You know you're an audiophile when... - Page 301  

Quote:

Originally Posted by wolfetan44 

You know you're an audiophile when your at an audio store and your bro is trying the Shure 1840's listening to some Pink Floyd song and he says that he noticed a small part in the beginning of the song he couldn't hear with his Senn HD449. He said he wouldn't buy them though and I said What?? Isn't that so awesome you can hear a new part of the song?? And he said he didn't really care.

I'm against child abuse, but that, hmm, thats a though one there 

Quote:

Originally Posted by wolfetan44 

You know you're an audiophile when your at an audio store and your bro is trying the Shure 1840's listening to some Pink Floyd song and he says that he noticed a small part in the beginning of the song he couldn't hear with his Senn HD449. He said he wouldn't buy them though and I said What?? Isn't that so awesome you can hear a new part of the song?? And he said he didn't really care.

not to mention the SRH1840 isn't cheap...

Quote:

Originally Posted by dscythe 

I'm against child abuse, but that, hmm, thats a though one there 

Kill him!

Quote:

Originally Posted by streetdragon 

not to mention the SRH1840 isn't cheap...

Yes, but he said if he had the money he wouldn't buy them. He also made the claim that the Senn HD449 were only slightly worse than the Senn HD800. Thats been irritating me a lot.

Can't find the post but someone said something to the effect of this earlier:

I ignored it before but it's been bugging me for days. I have to say, REAL audiophiles are the people who prefer to listen in lossless but can still enjoy the music if it's not.

The beginning and/or vain audiophile marvels at what he can hear. The experienced audiophile knows what he cannot hear.

Hmm...now where have I read that before...? It's gonna bug me....

...when you find yourself re-acquiring all your old music from back before you discovered the Head-Fi world at higher bitrates because its all 128 AAC files from iTunes

You know you are an audiophile when ...

Quote:

Originally Posted by wolfetan44 

Kill him!

 

Yes, but he said if he had the money he wouldn't buy them. He also made the claim that the Senn HD449 were only slightly worse than the Senn HD800. Thats been irritating me a lot.

maybe some people expect the lyrics to change when they switch from ibuds to flagships?

(but in all seriousness different people have different prioritites with money, we just have headphones as (one of) the highest priority)

When you hate on Hip-Hop and assume it is the same as rap OR hate on any genre of music you personally don't listen too. THEN your no longer a music lover but an audio file. (Yes I'm a little bitter over some hip hop)

Quote:

Originally Posted by kid vic 

When you hate on Hip-Hop and assume it is the same as rap OR hate on any genre of music you personally don't listen too. THEN your no longer a music lover but an audio file. (Yes I'm a little bitter over some hip hop)

When you know how to spell audiophile lol, but seriously, when you sell all of your Xbox games to afford a new amp
 

I don't think it's so much that audiophiles "hate" rap/hip hop (and punk, and grindcore, etc.) so much as that they listen to music for reasons that don't mesh with those genres.

Those genres tend to be heavily bound to youth subcultures, so things like recording quality and subtle composition tend to go out the window in favor of fitting into a clique and maximizing sonic shock factor. There's also generally an age gap between the average rap/punk/etc. scene and the typical person able to afford true audiophile grade gear. Generalizations? Yes, but still true in 99% of cases.

Of course some of the acts in those genres do defy the stereotypes, but you can't expect people to go searching for them for no particular reason when they're effectively a needle in a haystack. Yep, most people think rap/hip hop and think - Snoop Dogg, 40s, pimps and hos. They're wrong of course. You can find "rap" from late '70s Germany when the nerds programming early synthesizers didn't know how to sing so just "rapped" over their melodies. I don't think it's the public's fault, though, that "rappers" themselves have gone out of their way to reinforce the narrowest stereotypes possible.

However, as I've mentioned before, my definition of audiophile seems to differ from many on this board; FiiO + ATH-M50s is not "audiophile". Audiophile traditionally doesn't mean just finding something satisfactory/industry-standard/currently-in-vogue to gain access to your music. It's more like savoring the subtle and often admittedly ridiculous nuances between different mediums. In ways it's a guilty pleasure, but one of the most healthy ones I can think of.

I'm much more of an audiophile when it comes to non-headphone audio gear. I'm still relatively new to "high end" headphones, and until this year owned nothing but a pair of Grados and a pair of Sonys, with no amp. Every time I consider taking the plunge into one of the $X,XXX+ models with a serious signal chain behind it, some preamp or towers or acoustic treatment or car audio thing sidetracks me. Perhaps it's a matter of time, though.

Yeah, I think the main reason rap/hip hop/[skip-the-lecture] is underrepresented in general audiophile listening preferences is the production. Modern production (in all popular genres) is almost invariably over-compressed, harsh, poorly separated, LOUD, and altogether not very good. A lot of older music is much better recorded, and the arrangements favor real performances and performance ambiance (e.g. a small brass band in a medium-sized room, where you can hear the size of the venue) over sampling and heavily processed/highly overdubbed takes. There's just a lot more of interest to the audiophile in these recordings, and they were made at a time when fidelity was much more important than it is today.

Also, audiophiles tend to be older, and they like to listen to the music they grew up on. I think that's reasonable. I grew up listening to classic rock, and I've branched out myself into prog and classical. So that's what the majority of my collection is.

You know you're an audiophile when you find yourself reading reviews on cheap portable headphones, even when the person you're thinking about gifting a pair to doesn't care about sound quality (I just can't bring myself to give somebody a bad sounding product).

when you go to the vending machine and see 2$ soda and think thats outrageous!! but when you see a new amp/dac combo for 500$ your like lol,take my money now.