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The difference is audiophiles invariably have good results after spending all that money.

by soligern 3y ago

gadders 3y ago
Do they really? A lot of it is snake oil.
- soligern 3y ago
  Not really. You just end up paying more and more money for equipment that delivers what it promises but the relative improvement becomes harder and harder to discern because you begin to approach the limits of the upper end of audio fidelity.
  - gadders 3y ago
    And by the time you can afford all the expensive gear, you're old enough that your hearing has degraded so you can't hear the difference.
    - maigret 3y ago
      How do you mean? With age, one can hear less and less very high frequencies (above 10kHz), but those are not that critical for music. There are lots of old conductors who can hear 100x more details that I ever had. Many studio engineers for super popular pop records are above 50. Most of the listening is actually in the brain.
- meowface 3y ago
  Sort of. (I kind of am, or used to be, an audiophile, so I'm naturally very biased on the subject.) Going from low-end to mid-range is a big jump and mid-range to high-end is a modest jump, but high-end to ultra-expensive is typically "not really better, just (slightly) different". If you're a moderate audiophile then you'll end up with a system that sounds a lot better than what most people will have by default, and then you'll be happy with it and won't change it for years. Given the years of value you get out of it you're not spending that much money. If you're a stereotypical "religious audiophile" maximalist then you'll be chasing the top of the top and buying obscenely expensive things every month or two for years and years without any perceivable improvement over what the moderate has. This can sometimes manifest as the notorious $1000 audio cables but more commonly it's like spending $3000 on some headphones that aren't really better than a $350 pair. And then doing that over and over and over.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

The difference is audiophiles invariably have good results after spending all that money.

gadders 3y ago

Do they really? A lot of it is snake oil.

soligern 3y ago
Not really. You just end up paying more and more money for equipment that delivers what it promises but the relative improvement becomes harder and harder to discern because you begin to approach the limits of the upper end of audio fidelity.
- gadders 3y ago
  And by the time you can afford all the expensive gear, you're old enough that your hearing has degraded so you can't hear the difference.
  - maigret 3y ago
    How do you mean? With age, one can hear less and less very high frequencies (above 10kHz), but those are not that critical for music. There are lots of old conductors who can hear 100x more details that I ever had. Many studio engineers for super popular pop records are above 50. Most of the listening is actually in the brain.
meowface 3y ago
Sort of. (I kind of am, or used to be, an audiophile, so I'm naturally very biased on the subject.) Going from low-end to mid-range is a big jump and mid-range to high-end is a modest jump, but high-end to ultra-expensive is typically "not really better, just (slightly) different". If you're a moderate audiophile then you'll end up with a system that sounds a lot better than what most people will have by default, and then you'll be happy with it and won't change it for years. Given the years of value you get out of it you're not spending that much money. If you're a stereotypical "religious audiophile" maximalist then you'll be chasing the top of the top and buying obscenely expensive things every month or two for years and years without any perceivable improvement over what the moderate has. This can sometimes manifest as the notorious $1000 audio cables but more commonly it's like spending $3000 on some headphones that aren't really better than a $350 pair. And then doing that over and over and over.

deleted 3y ago

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