Will the head-fi hobby go the "Excess is Best" route? - Page 2

BBM. I doubt that the rise in the top end of the hobby will ruin it -- too big and spread too far by now. What I've noticed since I began with a HeadRoom Little and HD650s lo those many years ago is that the willingness to spend big on the flagships seems to have squeezed the middle tier of headphones and amps. Back in the day the HD6xx and Grado RS1s were the standard recommendations for aspiring headphiles. Now I read more and more posts that advise skipping directly to HD800/LCDX territory, which is instantly a very different value proposition. It also cuts the journey short, erases the pleasure of the incremental improvement and means one doesn't have to learn much along the way. I think that's a bit of a shame.

 

The excess is always there, because audiophiles, like gearheads generally, include a segment that is a special breed of geek, for whom the bragging rights of top-of-the-tree performance (and, of course, the musical satisfaction) makes pursuing the nth degree worthwhile, I find it exhausting, and I've found over the last year that keeping things more or less the same is a distinct relief. But I'd say the major change is the rise in the headfi profile and the attention now being paid to this niche by manufacturers. The choice, at least, is nice.

 

o

 

 

 

I'm with Seacard.

98% of the time I'm grooving along with the ProAc Response 2.5 clones. They cost me less than the HD-800. I'm not known as a basshead around here, but those things hit low like no headphone I've heard. They image well and serve up a terrific soundstage, too.

I do think headphones and related products will march upwards in price. But it won't kill the hobby.

You csn still get superb quality for $300-$500 in headphones. Some will spend more, but I think more people will realize that speakers offer the bes value as you approach $1,000.

I really hope that more people catch on that you can have absolutely wonderful sound for just a few thousand. That is a bit of money, but even with average salaries of around $36k, a year or two of collecting equipment and spreading costs will have you near the best performance available. Never has high-quality audio been so inexpensive. I would love to see more people turned onto great quality than getting bogged down spending hundreds on a LOD and other worthless accessories. Put some cash into great headphones and speakers and play it modest with the rest. Great sound quality will ensue.

Status symbols, perhaps not, but isn't enjoying music the point?

When Audeze announced the LCD-3 at $2,000, the reaction from many people here was mind-boggling, as if the arrival of the LCD-3 had made their LCD-2s sound worse.

 

Audiophiles display a mess of different human characteristics. We love music so much we are willing to pay a lot of money to hear it better. We're a little OCD and easily get sucked into ever-spiraling degrees of minutae regarding performance. We're also a little status-conscious and competitive - we want to have the best things and prove it - based on whatever characteristics we consider to make something the best. And holy cats are we a chatty bunch of people. It helps reinforce all those other bits.

 

So of course the head-fi hobby will get ridiculous. I kind of hope it does. There's a stunning range of products out there that accommodate all budgets, far more than I could ever audition, and stratospherically-priced items are simply more attention-getting than the rest. For those who can easily afford $30,000 headphone spreads, they will do so, and I hope it makes them happy. I'll be content to enjoy the gawking.

buy what your discretionary budget permits. for some that is a $300 headphone. for others it is a $2000 one.

After a certain price point, more expensive isn't necessarily 'better', but just different.  There are probably some people who buy top-tier gear to have the latest and greatest, but my guess is that more people start spending pretty high sums of money to tailor their chain to what they like to hear.

 

Thanks to Chinese manufacturing and the maturation of the hobby, the price-performance ratio continues to get skewed ever more favorably towards the consumer, and it's easy to do system matching even at the mid-fi level.  It's pretty fun learning about the different kinds of gear, implementation, tubes, etc., and design a system tailored to your own personal tastes.

Thanks to exploitative, dirt cheap labor and a manipulated currency you mean.

 

se

 

 

 

Edited by Steve Eddy - 10/28/11 at 1:18pm

 

 

^This post is spot on.

 

 

Hmm... I'm not going to get sidetracked from the OP here, but based on my professional work with Asian OEMs (including visiting factories), as well as the series of western investigative reports post-Foxconn suicides, I think the truth about exploitative labor is in a gray area.  I certainly wouldn't want one of those jobs, and I don't think most Americans would tolerate a job like that, but it's accepted in most parts of the world.

 

It's certainly dirt cheap, though.  That's why the Chinese are fixing our Bay Bridge in California, since the workers will be paid about $10/day, probably foremost among many other reasons.

 

Manipulated currency, sure.  It'll be interesting seeing what'll happen over there when the economic freight train begins to start hitting its first potholes (real estate bubble, water shortage, diminishing export market, etc.).

Today's flagships aren't necessarily more expensive than yesterday's flagships - HE90, R10, SR-Omega/T2 - it's just that people's exposure to flagships and willingness to buy them has gone up, so - as has been said - the de-facto recommendation for high-end gear now seems more expensive than it was during the HD600/RS1 era. We have the mp3 player/smartphone to thank for that, since headphone listening is becoming more prevalent and awareness of high-end headphones is spreading. And with growth in the market will come turbulence in the market, less than competent manufacturers coming in, snake-oil salesmen, and basically all the usual trappings of a niche market that's targeted to a not-necessarily-technically-savvy audience with deep pockets.

 

This is all normal. If you want to do something about it, then question the questionable manufacturers, be cynical, think critically about designs, and above all promote objective measurements (like what Tyll is doing) and transparency in the marketplace. Oh, and get educated technically, since without at least some competence you won't be able to tell who's full or it and who's not. Unfortunately there's nowhere near enough of that happening here, but audio communities come and go... Just sayin'

 

P.S. If you're of the "the price should be what the market can bear" philosophy, then you shouldn't be complaining about excessive profit margins.

x2.

 

HD600 + glite + lavry (stello if cheap) was the standard headfi-approved good listening gear - cost about a kilobucks used with the stello
 

 

In my opinion the change over the years has been exposure to what is available and what people are using from the internet. People have always spent lots on their hobbies but now we know about the products and see the photos of peoples gear on the internet. I have been into audio for the last 25 years and at the beginning before the internet I just wasn't aware of a lot of the really expensive gear. Shops tended to show you gear within your budget. Now with the internet we all are exposed to the best gear.

 

It is very easy to forget that our hobby is primarily about experiencing music as realistically as we can. The gear sometimes gets in the way of that (however expensive it may be).

 

In life success is very dependent on who you compare yourself to. Since having my daughter I realize that if she is happy I am successful. The gear I have or use means very little about who I am. I have friends that earn many times what I do and have nicer gear and good on them. I don't believe that possessions necessarily make us happier.

 

I certainly don't envy anyone and I respect peoples ablity to spend their money however they choose. Nothing is too expensive if it has that value to someone.  My inablity to buy more expensive gear is down to me. I was basically lazy at school and never very ambitious and these days life is primarily about my family and wanting to contribute more to the world than you take from it.

 

Sorry for the rant. Thinking about this topic made me realize how content I am.

 

Macrog

 

 

-one of my hobby horses - "realism" is badly abused in this hobby

 

too bad the whole recorded music industry doesn't remotely buy that - recordings are made to "sound good" on (mostly loudspeaker) playback systems

 

many audio illusions, culturally accepted conventions, exaggerations, omissions are used in a recording - typically the whole "sound stage" is "painted on" by the mastering/production engineers at a mixing board/workstation from 1/2 dozen or more separate mic feeds, many not recorded at the same time, with musicians never having been in the same room

 

some of it is simply because the impossible physics of practical wavefront reproduction, Independence from microphone, loudspeaker, room limitations

 

others like dynamic range compression make for new sensations that could never be experienced in live acoustic performances

 

I am highly amused when discussions of high end equipment start appealing to "realism" - the "you've never heard a live cymbal" put downs, detailed "image depth" comments...

 

 

 

Edited by jcx - 10/29/11 at 4:03pm

 

This is true wisdom. I believe that this approach will make more people really happy !

 

What's the problem here? All hobbies have different levels. Take cars. There's the guy with a Mustang. Then' there's the guy with a supercharger on his Mustang.

They both enjoy their cars. They build cars, boats, etc. to insane prices. It has no effect on my enjoyment at all.If somebody owning expensive headphone setup upsets you that much,

then you're thinking too much. Skip head-fi and go surf for smut or whatever makes you happy. High end gear can't hurt you if you don't know about it.

 

But this is where we get in on the inside joke. When we have something that CAN resolve the hidden nugget, like DEVO 'Something for Everyone' - they left nuggets (like on 'Mind Games') where you can jump up and say 'Did you hear that? I get it.' And, we know that no one else did, except the band (who in that case is the engineer / mixer) and production guys. That is what makes the upper end chase fun. Well, unless you don't get it. <shrug>