Your "reaction" toward your non-audiophile's comment

I usually dont even try to explain these things to non-audiophile's. not worth it to me since i already know what I have and why.

 

If i told my Parents that i have a 100$ pair of Earphones, an 80$ pair of Headphones, and am spending so much time on Head-fi, 

i wont need to explain the oh-so-beautiful mids of the ZEROs, the Neutrality of the Sansa Fuze V2,or the awesome bass of my HD212Pros.

On top of that, if i unveil the plans of me making a Mini3 amp, they'd be more then ready to shoot me and try again. :)

I rarely ever bother trying to explain unless they insist on knowing.

 

I showed a friend my Westone 4's and told him the price. His reply ended up "My Solo's are better and less money". 'Tis why I rarely bother.

my friend told me that his Inks sounded better than my Re0's...but he admits that my Turbines sound better than his Inks.

 

 

for non 'audiophiles', bass means everything but of course we all know that already.

Whenever I walk around with my TF10s and people ask me "are they better than Beats?" I just say they have 3 speakers in each ear and that makes them be quiet lol.

I resemble that remark. LOL Hard to explain some of the sonic things we take for granted to those that don't appreciate it. Ignorance can be bliss and I don't mean that in a bad way.
 

Well, today I was in the market looking for a decent carry case (not a Ringke) for a Cowon J3. The salesman in the supposedly "high-end" shop simply refused to acknowledge the fact that there is another "known" brand in this world other than apple that makes touch screen players. I told him that I have a touchscreen player and need a decent case for the same, but he just asked me - "Is it an apple?", and when I said no, he just kept saying that they don't sell carry cases for "Chinese" MP3 players!! It would be a lost cause to try and explain the reputation that Cowon carries so I eventually left, but I was moments away from completely losing it. I couldnt bear another such conversation at other stores so just came back home and ordered a few Mofi pouches from MP4Nation.

 and the other day I had this guy listen to the CK10 for a few minutes - which for him basically meant, putting on a bass heavy pop song and turning the volume to full (I'm sure he is already almost completely deaf, so I didn't stop him), at the end of it, he just added that the bass really breaks at high (and deafening) volumes - and I should go out and try the Sony EX-85 monitor earphones, because they would be "much better". He couldn't believe I dropped $280 on such an "ordinary" pair of earphones and that they didn't have any bass! 

  What can we do? - just keep our gear hidden a cloak of invisibility, so that we don't lose our brain cells, by trying to explain and justify it to "others".

Edited by kingpintps - 3/19/11 at 12:28pm

I think many of us were once like that... judging sound quality by quantity of bass (I know I was). But our tastes changed over time as we learned to appreciate and become accustomed to good sound across the entire spectrum. So don't hate or laugh. If probably the majority of these "non-audiophiles" were given a pair of good phones to use for a while, they'll probably grow out of their ignorance.

There have been countless times where people in my school have asked about my TF10's. Most of the time, they ask, "are they better than the Beats?", to which I reply, "yup" and keep walking. Rarely do I have a person that is genuinely intrigued by my TF10's enough to ask me to try them out; of these times there has only been two people that could get a good fit with them lol. One of my friends actually argued with me and my other friend, who is also an audiophile, that my headphones sounded significantly worse than her stock Apple buds...

 

Now I tend not to even respond to people asking me stupid questions regarding any of the IEM's that I wear; it's pointless to point out the flaws of Skullcandy, Beats, etc. because most people only care about bass (though, my TF10's have quite a bit of bass)...

Have your friend directly compare your headphones to Skullcandies - he will notice.

As for the bass... I almost think the general public is a lost cause. As long as the bass is loud, it seems that nothing else matters. The bass can be fuzzy, imprecise, tuneless, and smothering everything else. Pretty much no one hears live acoustic music these days, let alone play it.

The frame of reference for most people is a cheap car subwoofer or a HTIB set wit massive bass noise so it sounds "good."

People ought to just get the cheapest but loudest subwoofer on the market and skip the rest.

Quote:

 

maybe we earned the right to that by burning our pockets to willfully change our tastes over time 
(just kidding - I see you're point)

To some people quality of sound is just not as important, and they would be happy to simply sing along with their favorite tunes, with some woofers blowing in the background. That's fine, as long as they don't laugh at our $600 portable setups!

 

I know better than to tell my family and friends how much of this student's small disposable income has been spent on headphones during my pursuit of sonic perfection within my means.

SoundMagic's PL30 is my phone of choice right now and pummels everything I've heard within the same pricerange, but I've purchased countless other headphones and hardly used them, which may well be deemed a waste! :P

Alot of my friends deem Skullcandy phones to be fantastic whereas I can't stand listening with them, so I agree with previous comments about the majority of people judging sound quality on bass alone.