Are Audiophiles Music-Lovers?

[semente]

I don't know if this tale has been mentioned here before...

 

Are Audiophiles Music-Lovers? by Keith Yates

 

"Like many audiophiles I have often sped home from a concert to fire up the audio system, and then, to the sore vexation of my wife and guests, spent the rest of the evening plunged in the morbid contemplation of what, exactly, was missing."

That's how I led off a piece for Stereophile a few years back (Vol.11 No.4, p.58). Live, unamplified music---the sine qua non, the benchmark, the mantra, no?

 

Most of us desperately want to believe in this "absolute sound," but is it possible that for the majority of our tribe it remains a ritualistic chant, intoned by many and practiced by few? There is fresh and troubling evidence. Peter McGrath, a friend, fellow high-end dealer, and noted recording engineer, estimates that, as a group, audiophiles spend 100 hours reading about tone cones, speaker cables, and audio miscellany for every hour spent in the company of a flesh-and-blood orchestra, chamber ensemble, jazz trio, or blues group. Says one industry guru, who insists on anonymity (nearly all of them insist on it), even disgraced televangelists show more integrity: They may have trash cans full of empty booze bottles, and bimbos scattered around town, but at least they show up to church every Sunday.

 

(...)

 

In 1989 I undertook to set things right-side up, to do something that had never been attempted in the history of audiophile retailing: I designed and built an ambitious, state-of-the-art, high-end facility around a real live concert venue. Not a concert hall pieced together from leftover scraps of space in some remote corner of the building, nor merely a regular shoebox-style soundroom with space for 20 or 30 folding chairs that masqueraded as a concert hall, but a real, up-front-and-center, built-from-scratch Concert Hall. Accommodating up to a dozen performers and an audience of 140, my concert space was the store's centerpiece, its cynosure, its core.

 

(...)

 

Over the next 18 months Keith Yates Audio staged regular chamber concerts by the leading musicians in the region---generally the concertmaster and assorted principals of the Sacramento Symphony. We did the piano and wind quintets of Beethoven and Mozart; string quartets of Haydn and Debussy; an evening of Bach with harpsichord, flute, and violin. There were duets, sextets, octets; little pieces by Vivaldi and Villa-Lobos, Poulenc, Scott Joplin, Pierre Boulez; virtuoso guitar works, cello showpieces. A joyful vocal recital with San Francisco Opera soprano Sara Ganz.

 

(...)

 

Local musicians cooed over the splendid new venue with the great acoustics. The local papers and NPR radio station ran enthusiastic reviews. An editor from the New York Times phoned, trying to figure out whether their business or arts section would be the best place for the story. High-end retailers started showing up from around the world to see what the fuss was all about and to snap pictures for the staff back home.

 

(...)

 

There was only one little hitch. My audiophiles---the ones who for a decade had been buying their gear and magazines from me, swapping favorite recordings with me, and reading my articles---never showed up. Oh, they came during business hours to audition the Levinsons and Krells and Wilsons and so on, but they were nowhere to be found during our evening concerts or even during the music-appreciation lectures put on by the symphony association. I tried everything: in-store signs; notices in the newsletters; a little story in the local classical station's magazine; private mailings; personal appeals; phone calls in the night. The excuses were richly varied---audiophiles have fine imaginations---but somehow halfhearted, and often sheepish, as if some unsavory little secret had been dug up. I was stupefied. Customers who'd spent thousands and tens of thousands on state-of-the-art components to "capture that elusive magic of live music" wouldn't let me sell them a $15 ticket to the real thing. I couldn't give them tickets. So who filled the 140 seats? Regular people who read about it in the papers, people who went home to maybe $600 worth of ratty old Sansui gear driving epileptic speakers wired out of phase with 22-gauge zipcord.

 

(...)

 

Read more at Are Audiophiles Music-Lovers? | Stereophile.com

[master]

Nothing gets folks more riled up than talking about love for music vs love for equipment.

 

I can see this one headed there.

 

A good read though.

[firedog]

I think almost all audiophiles are music lovers at the beginning, otherwise they would find some other type of tech to be addicted to.

 

That said, some become so addicted to the hobby that they start to care more about the equipment than the music. There are definitely those who can't enjoy the music because of audiphilia nervosa, or because they've descended into only listening to "audiophile" recordings.

 

As far as the situation described in the post, I assume the original writer is exagerrating a bit. If he was having only classical music shows, that would explain some of it - as lots of music lovers won't go/pay to hear classical. It may also be that many audiophiles preferred listening to their super expenisve systems. That doesn't mean they don't like music.

 

Clearly a lot of the members here do go to hear live music regularly.

[realhifi]

Back about fifteen years ago the local hifi shop did a similar thing to what you are describing. Had concerts that were free, nominal costs on drinks, snacks. It was a huge success and people jammed the place. Difference? They had local jazz bands, folk duos, electronica, etc. No classical. Their clientele was not centered around classical music and both their cd sales and their conversations showed them what their clientele was listening to.

My experience follows that almost to a t. I think you can't pigeonhole audiophiles into one group and different groups are very different in their participation at live music events.

[Paul R]

What an appropriate and thought provoking article!

 

I am not sure that I agree with all his conclusions, mostly because there are nearly infinite combinations of music/equipment preferences in audiophiles.

 

One rather arguable point is about this concept of "the absolute sound" - as in I do not think it exists. Compared to some of our audiophile systems, the sound of the music at most live music venues is flat out horrible.

[semente]

What an appropriate and thought provoking article!

 

I am not sure that I agree with all his conclusions, mostly because there are nearly infinite combinations of music/equipment preferences in audiophiles.

 

One rather arguable point is about this concept of "the absolute sound" - as in I do not think it exists. Compared to some of our audiophile systems, the sound of the music at most live music venues is flat out horrible.

 

I have found in most instances that un-amplified music performances sounded quite good whilst many rock, etc. gigs sound loud and bad.

 

R

[esldude]

Hey try going to some music fairs. Some of it sounds bad, some good, but unamplified you don't find it hard to find something interesting.

 

A large one I have been to a couple times is the Tennesse Valley Fiddlers convention. They have some pro acts, and it has a competition for best player on a few traditional instruments. What makes it worth going is a huge crowd shows up. Among them hundreds of musicians. They walk around and randomly group together and start playing. Dozens of such impromptu groups playing various songs. It goes on for 3 days. You will find something worth hearing there.

 

There are various other small fairs around if you search them out. Not living near a large metro area with lots to choose from this can stand in pretty well. Though you won't find classical music there. I have wondered how it might go over if someone held an outdoor chamber music festival. Let people show up and play chamber music for people to gather round and listen to as they please. It might be a non-stuffy fun way to promote more enjoyment of classical music.

[Cycleman]

One rather arguable point is about this concept of "the absolute sound" - as in I do not think it exists. Compared to some of our audiophile systems, the sound of the music at most live music venues is flat out horrible.

 

Well, for sure, this concept of "absolute sound" is far closer to fantasy than reality.

And you know why?

Live music and recorded music are different media.

 

Let me repeat, with the volume turned up: DIFFERENT!

 

Step back for a moment and answer this question:

Are live theater and movies the same or different media?

Raise your hand if you think they're the same.

Whoa, no raised hands that I can see.

Why not?

With live theater and movies, aren't both based on performers acting out stories?

 

Now to music.

With live music and recorded music, aren't both based on musicians performing music?

 

Ah, but by recording the thing -- whether music or a movie -- you entirely change the medium from the live event. The recorded thing is repeatable, which for many is part of the pleasure. Sometimes, or often, the recorded thing is spliced together from different parts, to create at its best what seems like a seamless whole. And most of the time, increasingly for movies, recorded things are experienced at home.

 

But neither music recordings nor movies are live.

That's not a problem, just a difference.

The problem is when people expect recorded things to somehow -- through some form of magic -- be the same as live things.

 

Ah, but live music and live theater are not exactly repeatable, even if they might seem so. And you cannot splice each one together, since the performers are naked on the stages, creating their arts. And nearly all the time, live things are experienced away from home in public settings.

 

So, the executive summary:

Those people who think audio equipment, the toys designed for recorded music, should at their best make the music-listening experience just like live performances are expecting a fantasy to come true. That's just the same as if those people who watch movies criticized them for not being like the play they saw on the stage.

 

This is not a problem.

Separate media, separate pleasures, even if the pleasures of live music and recorded music are related pleasures.

 

If "absolute sound" is still your holy grail, then, keep praying.

The rest of us will just enjoy the music, however it arrives to our ears.

 

Dave, who would say that while he prefers recorded music and movies to live music and theater that he still loves hearing music live and going to plays where the performers in essence put their souls on the line

[Richard Dale]

I have found in most instances that un-amplified music performances sounded quite good whilst many rock, etc. gigs sound loud and bad.

 

I am a music lover first and an audiophile second, but the 'trained listener effect' that is a consequence of being an audiophile has had an impact on my enjoyment of live music.

 

For instance, I went to the Manchester Jazz Festival last year and was a bit upset by the quality of the sound in the main venue - a tent in Albert Square. The drums and cymbals were often sounding distorted and unlistenable, and I hadn't noticed that problem in previous years. However, on one gig, a set by GoGo Penguin everything sounded just so - I felt there was a large jump in sound quality on the bass and drums. I went to ask the sound engineer who I had seen mixing the previous gigs with poor sound quality about why it sounded different. He told me that GoGo Penguin had brought all their own gear in the way of microphones and so on, and their manager was doing the mixing (oops! a bit of a faux pas). He thought the GoGo Penguin's microphones lost 'dynamic snap' - but it would have been too rude of me to say that I thought he had been driving those mikes with 'better dynamic snap' into overload and ruining gigs for a lot of the past week.

 

The next day a different sound engineer was using the same microphones and although I didn't think the sound quality was a good as the GoGo Penguin gig, I found it was still perfectly acceptable and I only felt the mikes overloaded about three times in the whole set. So after that gig I went to speak to the engineer and told him about the mike overload problem and how I thought he had done a better job than the previous sound engineer, and he was surprised that I could hear the overload problem. We discussed another gig he had mixed in a church and he asked me what I thought of the sound, and I said that I really enjoyed the gig, but the guitar treble was a bit too rolled off. He agreed with me and said that he wanted the treble level up a bit, but the musician insisted otherwise.

 

So it seems practising with being fussy about recorded music quality can have an effect on your perception of live music quality and make you 'hyper fussy' for better or worse.

[jhwalker]

Recorded vs. live can sound very different, for sure.

 

The last couple of times I went to a live concert (once at the Meyerson and once at the Winspear here in Dallas), I was really taken aback by how "dull" the music sounded - like there was no treble at all. These are both wonderful halls with acclaimed acoustics, so I don't think there is a problem with the halls, I just think that my system at home really emphasizes the treble - to the extent that real "live" music actually sounds flat to me!

 

OTOH, there is something about a symphony orchestra in full cry that my home system simply cannot reproduce - at least not without riling up my neighbors So there's that.

[master]

Does "audiophile" always mean live reproduction of music or "as in the studio" at home?

 

It could also mean getting the best enjoyment out of music there is. Audiophile can also mean love for music and not all things technical... unless the definition and distinction has been drawn and set in stone.

 

Personally, I'm not a big fan of live music... at least not the local karaoke bar, or small intimate acoustic settings. I've done my fair share of concerts - in particular metal and hard rock - but that has decreased and even otherwise Miley is the last one I'd want to see live in any setting. I might go for the odd festival or concert, but its not the highest on my list of things to do anymore.

 

Let me put it this way... I'm no longer the teen who needs to watch the latest blockbuster on the big screen. Hanging out with my friends or girl, grabbing popcorn and snacks, is not the ideal setting for me to enjoy movies. For the most part I'm perfectly happy waiting for the Blu-ray and watching in the comfort of my home theater - especially since I've a pretty decent setup and a dedicated home theater room.

 

Why not the same for music? If folks have spent a small fortune - setting things up exactly the way they want it - its very likely they'd not want to listen to music with a ton of folks clapping and cheering/jeering. For all you know they prefer it in the comfort of their home. That could be one reason for folks not spending the $15 to listen to live music, but preferring instead to spend $15,000 to have it their way and in the comfort of their home.

 

Maybe its a couch potato thing or maybe being too much of a perfectionist... but I did not make it to the movies even for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I'm perfectly fine with the Blu-ray... even more if its 4K.

[wgscott]

Entity semente : Most excellent post.

[firedog]

Hey try going to some music fairs. Some of it sounds bad, some good, but unamplified you don't find it hard to find something interesting.

 

A large one I have been to a couple times is the Tennesse Valley Fiddlers convention. They have some pro acts, and it has a competition for best player on a few traditional instruments. What makes it worth going is a huge crowd shows up. Among them hundreds of musicians. They walk around and randomly group together and start playing. Dozens of such impromptu groups playing various songs. It goes on for 3 days. You will find something worth hearing there.

 

There are various other small fairs around if you search them out. Not living near a large metro area with lots to choose from this can stand in pretty well. Though you won't find classical music there. I have wondered how it might go over if someone held an outdoor chamber music festival. Let people show up and play chamber music for people to gather round and listen to as they please. It might be a non-stuffy fun way to promote more enjoyment of classical music.

 

There's a live chamber music festival every year like that in northern Israel - groups set up in Nature.

It's very well attended.

[r_w]

You absolutely do not have to listen to live music to be an audiophile.

 

The problem is that 99% of live music is either performed badly (usually the vocals are worst) and the sound is at best rubbish.

 

I almost always walk out of a pub if live music is on or starts up.

 

I saw Pat Metheny at the Barbican, London... he was great but he didn't sound as good as at home. When I'm asked to go to concerts I usually decline.

 

I want my music done properly or not at all - that for me is the definition of being an audiophile.

 

Audiophile = a person with lower than average tolerance for poor musical playback/performance... not an exotic equipment zealot with 5 brilliantly recorded albums... and certainly not a person who loves going to gigs.

 

;-)

[semente]

Entity semente : Most excellent post.

 

Cheers.

[Snowmonkey]

OTOH, there is something about a symphony orchestra in full cry that my home system simply cannot reproduce - at least not without riling up my neighbors So there's that.

Hell, I just rile them.

[odelay]

Thanks for sharing Semente - always good to reflect on what 'a lover of sound' might mean for us.

[mourip]

I have always thought that the idea of "The Absolute Sound" was pretty unrealistic but a wonderful marketing ploy. Comparing the home audio experience to a live concert is apples to oranges. Even if you were present at the recording of the original concert it would be an unattainable goal.

 

It seems to me that most audiophiles want one of two things ...or possibly both. They want to have a pleasurable music experience in their own home or they love the thrill of the chase. Both goals are possible but probably do not play well together, at least for very long. If you love the thrill of the chase to perfection then you will usually not be satisfied for long. You will always be looking for something to improve and then not happy until you reach the next plateau.

 

It's funny but even though I know this is true I still get caught up in wanting the next tweak.

 

Recently someone gave me a 15 year old pair of Grado SR60 headphones. This is their entry level pair and "long of tooth". I decided to set them up with my old Twisted Pair Audio USB adapter whose chip also has the ability to be a DAC with headphone out. I connected it to my desktop PC. It only goes to 16/48 so I am listening to Pandora and YouTube with about $125 worth of "dated" computer audio gear. I have been enjoying it immensely for two weeks completely ignoring my pretty good speaker rig. The though keeps coming to me that I could live with this forever if my circumstances were different. This makes me ponder what I am doing and also makes me a little crazy.

 

So in the end it seems like an illusive game that we all play a bit differently. I do not think there is a right or wrong to it.

[bluesman]

I have found in most instances that un-amplified music performances sounded quite good whilst many rock, etc. gigs sound loud and bad.

The cost and complexity of really good live sound reinforcement seem to keep many venues from achieving even acceptable sound, and almost none have truly great sound. This makes it very hard for even the best rock or pop group to sound their best in any setting that "requires" amplification. There's some great rock and pop music, so you have to separate out the quality of the music itself and your feelings about it from the quality of sound reinforcement. A bad system makes a great band sound terrible. Of course, a great system makes a bad band's badness more apparent.

 

Back in the days before concert sound reinforcement, whatever you had on stage was what the audience heard - thus the creation of the walls of amplifiers that used to "grace" concert stages. We did manage to get some half decent sound out there, but it wasn't easy. My band opened concerts and "record hops" for WMID in Atlantic City from the summer of '60 through spring '64 when I was a young teen, and even the stars relied on what were huge amps for the day (e.g. Fender Showman and Twin, Vox etc). We did several of these at the Ocean City (NJ) Convention Hall, where I managed to blow the only speaker I've ever destroyed by diming the knobs on my little Ampeg Reverberocket. The amps of the day just couldn't make the leap beyond small group, small room shows. The last ditch effort to raise the bar before amplifying the entire band through house systems began with the first Marshall stack (100W into eight 12" speakers) in 1965, after Jim Marshall created the JTM45 combo amp (chassis and speaker in the same cabinet) in 1962 to bring power to the little guy.

 

Remember that concert halls have always been designed and built with acoustics in mind, and the best acoustic instruments project incredibly well. Even a good classical guitar or violin can be heard throughout a good hall with no amplification, let alone a 9'6" grand piano. We went to hear Average White Band and Tower of Power Saturday night at the Keswick Theater in Glenside, PA. The sound system is pretty good there, but balance among the instruments was imperfect and some solos were hard to hear from where we were (2nd row left end in the orchestra pit). The bass reinforcement was muddy and tubby, too. But the energy of a live performance by some of the best in the business is too great to pick sonic nits.

 

"people who went home to maybe $600 worth of ratty old Sansui gear driving epileptic speakers wired out of phase with 22-gauge zipcord" ...... I LOVE it!!!

[blownsi]

There seems to be two types of audiophiles: Music lovers and gear heads. I think many of us fall into the latter category due to marketing, internet hype, etc. I personally struggle with trying to remember that without the music, the gear just doesn't matter.

[Paul R]

LOL! - Well, yes and no. Live music is not fundamentally any different from recorded music. Both have the ability to touch a person and evoke emotional reactions. In fact, both can touch a person in exactly the same way and evoke exactly the same reaction. Not always of course, but that it can at all tells us that there is nothing fundamentally different about the music or the environment, and that music reproduction is easily capable of doing a "good enough" job to communicate the music to people.

 

Recorded music is, however, most often, much closer to the "best seat in the house" than most of us experience at live events. That is almost *always* true at venues with amplified rock/pop/folk. Often less true at acoustic only events or especially so, at very small events of any kind.

 

I tend to view the person who is snootily holding up their nose at anything less than a system that costs over $30K, and doesn't have Shakra sticks or whatever other mumbo-jumbo equipment is hot right then, as nothing more than poor soul starved people.

 

Pretty much *everything* in high end audio has a hoodoo component to it. Sometimes, very justifiably, because the concepts and details behind something are terrifically hard to grasp or understand. (Math do get in the way sometimes, don't it?) Other times it is just marketing hype. (i.e. Quantum Tunneling Cables!)

 

In any case, I agree with your conclusion, that "we should be enjoying the music, however it arrives at our ears." Just picking a few nits here and there...

 

 

Well, for sure, this concept of "absolute sound" is far closer to fantasy than reality.

And you know why?

Live music and recorded music are different media.

 

Let me repeat, with the volume turned up: DIFFERENT!

 

Step back for a moment and answer this question:

Are live theater and movies the same or different media?

Raise your hand if you think they're the same.

Whoa, no raised hands that I can see.

Why not?

With live theater and movies, aren't both based on performers acting out stories?

 

Now to music.

With live music and recorded music, aren't both based on musicians performing music?

 

Ah, but by recording the thing -- whether music or a movie -- you entirely change the medium from the live event. The recorded thing is repeatable, which for many is part of the pleasure. Sometimes, or often, the recorded thing is spliced together from different parts, to create at its best what seems like a seamless whole. And most of the time, increasingly for movies, recorded things are experienced at home.

 

But neither music recordings nor movies are live.

That's not a problem, just a difference.

The problem is when people expect recorded things to somehow -- through some form of magic -- be the same as live things.

 

Ah, but live music and live theater are not exactly repeatable, even if they might seem so. And you cannot splice each one together, since the performers are naked on the stages, creating their arts. And nearly all the time, live things are experienced away from home in public settings.

 

So, the executive summary:

Those people who think audio equipment, the toys designed for recorded music, should at their best make the music-listening experience just like live performances are expecting a fantasy to come true. That's just the same as if those people who watch movies criticized them for not being like the play they saw on the stage.

 

This is not a problem.

Separate media, separate pleasures, even if the pleasures of live music and recorded music are related pleasures.

 

If "absolute sound" is still your holy grail, then, keep praying.

The rest of us will just enjoy the music, however it arrives to our ears.

 

Dave, who would say that while he prefers recorded music and movies to live music and theater that he still loves hearing music live and going to plays where the performers in essence put their souls on the line

[r_w]

Agree with Paul R,

 

But would throw in... Live music, however good isn't the defacto standard for music enjoyment. Skillful recording and production seeks to raise it (not match it) by creating unrealistic but wonderful soundscapes. I guess its either your thing or it isn't (same goes for synthesis), but Paul's comment re 'creating the best seat in the house' is a very clever way to articulate what I was attemping to get at.

 

Hats off.

 

;-)

[Cycleman]

LOL! - Well, yes and no. Live music is not fundamentally any different from recorded music. Both have the ability to touch a person and evoke emotional reactions. ... Just picking a few nits here and there...

 

Well, no and yes.

 

To stick to my own knitting, my deep perception is that the act of recording makes any art form deeply different from the live version, no matter what the art form.

 

The factor of repeatability in recorded music, that alone, which allows the listener to know exactly what to expect, in significant detail for often-listened to recordings, changes the emotional reaction in fundamental ways.

 

Dave, who thinking of best seat in the house is reminded of one reason he loves the Towne Crier club in Beacon New York where you get to choose your seat based simply on when you arrive and so by coming early for a pre-show dinner there you can take a best seat at no extra cost and so that will be the case in a few weeks when we see Levon's daughter Amy Helm perform there

[Paul R]

Well, no and yes.

 

To stick to my own knitting, my deep perception is that the act of recording makes any art form deeply different from the live version, no matter what the art form.

 

The factor of repeatability in recorded music, that alone, which allows the listener to know exactly what to expect, in significant detail for often-listened to recordings, changes the emotional reaction in fundamental ways.

 

Dave, who thinking of best seat in the house is reminded of one reason he loves the Towne Crier club in Beacon New York where you get to choose your seat based simply on when you arrive and so by coming early for a pre-show dinner there you can take a best seat at no extra cost and so that will be the case in a few weeks when we see Levon's daughter Amy Helm perform there

 

Could be - I will note that Glen Miller enjoyed enormous success, and one reason was because he demanded that each performance of a song be exactly identical. People knew what to expect from each song, and lo and behold, success.

 

I might posit that recorded music also has that advantage, but it is no different from live performances.

 

-Paul

[Cycleman]

Could be - I will note that Glen Miller enjoyed enormous success, and one reason was because he demanded that each performance of a song be exactly identical. People knew what to expect from each song, and lo and behold, success.

 

I might posit that recorded music also has that advantage, but it is no different from live performances.

 

-Paul

 

True, some musicians try to perform the same song the same way each time, but many do not.

 

Whether that's an advantage or not is, to me, still a question.

 

Actually, repeatability is just a difference, neither good nor bad.