[Soused]

...mostly old blokes?

 

[Bill-P]

Because young people also have more hope and a more vivid imagination, so they can "fill in the blanks" better than old folks, and as thus can "imagine" bad gears being good.
 
And because old men don't have as good hearing, we need all the treble boost (HD800?) we can get. And we can pay for it, too!
 
Honestly, though, kidding aside, I think it has to do with the amount of money involved. Young folks don't have a lot to spend, and older women would rather spend money on stuffs other than audio gears, right?
 
Only men care enough about how their favorite artists sound like to shell out the dough.

 

[castleofargh]

because money ^_^.
 
 

 

[RRod]

We just do anal-retentive better.

 

[rhythm is life]

Part of it is the "you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone" mentality. Young people are all too willing to blast their ears off using earbuds on trains and subways. I know I always wanted to turn the music up to 11 when I was younger. Thankfully, I started turning it down in my mid-20s, and at 29 I can still hear up to about 17.5khz. I'm simply a lot more conscious about my hearing, and I cherish the health of my ears. Also when people get older, they generally have more of an appreciation for the elemental things in life. Like sound.

And yeah, old people have more $ to spend on super-duper summit-fi gear so that they can tell everyone "I'm an audiophile".

 

[Strangelove424]

  We just do anal-retentive better.

 
So true. I have a friend who sings very well, and knows a ton about how to mix, but she hates listening to herself on my system. She says it's too neutral, too revealing, and her voice sounds bad on it. On the contrary, I think my system shows her off best, but I understand where she's coming from. It's interesting to me that she knows so much about audio, but when it comes down to personal listening, has very little interest in putting together a revealing system.  She understands the tech perfectly, but doesn't have any interest or will to implement that pursuit for fidelity into her daily listening. It just doesn't motivate her as it does me. Perhaps that is partly because I am male and can obsess on geeky technicalities more, or perhaps it's because I don't have the talent she does, and don't perform music, so it's more important for me to enjoy the talent of others the best that I can through my system.

 

[korg17]

cz old blokes have a lot of disposable income haha


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[ktm]

When you're young, it's all about what's hot in music.
When you're older, you broaden your tastes.
A lot of music from my youth  horrifies me now.
It's more about quality than "loud".
My taste in women has changed too.
Think "grandma".

 

[Claritas]

The listener has to discover for himself what he enjoys. Learning takes time and patience. Even then, tastes change.

 

[Dark_wizzie]

Young people are all too willing to blast their ears off using earbuds on trains and subways. I know I always wanted to turn the music up to 11 when I was younger. 

That does not sound like me at all when I was younger. Loud volumes hurt my ear and I've always listened at most at 85db.

 

[399942]

Ha! I'm in high school with the ATH-ESW9's and a Fiio amp, and am planning to upgrade to the ATH-W5000, and an amp upgrade, obviously. I think most people either don't have the money for nice headphones, or simply "don't care". 90% of the people in my school use apple earbuds, or an equivalent. I've asked around ("how do you bear to listen to music on such awful quality headphones"), most people either get very angry ("shut up"), or just refuse to listen ("Meh, I don't really care"). I've met two people are either are, aspiring, or know of audiophiles, the world of sound gear, etc. I know a guy with some AT Open Airs, and a guy with some sennheisers and B&W's. Most people really could care less, some people respond with "I would, but I really just don't have/want to spend the money. It's really quite depressing that people simply don't know what they're missing. People who respond that their headphones sound fine have never heard what "good sound" sounds like.
 
So there's several reasons why older people usually tend to be audiophiles. As for the gender thing.... well I honestly have no clue. I think I read somewhere women have better hearing or something like that, so It'd be neat to see more women interested in audio tech. My really good friend (a girl), get very upset every time I bring up headphones, just like a lot of other girls I know, I have no idea why (maybe because they know I'm right and wont admit it ;P).  Oh well, it is a mystery! Very curious to hear what others think.

 

[ktm]

Bottom line- most don't care about audio quality.
As time goes by, more drift into that realm.
More of an acquired taste.
But most don't get that excited about it.
Such is the nature of most hobbies.

 

[RonaldDumsfeld]

Back when we were young audio gear wasn't as good as it is today. Spending more money and tweaking your system really could make a substantial difference. Thing turntables and cartridges in particular.
 
Girls had proportionally even less money and anyway usually had different priorities.
 
Nowadays, and particularly since we went digital, pretty much everyone knows it should all sound more or less the same anyway so why bother? Transducers excepted to a certain extent of course.
 
But us old guys have sort of gotten into a habit and habits are harder to break as you get older.
 
Also a factor. In order to build a superior quality playback system that goes loud, deep and clean not only do need big money for the gear you also need to live in a big detached house with grounds, not mind getting divorced a lot and hate your neighbours.

 

[bigshot]

A lot of people think that high quality audio depends on frequency extension. The truth is, with recorded music, very high and super low frequencies are relatively unimportant. The thing that separates the men from the boys in music reproduction is the BALANCE within the core range. A balanced response is MUCH rarer and more difficult to achieve than most audiophiles imagine. They spend their time chasing gnat's wing's differences and ignore the elephant in the corner entirely.
 

  Also a factor. In order to build a superior quality playback system that goes loud, deep and clean not only do need big money for the gear you also need to live in a big detached house with grounds, not mind getting divorced a lot and hate your neighbours.

 
That is undeniably true. It took me fifty years to get to that position.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

Originally Posted by Soused /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 

If young people have the best hearing, and men lose theirs faster than women, why are audiophiles...

...mostly old blokes?

 

For young vs old: Do young people have the money for the system and the proper space to use them in for? Also young people being more energetic are more likely out there watching live music, and likely with bad acoustics and loud enough to damage their hearing so by the time that they have the money they polluted the hobby world (and forums) with systems that are claimed to sound better even when measurements say they don't.

 

For male vs female: Look at the teens. Who are more likely to buy clothes and shoes vs guitars/drums or cars? I mean, before the sneaker phase, boys didn't really collect shoes - they wear them out for whatever they're for then get new ones; and before Apple's revival in 2001, girls in general didn't really care much for tech products. As for hearing loss...who is more likely playing in a garage with his buddies, the boys or the girls? Who are more likely in the crowd, and who are more likely backstage just begging to blow the band? Even when men are backstage they're fessing around with the audio equipment. Also, who are more likely to have a 50cal machine gun near their face with AK-47s all around them (or vice versa), or heavy machinery at a factory or job site? All those and more can explain why men tend to lose their hearing sooner.

 

From an evolutionary standpoint however men's hearing should be more resilient, given the initial phase was that men were the hunters, and only in more egalitarian societies did women take up a role more akin to that of a male lion (that is, you don't just watch the cubs, you protect them too, instead of having some men stay behind for that) while the men did what lionesses did (hunt, or fight wars). Sparta, the Scythians, and to a lesser extent the Onna Bushi of Japan come to mind. So under that assumption, men losing their hearing sooner is more likely due more to what happens to their ears along the way than a genetic flaw.

 

My female friends who never were in a band are self-confessed to be tone-deaf btw, and the only headphones that they could discern that were different from their Apple earbuds were my SR225 (not the HD600, not the K701, etc). It's not genetic, it's socialization - the ones who play instruments do a lot better. By contrast more of the males could at least play the guitar or piano, especially when some of them had the motivation to be the cool guy with a guitar singing around the beer table (I can't understand why bards are still popular like this, but nobody pays attention when I try to sing The Illiad as opposed to anything inspired by Romeo and Juliet).  If anything, the genetic predisposition for men hunting and fighting means a bit of bias for how well they can pick out intricacies for sound now as much as when they can pick out footsteps over the ambient noise, but of course that's more from socialization given female musicians and soldiers don't have any disadvantages there.