile? I find it kind of humorous when people over 50 are talking about which record pressing sounds better.

What kind of music do you listen to? Enjoying these videos thank you!

If your are happy listening to music, your an audiophile in my book

I agree with you 100%. I've got a pair of 25 year old MMGs speakers and a mid line Onkyo receiver and it sounds fantastic to me. My dad had $15k worth of equipment and I never heard a difference. With digital... I own one vinyl record because I can't find the digital version .. but don't (and won't) have a turntable. I will say that there can be some differences in compressed vs uncompressed on *some* albums, but I've always contributed that to choices made by the record company/technology of the capacity of a CD. I have 300 CDs and I think there are a total of 2 where I have a newer FLAC download which sounds noticably better.

I think there used to be a huge difference between compressed 128kbit files and uncompressed files but it is more difficult to hear the difference between 256 kbit and WAV. I also used to think that DSP was the way to go until I heard it degrade the sound quality on my digital music playback system. It could have been the software’s algorithm not implementing the equalization correctly to the zeroes and ones. I honestly don’t know why. It technically shouldn’t but it did. Sound differences when it comes to electronic music is purely personal preference but for acoustic there is a notable understanding of what is good and not so good since one can compare to the real instruments. Lastly, there is a sonic difference between amplifiers. It is up to the individual listener to discern if it’s “significant” or not.

I totally agree with #9 which you should have made #1 because regardless of how much money you spend upon high end audio equipment it’s never going to fix the problems and reflections inherent in a room that was not designed to be a listening environment. Room treatment is #1. I spent 13 years teaching Music in a small college. The classrooms were bare untreated rooms and any recordings we played, vinyl or CD’s (it didn’t matter the media) the playback sound was terrible. It’s hard enough to explain music theory, compositional techniques of the world’s greatest composers and musicians when the environment made every musical selection souls like 💩. In some disciplines the classrooms were designed for the purposes of the classes to be offered in those rooms but sound treatment was not even à consideration because the answer was to buy a better amplifier or better speakers and that was a waste of money. They built a brand new fancy rehearsal hall without any acoustic consideration at all and it was so bad it was almost useless for any rehearsal use. Eventually they hired some acoustic “engineer” to do some tests and they did some room corrections which helped a great deal although it did not entirely cure many issues that still remained. The Listening Environment has to be the first step in the process. Equipment can’t fix problems in reflections and absorption. My 2¢.

Analog Has More Low Level Detail & Power Cords. I forgot to say a few things I wanted to mention and this might be my last contribution on here. There's lots of other audio based channels. But yes analog does have some noise. Ticks from lps and hiss from tape; but if you have really good equipment, noise is not a significant problem with analog. My turntable has a really good tonearm. All a good tonearm has to do is hold the cartridge perfectly steady while its tracing a groove without adding resonances, vibration feedback etc. Most tonearms aren't very good, and the stylus instead of being held firm without any extraneous movement, with most tonearms the stylus ends up bouncing around the groove walls laterally like a drunk bounces from one wall to another when he's trying to walk straight. The result when playing records is ticks and pops. Tonearms with outstanding bearings, that hold the stylus firm and motionless results in a much smoother trace of the groove, where the stylus rides in the middle of the groove. A great tonearm can decrease ticks and pops by 400% at least. With great analog playback equipment and good records; noise is not a problem.People who hear a great turntable/tonearm for the first time sometimes comment that the record is aboutt as quiet as a cd. Cd's forte is medium and loud sounds/ passages. Very low level detail is harder for digital to resolve, than the louder sounds in a recording. If you play something with a piano note that gradually dies down to silence, you will hear the decay of the note all the way down to silence with even medium quality analog. Analog unlike digital doesn't really have any resolution limit on picking up very low level sounds. The sound of notes or harmonics decaying are still audible with analog, while the sound just suddenly stops earlier with digital once it reaches it's resolution limit. I like digital too, but analog is king for low level detail and some other maybe even more important things. Digital also has filtering and it has to use some frequencies to do its filtering. Yes, with digital there is a narrow band of missing frequencies, the ones it uses to do its filtering. Explaining dither and stuff like that is too involving right now. Like the speaker cable I spoke of earlier, and interconnects, power cables can make a huge difference, but you have to move far enough up the price chain. They improve mostly the low end but noticeably improve higher up in frequency and even into the treble. But with premium power cords, (unlike speaker cables and interconnects) you will hear the biggest improvements in the bass and bigger image size. Power cords make the same kind of improvement as bigger transformers. The power cord that spawned the whole industry of premium power cords was the Discrete Technology Power cord. Distech wire was used internally for a time in Krell amplifiers. There's a company that ran its course years ago called Virtual Dynamics, who made what became one of the most famous power cords of all time. Still sought after on the used market and capable of fetching a high price, used of course, at auction. Do audiophiles show off? Some of them. Does that make them pretentious? It's lots of "real" money they use to make purchases like they do. Nothing more real than that. Pretentious is a bad word choice for something that is so real. Here's to all us guys who have sound so big and open that our large listening room is still not large enough to let gel the massive air volume of the original recorded acoustic in our room. So the sound has nowhere to go but upward. Yes we do have sound on our ceilings sometimes, even if our speakers are only 4 feet high. You out there, your audio dreams are not fairy dust. They are there right now, if you can get them. They are all quite possible with current technology, but your equipment has to be great enough, and that usually means expensive. Equipment of a class that most people are ignorant of. They doubt not only what is possible, but what already exists.

1: I consider myself fairly rational. If something comes to my attention, it gets analyzed. The clear/green/black CD edge for example. In theory, there indeed may be a small difference in reflection, but that scattered light simply doesn´t matter, it does not get into the pickup. 2: I got a few vinyls, just for nostalgic reasons, haven´t heart them for years. Same applies to cassettes. 3: Digital wins! But I must admit, some recordings or better pressings may have a sound (or media related equalization), that adds a certain "feeling". I may find data about how a certain distributor or press did it in general, but for a single pressing, I don´t know how this was done, so even the best equalizer will not perfectly replicate the respective vinyl. 4: I wouldn´t go beneath 128kBit, but above that the difference is so small, given my equipment and my ears, I don´t really notice. Most of my music is MP3 at 128, some 192, a few at 320kBit/s. Few FLACS are floating around as well, so when I listen to music, it´s from the computer (or cellphone to car radio). 5: Amps, even better ones, unfortunately do have differences. My old Pioneer receiver (bought new), Siemens 777 and an AIWA (the latter two had seperate pre- and main amps) didn´t sound the same, one was fairly crisp, one more warm, one fell in between. Which one did it right? I don´t know! Admittedly, there may have been some aging involved. 6: My current Yamaha receiver offers DSP, but it´s not used. I don´t need to trick my ears into sitting in the MET, my brain knows I´m on the couch! I must admit I also have a Yamaha DSP-E1000, but only because it was cheap and offers/ed surround decoding, reasonably good amp as well. Currently not in use. 7: Got no real experience with tubes, at least not for many years now. Parents got an old phono/radio sideboard, was always on during sunday´s breakfast. It´s still there and will stay with me, nostalgic reasons again. 8: Copper is copper and if the jacks are clean and snug, all is well! If a speaker wire is thick enough to transmit the power and keep the amp controlling the speakers, it doesn´t matter if it´s from the home store at 50 cents per foot. 9: After spending a few years in a very echo-rich office and much later watching your room improvements, seeing super high-end equipment in a spartan living room with perfect, mostly empty walls and not much furniture or decoration in it makes me shake my head! Thankfully my living room is far from that! I think if the music gets into you in a way you can enjoy, all is well. Some listeners don´t even care about quite massive distortion, some want to hear the pedal clunk of Tori Amos´ Bösendorfer or the nuances indicating a smile in the voice of I-unfortunately-don´t remember-that-artist, some want the ritual of putting on a vinyl or even a bakelite, some like the faint glow of some tubes. Some of it isn´t rational, but music by nature isn´t rational.

I stopped being an audiophile in 1989. The day I figured out the audio press treat us like the proverbial lemmings. Driven, compelled to follow their lead. When every month there is something that is so much better than the last month. I started designing my own gear like John and like John I have an analytical mind and a background in Construction. Carpentry and Cabinetry. I ended up designing loudpseakers, amplifiers and then drivers. And I can tell you first hand what the idiots who write in the audio rags are really like. They know so very little about the true nuts and bolts of what makes good sound. They can write and they feed the machine and the willing followers that eat up their drivel. Keep it coming John. Good sound. Realistic sound, as in true to life, which means you have to listen to lifelike reproduction as your benchmark. When you get that. You are done! Mark

I hear you John, heck I still use a Nikko Pro amp and preamp and a BSR digital eq and room analyzer that I bought back in the 70's with a set of Sansui tower speakers and it still sounds great. I am not an Audiophile either lol, but I do like "direct to disk" albums. Plus I have a set if digitally remastered CDs of all Classical music.

It's really sad that the word "audiophile" has become a term that people avoid being associated with like the plague. Previous poster have delineated the reasons much better than I can, so I'll leave it to them. On a positive note, it's GREAT to see you putting out fresh content on this channel, and I'm stoked to see what your new system is all about. Keep it coming!!!

I am not an audiophile, but I have noticed these last 10-15 years that amps, receivers and even crossovers in speakers from some brands like to tweak the sound almost like using an EQ or bass/treble functions. And then takes away the ability to tune the sound for the users. So from my experience speakers had more or less the same sound in my younger days, but not the same quality. so this led to a lot of wasted money buying and selling stuff until I found the correct equipment, So I do like good sound, but I would not have to try all this equipment if these strange features were out there. Now you do not need to be an audiophile to listen to music either, but if you have a decent stereo with a sub to get that fuller warm sound it can add to your speakers u will definitely notice the difference between mp3/spotify and lossless format. So there is a difference, and it's pretty noticeable on sub for me at least. Then there is also the issue that not buying records makes artists suffer. So in a sense, you are ultimately making the artist suffer by listening to poor sound for free. And lastly, when one uses modern speakers like active with Bluetooth and all that you are also getting built-in amps that adjust for compressed sound, so you might notice it less on such devices, but not entirely. (Bluetooth btw is also incapable to transfer lossless format, so it makes no sense streaming flack through it. ) Computers can have good sound depending on the soundcards. If u are just transferring data to an integrated amp with a built-in DAC, then it becomes the same as using a cd player with an optical or coax connection. So that can be good for flack or certain streaming services. I also know audiophiles have picked up on DSP. I mean, it eliminates the hassel with forced eq modification on crossovers. So if you can get a good combo of cabinet and drivers, then why not! I also grew up just caring about the music, but seriously. The sound today is very distorted and stereos were generally good back in the day. now people buy soundbars and all other crapy cheap equipment that just sucks all life out of the music. I know, I've had speakers brand new and big that were not that cheap either but could not beat a budget 3-way JVC speaker back in the day with a good eighties or 70's integrated amp. Today is all about saving money, getting music for free, or less, and listening through Bluetooth on top of the sound wars going on in the music industry where everything is turned up louder and treated so one does not notice the clipping that much.

Room treatment is so important. I wish people would research and put some effort toward room treatment before they spend any money on components. REW is a free software program that along with a $50 mic and a cheap "stereo" will improve the sound more than several thousands of dollars worth of audio equipment. For a good pair of speaker cables just buy a few feet on Canare 4S11 (around $2/ft CDN) and banana plugs.

I'm with you on every point you checked. Physics and Math matter (to me) more than Marketing and Emotions. They don't lie. In the end, the audio and sound experience is what counts.

you spoke for 16 minutes on how you are not an audiophile. You are an audiophile.

*Audiophile?* ... How about being a _Music Lover_ ?

A lot of people who make light of tubes don't realize that the best amps on planet Earth are predominantly tube amps. Both tubes and transistors have their strong and weak points. Except maybe for no holds barred transistor amps that none of us can afford, a good tube amp makes a transistor amp's sound, seem like the instruments are miniaturized. The instruments always sound "bigger" with tubes. The sense of depth and sense of space between the instruments is also much superior with good tube amps. Tubes are also known for their warmth. If you listened to a familiar much played solo piano recording with a good tube amp, you would undoubtedly notice that the left hand keys of the piano (low notes) sound way more generous and resounding than on the transistor amp you were using, which generally cheat you in that way a bit. Also the uppermost keys on the right side generally will sound thin and edgy with a transistor amp. The tube amps make them sound like a plink more than a thin edge, which is correct. And the plink has some body behind it too. The late Harry Pearson of The Absolute Sound said that tube amps are clearer in the midrange. I would agree and I find the midrange is more present somehow, without being as bright or spotlit. So the reasons for tube amps is: bigger instrument size, much more sense of air and space, more smoothness and warmth, and instruments that sound like they have a front AND A BACK, like in real life. Not like a thin paper cutout standup, where if you look at it from the side it's just paper thin. The instruments definitely have more 3D body with tubes. All that + the fact that probably 80% of the best amps on the planet are tube amps is why tube amps exist. Not because of snobbery. 40 tube watts sounds more powerful usually than 100 transistor watts. I guarantee it. Tube watts and transistor watts are two different things. If you do get a clip, tube amps have softer clipping. The sharp clipping of a transistor amp has ruined many a speaker. I like both tube amps and transistor amps. Transistor amps are more for excitement and might often be the choice for rock music; tube amps are better at touching the soul. There are presently over 70 companies manufacturing tube amps. They are more expensive and more expensive to ship, since they have such big and beefy transformers.Unlike most solid state. I use both. Acoustics is very important. Do make sure you have thick carpets, minimal glass, and have absorptive materials in the right places including corners where standing waves propogate. Higher ceilings have much better bloom and height than lower ceilings. Some structures have more solid flooring than others too. Make sure speakers are far from large areas of glass which cause glare in the sound. Absorptive materials in places that cause early reflections can make all the difference.

I’m not an audiophile because logic, reasoning, and facts are important to me. 😊

Wow!!! finally I found my twin soul!! I claim the same statement for several years!! I have an audiophile friend who bought interconnect cables for 1000$ and swear to hear new sound... I am building also speakers using MiniDSP as my crossover. Since I use a DSP I can cross at 32 to 48 db/octave and build the spectrum by 8 channels (ways) thus around one octave per channel. The good stuff is that I am crossing before the amplifiers and use amplifier per channel. I have another friend who likes sound and his critic to my speakers "there are too perfect" and he really mean that. Well, there are so many lies in that religion , like one optical cable is more 'musical" than other... people even invest in digital cable, how ignorant can you be... By the way I loved the craftmanship of your speakers.

i basically agree with all of this, but especially 1, 5, 6, 8 for point 2 - if anything, i can say i'm not an audiophile because i think vinyl is merely 'good enough' - even if it's not technically better than digital. for point 4 - i'm definitely able to hear differences between low-to-mid bitrate compressed (160k or less) which is what spotify defaults to. the strings of classical music easily defeat all but the highest bitrates. i hate IGD (big proponent of linear tracking and fine line carts) as much as i hate the garbled way cymbals and violins turn out when there's not enough bandwidth to recreate the original sound in lossy compression

The age old debate of absorption vs diffusion. It reminds me of the guitar Tonewood debate. Personally I ere on the side of absorption being a recording engineer and making my own sound panels using rockwool. It takes the room out of the equation. For mixing(in a separate room) I use sound panels strategically placed at 1st, 2nd and 3rd reflection points.

Windows 11 and modern computer hardware allows streaming of digital data over USB to a DAC, bypassing the one in the laptop/computer.

Years ago my friends thought of me as an "Audiophile" with my Technics "tower of power" and I used shop at Sound Advice in Toronto. Well my 65 year old ears are now happy with digital music playing on my Bose sound bar with a sub. Sonics are in the ears of the beholder!!

Long time ago, I took an internet quiz that had 128 kbps/320 kbps/Uncompressed wav files side-by-side in a blind test. The 128 kbps was obvious, got them all correct, but I heard zero differences between the 320 kbps and Uncompressed wav files, was just guessing which was which. From that point on, never worried about uncompressed digital files again (or flac). 320 kbps, I think, is as high of quality as the ear can decipher, certainly my ear. I still have records, but more for the ritual than sound. Love digital for making playlists, love records if I want to be immersed in an entire album.

Hi John I don't understand why you don't use your DSP to correct for your room's 'sound' instead of first making a 'perfect' speaker and then adapting the room to the speaker? Isn't it going across the creek for water?

Finally a rational audio guy! I’m glad I stumbled upon your channel!

My music is also from my computer - built a silent PC - it feeds a USB DAC which outputs to an amp then speakers. My music is all either WAV or FLAC. No sense in ripping to MP3 as storage is dirt cheap.

Good reasoning, I enjoy audio and I don't need the best of the best, or things with gold connectors, I enjoy some vinyl but not because I think it's the better quality, but there's just something to handling/holding music like that.

Streaming/compressed music after about a half hour or so gives me a headache. CD's played via an RCA cable do not.

I am an audiophile but not an audiophool. I do have a range of equipment for nostalgia sake, but the majority of my collection is on my computer. No MP3s. Simple measurements can easily show the amount of compression vs the same file in FLAC or WAV. I still prefer passive crossovers between mids and tweets. Generally, no more than 3way.

The only audiophile thing I own is a 50 dollar dac because I could hear my computer working in the headphones when it was under load.

audiophile or not you want and appreciate good sound as do i and i'm looking forward to the next speaker build john. thanx

Reminds me of a friend who said I’m not a xxxxx plug in a political party, I’m a xxxxxx plug in the corresponding political philosophy. If it walks, looks, quacks--it’s a duck. Just because someone doesn’t think $1000 power cables, $1000 hdmi cables, affect the sound doesn’t mean they are not an audiophile, it means they are logical in their approach to improving the sound of their system within their budget. I’m an engineer and not prone to believing hype. I’m searching for ways to improve the sound while like many constantly fighting G.A.S. (Gear acquisition syndrome). Right now I’m focusing on acoustic improvements within the wife approval limitations. I will probably follow that with a dedicated DAC to insure I’m streaming at a quality I probably can’t hear maybe channeled through a dedicated amp for mains, that I probably won’t be able to hear a difference on (it’s a struggle). But….all of these changes have been driven by my purchase and assembly of CSS 2TT-x kit speakers that so improved my stereo listening experience, I can not get enough of just listening and my old speakers are Yamaha NS 1000Ms-no slouch. It’s a journey and I’m a 71 year old that can not hear above 10k but have discovered I don’t need to and rediscovered my love for all types of music.

Seems to me that “audiophile” is a label that is defined nowhere and entirely in the ear of the beholder, even if the beholder is oneself. I would consider myself to be one and yet be in at least some agreement with you on most points. I’m an engineer in the satellite communications industry. Today, all radio is DSP. It’s not possible to build WiFi, cellular or satellite modems using analog components. Only software radio implementations have the frequency stability to implement OFDM. If digital can accurately reproduce complex waveforms in the GHz frequency range, then accuracy in the 20kHz audio band using the same state of the art devices is now a total non issue. That said, no ADC or DAC is perfect either so there will always be implementation differences, some of which may be audible. CD players don’t all sound the same. Cables do matter, again I know this from my work, but again, at audio frequencies they matter a heck of a lot less than at RF. I run $25 or less cables in my setup. On amps, yes in theory they put out what comes in, but of course none of them actually do, most especially where transients are concerned. Then there’s always the interplay between speaker sensitivity, impedances, etc. that is never going to be identical between two different designs. I find there are fairly massive audible differences between amplifiers. I’m not opposed to EQ or tone controls, but I try to buy gear that works for my taste and my room without needing it. There is an audible difference between MP3 / AAC and FLAC to my ears on certain recordings, played through the same setup. You can demonstrate this analytically by comparing the two in software like Audacity on a PC. To my ears the effects are mostly audible in bass detail such as accurately reproducing the plucking of a bass guitar string, and in stereo imaging and instrument placement. They are not huge effects but they can be noticeable in A/B comparison. I don’t sweat this except on my absolute favourite discs where I make sure I have a FLAC copy. A lot of my library is AAC 256 and is just fine. I don’t play vinyl and I don’t have tube equipment. I don’t think being rational and an audiophile are in any way mutually exclusive. I know there’s a lot of snake oil around but I know a lot of audiophiles that don’t buy it.

I believe the equipment and the room make a big difference in quality of sound, however it's about enjoying the MUSIC in the end. From that point of view, I can go along with my mobile phone and headphones. Don't get me wrong, I'm a tech lover on a very restricted budget, but what I appreciate in the end is the effort that musicians made to share their ideas with us.

Well, shame on you John! LOL. I'm the same way. I am renting so I haven't really set up my room, but I have some best buy Klipsch Dual 8" with 1" horn up front, Klipsch radius surrounds for front high, and 2 Klipsch center channel speakers for rear and center surround.[7.2] and a $700.00 Denon AVR. Sometimes it sounds amazing, but I really need to fix these crossovers.

Audiophiles have forgotten that this hobby is all about enjoying music. The focus should be to enjoy music as long as it sounds good on your current system, which does not need to be $500K. Audiophiles lose their way and end up obsessing about "sound". They end up listening to music that they do not necessarily enjoy for the sake of "sound". They end up spending too much money on equipment in their quest to find the "perfect sound". Most of the times I am listening to music from my phone using headphones. I can care less whether it is analog or digital. I do stay away from MP3s.

I cant stand being in a enclosed dark room hearing myself think! I suffer from PTSD worse thing in the world, is a dark room. So I can never be a audiophile. OTOH if you come downstairs in my listen room, depending on your definition of what Audiophile means to you might be different🤙 I don't like to be labeled as anything. I just do my own thing that makes me happy!

you are an audiophile if you enjoy sound reproduction and the gear itself, and have a nice stereo hifi system you enjoy and out some effort into, and can sit an listen to music with no other distractions. thats is about it. i do not know what the hell this other crap is about, who defines it in all kinds of other ways and overthink it, if you spend more on a stupid phone over the years than a stereo system then you do not care. it is about caring how things sound and enjoy it.

My rule of thumb is that if studios don’t need it, neither does the system playing it back (the converse is that it's no surprise that studios spend a lot on room treatment). Sometimes at least there’s a kernel of technical truth to the claims but it gets lost in the overpriced magical nonsense. Clocking/jitter matter in the right places, but no, you don't need a special network switch or directional cables. That said I have fancy braided cables but a) cheap off ebay and b) because they look cooler. And I've definitely overbuilt some of my audio gear, but that's part of the fun I guess :)

I LOVE the rationality reason. Too many audiophiles imagine things. On the other hand, I’m not sure that no vinyl and a preference for digital preclude you from being an audiophile. I think that many modern “audiophiles” share this view. Finally, I think a belief in room treatment is an argument that you ARE an audiophile. Most of the enlightened audiophiles on KZfaq and elsewhere preach the benefits of room treatment.

Regarding cables, you may want to check out Danny at GR Research. I used to be a cable denier but he makes a rational and verifiable case as to why cables matter. He does measurements as well.

Glad to see you back!

I think FLAC is probably worth it, because storage has become so much cheaper, and at the end of the day it's nice to have lossless compression.

I’m so irrationally angry I need a $1000 power cable

To me, an audiophile is just anyone who spends a little extra time or money getting good sound. Like, I'd consider someone who buys a Schiit stack with an HD 6XX to be an audiophile. That's, what, $400 total? And do you need anything better? What really did it for me was the way some people talked about DACs and amps. Like, a DAC just needs to reproduce the analog signal from a digital file right? It should be 1:1, and you can just measure how accurately it does that no? Yet I see people talk about the sound characteristics of DACs like they're speakers. They get DACs that intentionally distort the signal and pay thousands for the privilege. Boggles the mind.

John I agree with you 100% The time for records are past I mewn what is the point? ...its all marketing BS.there is much better sounding media out there or just digital... I do like my high end CD players from the 80's because they are a mechanical marvel in my opinion and I do like the physical media and the CD sound quality also like music on memory stick or hard drive its just accessible and sounds good!! Cabels are BS a waste of money, tubes also a waste of money and there is no power in them its more like a snob thing.!

None of those issues preclude one from being lover of high quality sound. Sure, many audiophile have those beliefs and practices, but those aren't necesarily required to be an audiophile.

I stream over a game console into a cheap avr and a set of very nice speakers and sub. I'm plenty happy

For me, the allure of Led Zeppelin is the drum work. John Bonham was an excellent drummer, and I can appreciate that.

No tubes?? Really? Man. Maybe it is just me, but tubes are just more pleasing to my ears. They immerse me into the music. “But COLORATION!!”, one might say…yeah…and? It tastes better and is prettier to look at through my ears… Like butter, tubes make everything better.

what a beautiful video Indeed, the traditional audiophile is perhaps the worst person in the entire audio community. The absolute lunacy, the disdain for research-backed approach, the egos, the narcissism, all too frequent among "old school audiophiles". Some of them even hate each other, while believing the same things! And those things have no basis in the real world too! Audiophiles are people who listen with their egos, they don't need ears to hear.

I think you’re all making this more complicated than it needs to be concerning the definition of an audiophile. An audiophile is some one who cares more about the hardware side than the average listener. There is some nugget of truth that we audiophiles use music to listen to our gear but you can’t listen to anything (other than live music) without some hardware after all. In the end, the gear (hardware) is in service of the music (software) to provide emotional enjoyment. But unlike most non-audiophiles, the quality and accuracy of the playback (hardware) matters to me more as better sound provides more emotional enjoyment.

The sound on this video sure shows the worms you put into this room. ITV’s crystal clear! I don’t know if that’s rational but “ears don’t lie”

Audiophilia is becoming meaningless. There is so much equipment and offerings today, especially combined with still amazing equipment from earlier eras. Looking for a Holy Grail is an endless proposal. There are fewer listening rooms in audio stores. There are fewer sales people who have the patience to indulge. (Many people are buying equipment online now without ever having listened to it.) You are likely to quickly find something that gives you 98% of what you are looking for. And there is no such thing as a perfect set-up. One needs time to get to know the sound of speakers and the system behind it. Even if one has all the money to spend on it, it is time consuming and room consuming. Add to that you get accustomed to the sound of whatever you're listening to. I like a specific brand of audio equipment. But I have to admit I have spent almost no time critically comparing other well-known audio equipment brands. I wonder if I have even heard some of those brands even casually. I also feel a lot of music genres people listen to these days are not dependent on "perfect sounding equipment" to get the job done.

Me too!

The "audiophile" is mostly just lost in time. They probably were impressed with a system back in the 1970s, and they're still chasing the experience they thought they had back then. The memory of their experience becomes an unatainable fantasy, even though in purely objective terms, even a relatively inexpensive system using todays tech would outperform the system they were so enamored with years ago.

A lot is made of what the term audiophile really means. It's just semantics. It has as many different meanings as there are people in our hobby. To me it used to have a meaning of someone who was a fan of good reproduced sound, and who give it enough importance to spend money in order to get good sound or improve their sound quality. Now I think the meaning for me has changed to someone obsessed, who throws ever increasingly big amounts of money at better and better equipment. I am not that kind of audio hobbyist. I am an inquisitive audio hobbyist who realizes that $10,000 loudspeakers could have drivers in them that you could buy on the used market for several hundred dollars sometimes. I haven't checked the price of wood lately, but you used to be able to buy enough mdf to build a good size speaker for around $40. Crossovers can be bought or built, and some places that sell drivers will even give you advice, if you don't know what you're doing. There's places that sell premium electronic parts too. Having good knowledge of vintage gear is helpful. Much of the best equipment of yesteryear is still great equipment today. Drivers have improved, but if you are knowledgeable I bet you can think of some really good standout driverrs from the 1980s or even before, that were way ahead of their time. Speaker cabinets have narrowed since the 1970s in order to decrease cabinet diffraction or early reflections. Many speakers do sound more focused and less like a box now. With a lot of speakers made now, the emphasis is on clarity and crispness at all costs. The main cost being proper warmth. A lot of speakers even from the 1960s made sure to get that part of the spectrum right.That crucial lower midrange A lot of the old timers don't like modern speakers, finding them hyped and thin sounding, which I won't argue with. However if you look hard enough and listen to enough modern speakers, their are flavors to suit any taste. Except for mostly high end equipment, todays amplifiers don't usually have big beefy transformers like they used to. Transformers are by far the heaviest thing inside an amp, and with todays several times higher shipping costs; big transformers are not economically practical. Especially with reasonably priced gear. An amp wiith big transformers are a big plus sound quality wise, but they are too cost prohibitive at the reasonable end of the price scale. That is one thing that vintage equipment has over modern equipment. There have been some advances in modern amp technology. Not as much as with cables. High end audio with its extremes in price, has set itself up to look like snake oil to many people. And nothing is the object of the conspiracy theorists more than cables. In reality, the right cables can make far more of an improvement in your sound than upgrading amplifiers. Some of the greatest most creative and dedicated minds are working in the cable field. Advancements in the sound quality of cables dwarfs in my opinion, the advances made in other fields, although there are exceptions, and as always there is equipment ahead of its time. It is possible to get pretty good sound using common ordinary hookup wire. But you are doing yourself a big disservice. Without great cables you will never hear what your equipment is capable of. If your headphones are roughly the same quality as your speakers and your preamp has a good headphone input, you can easily hear this for yourself. Plugging your headphones into your preamp, will tell you what your sound quality is, up to that point. Listen to all the detail and nuance and purity your sound has, before the interconnect to your power amp and your speaker cables degrade the sound. Usually by about 60% if you are using nothing special for cables. If you are willing to spend enough money on cables, you can get almost all of that 60% back. That sound quality you are losing from the links, linking your equipment together. Some people who think they could use an upgrade have equipment right now that is good enough to thrill them, if only they knew how much sound quality they are losing between components and from power amp to speakers. Unfortunate that the audio field that has made the most progress, is viewed as snake oil to many. In my experience there are not many great cables under $200, and I haven't heard many great ones at that point either, but there could be some I have not discovered. I have only once auditioned in my home cables that were close to $10,000. They were used, and I could have kept them for a very small fraction of that price. I sometimes regret that I didn't keep them. They were amazing in so many ways. I remember having to disconnect my subwoofer as there was just too much bass. My high quality bookshelf speakers all of a sudden sounded like they didn't need a subwoofer anymore and went way deeper down in the bass than their spec. Their spec at the factory must have been measured with more ordinary cable. Thin speaker cables lose a lot of bass. You could barely wrap your first 2 fingers around these. But in spite of the unbelievably huge palpable soundstage, the liquid smoothness of the sound and effortless inner detail, the cables were just too warm sounding for my system. I found myself only playing brighter stuff like vintage Columbia lps and direct to disc recordings and early Mofis. The cables were so good that I should have actually built another system around them using brighter components and speakers. Don't doubt things that you don't understand everything about. Do experiment. Try to arrange in home money back trials (easy with cables). If your goal is to get sound quality as close to real music as possible; you just might be an audiophile. Although everyone has their own personal meaning of the term.

Lots of dsp discussion and implementation in audiophile discussions AND powered speaker designs actualy

Its easy to define your category... Rational audiophile

make a dsp video

Audiophiles are nuts, I prefer people like you who are like you, enthusiasts, not religious about their audio.

🤣 I love this. Reminds me of the classic tale, "The emperor's new clothes". (by Hans Christian Andersen - early 18 hundreds ) I believe "this" flows over to every part of life. Every word. Language or codex. It is actually scary. What is Truth....

Recommended pairing for this video: I'm Not in Love by 10cc

Great vid!

So, I think you are still an audiophile (in my ideology of the term). I think some audiophiles have an obsession that is unnecessary. I think of those people as audioholics. Just like the disease that fuels a drug addict, they are chasing that high they will never achieve. Or maybe a nicer analogy is the surfer that will never be satisfied with the perfect wave because there is always another one to ride. But, it is all the same. There is a point where rationality gets thrown out the window and obsession takes over.

👍👍👍👍

No room treatment just $300 IEC cables 😂

If you use Room treatments you're an audiophile.

So funny watching you subtly tear into the audiophile sheeps. You are an audiophile, you're just one that is practical and good with his hands

bravo :)

There is no reason to dislike or frown upon or laugh at audiophiles. It is sometimes amusing how much money they will fork over for equipment that is overpriced; which reflects how bad they want good sound. People who have done a few trivial experiments comparing cheap cables and thinking they heard no difference (at that price they could be right), and guffawing that audiophiles pay big money for cables, that they believe make no difference based on their flawed primitive experiments, is understandable. $5,000 cables don't cost thousands of dollars to make. They are priced at that (and well above that) because the designer knows that they make quite an improvement, of a degree that he thinks some audiophiles would be willing to pay that amount, for that said amount of improvement. Of course there is greed involved; as that same cable manufacturer could have probably put a list price on those in the hundreds of dollars. But in high end audio, you are paying for what the manufacturer believes the degree of improvement is, not what a said something costs to make. It's not that most audiophiles are irrational. They love good sound and want better and better sound, and think spending huge amounts of money is the only way to get it. They are not so much irrational as not knowing there are cheaper ways to achieve things. Lucky are the guys like me who are expert modifiers and experimenters, and we can clear the dishes from our kitchen table, replace them with a piece of equipment ready for modification, and before the soap suds dissolve in the kitchen sink, have a whole new level of amplifier or cd player. We can invest our time to get big improvements instead of throwing huge amounts of money buying expensive equipment. What seperates a receiver from good seperates, isn't so much that they are in seperate enclosures, but the parts quality and the sophistication of circuit design inside. Those things can be experimented with; there are almost infinite possiblities. There are down to Earth reasons why a Fisher receiver doesn't sound like a Luxman, Audio Note or Accuphase amplifier. There are limits. A piece of mid-fi gear is never going to sound as beefy or as big in instrument size as something like a Krell or something similar with football size transformers. But it can be brought up to at least shouting distance of stuff like that, by the best of us mod guys. I hear not a hint of grain or harshness in my system unless it's a really exceedingly bad recording. When your system goes up in sound quality in leaps and bounds, records that you thought were gritty sounding recordings, now sound pretty good. Really good sometimes. Because instead of hearing the distortion of the recording, plus the distortion your system adds; there is just the slight amount of edge of the recording, of what before sounded like a bad recording. Your system gets to the point where it is not adding any distortion of its own. So audiophiles spend the money they do, because they think they have to. They are not imagining fairy dust. As I said, everything in audio or for that matter, everything that happens in any field or circumstance has a simple down to Earth reason. Us great experimenters like to dig, get to the bottom of and understand those reasons. In audio, those reasons why something sounds like real music, while something else with virtually the same specs sounds like garbage. Nasal, colored, veiled (there is no measurement for clarity). Our ears are the best measurer and the only relevant one. How sound sounds to human ears is the only important thing. Not how it sounds to a machine. Every audio reviewer in the last 60+ years has mentioned that how something measures, rarely tells us how something sounds. Often it sounds virtually the opposite of what measurements say. Which is why all the great audio designers give priority to listening tests first, measured results a distant second. You can measure everything about a cake, except how good it tastes. Even if our ears were all the same and all of us heard exactly the same, there is just too much out there in audio land for anyone to make absolutistic blanket statements about things. I was going to give a lot of ways to improve your sound, that I'vd not seen elsewhere that I discovered in my 30+ years of experimentations in sound. But I think I will look for a different channel. In the meantime, let's not make fun of audiophiles. They spend a lot of money (most can easily afford it), but if you heard how superior some of their systems sound, your emotion wouldn't be amusement, but extreme envy. Which might be the underlying reason for this kind of thing anyway

Audiophilia is a calling. If you're not an audiophile, there really is only one reason. I am a proud audiophile and feel no shame in being one. Yes, I know vinyl is compressed. When I hear the best record player against the best CD player, I will submit my opinion as to which is better. I did compare a 24-bit vinyl rip to a 16-bit PCM, and found that the vinyl rip was more resolute. Sadly, my hearing is not what it used to be, and I have difficulty discerning between 320kbps mp3 and flac. But I could easily tell the difference on any system a few years ago. Not all interconnects and power cable is snake oil. They can and do make a significant difference. The real audiophools are the ones who poke fun at serious audiophiles who know how to optimize sound. I totally agree that room treatment is of paramount importance - but that can get very expensive and impractical, especially when you don't own the room - or the house that contains it. As an audiophile, I leave no stone unturned to get the most out of my sound. Audiophilia is the capacity to appreciate the nuances in music. It is nothing to be ashamed of. And yes, not all audiophiles think alike. Some even renounce cable (I don't). Some are full of shit. Some do have incongruent philosophies. Don't confuse a subset of a group with the group itself. In this case and in general.

I also am not an audiophile. The quality of the arrangement, composition, orchestration, performance, and delivery (conversions during bounces and optimizations for streaming services) all matter infinitely more than the postproduction marketing BS about how you need THIS cable or THIS plugin. The magic lies in the conversion(s) during productions and the treatments during listening.

Something I hear all the time... " I love Vinyl! I love all the cracks and pops...AND they are superior quality "

An audiophile in denial!

Well, you are an audiophile anyway. You are not the elitistic type. May be you, like me, are just a music lover. Question i, are you doing your best to enjoy your music? If the answer is yes, then you are an audiophile. Obnoxious, elitist people are in every activity. Just don't allow them to steal the name.

You are right sir. You are not a phile. Everything effects the sound. Lol

Bad news - you are audiophile 😄. You point that you are completly reasonable but you do not describe reasons why you find superior to have 100 000 files over choosen by yourself precious music on physical media . You did not mention reasons why You think tratment of your room was realy necessary - did you proof particular disadvantages in original acoustic or you believe it was right thing to do ? You abandoned turntables you had but what was the reason? Most people do not explain it but I suspect they abndoned psyhical media and turntables because all was at any time damaged. And that is for me hardly reasonable if we abandon what we liked before just to avoid reapir. . You say that crossover i is applied before DA conversion? I would be convinced if I could imagine how it is done but realy I can't. Do you know technology of dividing bands without using analog version? Being audiophile means not checking and fully understanding but believing. In my opinion with knowledge which humans posess audio is too complex to rectify fully on reasonable basics. And as we know practice shows just that. You may use reasonable decisions about your tubes only if you know all aspects of it's build and operation and compare to solid state. Frankly I tell you nobody on earth can do it unless he compare two particular pieces with particular spaker systema which is useless for decisions for all others. . When you say it is thing of past it is just one more no reasonable decision

Agree with you. You're saying true things that must shake up some of those audiophiles. They won't take your word for it, I'm afraid. 🙂

Man your mocking laughs are so funny. You're so gonna get sued 😂

Qobuz

Well first you need to define what an audiophile is. Webster says it's a hi-fi enthusiast. So, you are an audiophile, just one that uses cd's and doesn't believe in cables etc. All the points you listed are debated among people most would classify as "audiofiles". I own thousands of records that I've collected over my 70+ years. Is it irrational to buy equipment to enhance my experience because you say digital is superior? That's "audiophile" talk. You're in the 'my way is the right way' camp. Use the equipment you want and enjoy. Why should I care?

This is exactly how I feel. Non-audiophiles call me an audiophile but I'm far from that mark. 😆

All you need are the right cables, lol. Poor John almost broke out laughing like a maniac then.

I just wasted 7 minutes of my life listening to one the most boring presentation ever!

The amount of time and effort you've put into this hobby would suggest otherwise, sir.