[bigshot]

Today I got into a discussion on the Head-Fi social media group with a fella who said that 95% of Head Fi posters don't focus on music or sound quality... they focus on gear. He was trying to explain to me that people who describe equipment in flowery subjective ways do that because the gear itself is all that matters to them. It doesn't have to sound better. It's an object of desire. Gear is a fashion statement and a status symbol. It's like a Gucci handbag. It isn't any better than any other handbag, but it has status. I can't picture that myself, and I really doubt the percentage is that high, but he has a point. If I had to describe myself, I would be 80% musicphile, 20% audiophile and 0% gearophile. I imagine there are people who are the same proportions with the exact opposite priorities.

 

[Steve999]

Well if you are defining gearophile as someone who acquires gear as a status symbol, I’m zero percent. If it could be negative it would be negative. The way I look at it I try to get 90 percent of the sound quality as I would if I were going full tilt for the best I could do, for 10 percent of the price. You don’t do that by getting stuff that looks good for looks’ sake.

Audiophile—good sound is important to me, but it’s kind of secondary to the music. For example, I am lying here listening to a Sonos one smart speaker and it’s good enough that I really enjoy the music. Now I could go out to the den and get much better sound but apparently it’s not that important to me because I am lying down here listening to my Sonos one speaker. So, where does that put me? I’ll say fifteen percent just to be different from you. I think you probably work a little harder at good sound than I do.

Now, IIRC, I always thought I had a big music library, but your music library is about ten times bigger than mine, literally. However, and I have never confessed this online before, I have three for-pay music streaming services—Amazon Music, Apple Music, and Spotify. I know their music catalogs are extremely similar, but they all pull me in different directions in terms of music discovery, in many ways. I get a little tired of the type of direction just one service pulls me in. So I think that is a bit extreme on my part. And I don’t care one whit about any difference in sound quality between the individual streaming services or my CDs or my decades of rips (though I have always been careful with my rips—like you, I have my whole library copied), so I think I do lose audiophile points for that (and I’m proud of it). So, I am going to say 85 percent musicphile.

Anyway, I think I’ll take a walk out to the den now.

 

[bigshot]

The way this guy was describing it, a gearophile gets pleasure from having equipment and likes describing the equipment in poetic terms. He said sound quality was secondary. He didn't want to know measurements or do listening tests. A gearophile progressively acquires more and more expensive equipment and gets more rhapsodic with each upgrade. The pleasure is in the upgrading. It sounds like fetishism to me.

 

[AudioThief]

The way this guy was describing it, a gearophile gets pleasure from having equipment and likes describing the equipment in poetic terms. He said sound quality was secondary. He didn't want to know measurements or do listening tests. A gearophile progressively acquires more and more expensive equipment and gets more rhapsodic with each upgrade. The pleasure is in the upgrading. It sounds like fetishism to me.

Clearly this site is riddled with people who are simply addicted to buying gear - in fact, on this site and especially other sites, I think many of them buy gear to gain status on these very boards. Now this addiction might be because they are always imagining how their rig could sound even better, or because they love owning different gear as collectors.

I frequent these boards when I am shopping for equipment, then after briefly reviewing whatever I end up purchasing, I disappear again, and just listen to music. Once I've purchased the gear I need, discussing audio equipment to me is completely uninteresting. As such, I think its probably healthy, at least for me, to just get off the boards. Because if not, my mind starts racing about how I could buy more and maybe get better sound - when that just isn't the case after a certain point. I will say that I am very glad I found out about e-stats before I stopped frequenting these forums.

I've always loved listening to music, and I listened to just totally crap gear until around 2011, when I got ATH-M50s (I thought hi end audio were beats vs m50s!) - and that I just plugged straight into my computer or phone. It wasn't until 2017 when I decided I wanted to splurge on some nice IEMs that I fell down the rabbit hole. Have my enjoyment for music went up? I'd say yes, very clearly. So I guess I am like 50% audiophile 50% musicphile. When I was completely without a rig, and I only had my t20i's on the go, I simply didn't get that same enjoyment out of music as I do with a rig.

 

[castleofargh]

there is definitely a small group that follows trends and enjoys being the center of attention through the new FOTM that they have been among the first to procure(because not all of them purchase gears). people naturally gather around that small group because they crave for feedback about the new stuff. but as any trend, it's a volatile thing. you have to get new stuff on a regular basis to keep being "socially relevant" or something like that. but again I don't believe that's a big portion of the forum or of audiophiles in general. just another side hobby within the hobby. like how I became interested in how digital audio works, or in doing measurements myself(for that last one I can absolutely claim that it's a super tiny portion of the forum that shares my interest ).

other than that, there is no such thing as having to pick between enjoying stuff about gears and enjoying music. anybody can do both, at the same time even. it's the same logical fallacy as arguing that those who care about graphs don't listen to music. such dichotomies just don't exist.

personally I don't feel comfortable telling people what to listen to. I don't really understand music genres or how to describe what I like(and never really cared to learn except on very rare occasions when I would like to ask for advice about something specific but don't know what to ask). so while I spend literally hours each day listening to music and would be miserable without any music in my life, I'm not usually going to discuss that on a forum. with that said, I don't really follow up on new gears either, even when I'm in the market I tend to play it safe and go for last year's famous stuff that will have more relevant information gathered about it instead of "it's new, I have it, so of course it's the ze best!", kind of comments that new stuff inevitably get.

 

[Glmoneydawg]

There can only be one!...and he will have the best sounding,most expensive,shiniest,heaviest ect stereo of all...and the rest of us must bow down and kiss his azz.....read that in Hoffman forums somewhere....seems relevant here lol

 

[Glmoneydawg]

When i was yoing and poor it was all about the music.When i got to a point in my life where i had expendable money it was probably 50/50 music/gear.....as ive gotten older and maybe more confident that my gear is ok ,i'm probably 90% music 10% gear.......we get too soon old and too late smart

 

[bigshot]

When I focus on a new kind of music, it opens my horizons to new ways of hearing and thinking. Music enriches my life and makes me a better, more understanding person. It can delight me, make me cry or laugh. I am who I am because of music and art.

When I focus on home audio equipment, my credit card fills up and my house gets cluttered up with corrugated boxes and styrofoam.

It's interesting because I participate in a couple of classical music forums, and it seems a lot of people talk about classical music without talking about music. They start threads on things like "Which composers were gay?" and "Was Wagner a Nazi?" They rarely discuss music. I find that if there is an area discussing specific recordings, there is less of this and people actually speak in musical terms. It's good to have a historical background in specific works, but some people focus on that to the exclusion of the music itself.

I think a lot of this obsessive behavior has nothing to do with the subject and everything to do with the internet. Discussion forums attract people who have no outlet for their compulsive behavior in real life.

 

[BobG55]

When i was yoing and poor it was all about the music.When i got to a point in my life where i had expendable money it was probably 50/50 music/gear.....as ive gotten older and maybe more confident that my gear is ok ,i'm probably 90% music 10% gear.......we get too soon old and too late smart

"Rashness belongs to youth; prudence to old age." - Cicero

 

[bigshot]

There's no fool like an old fool!

 

[340519]

I'm definitely music first, gear second. It's not a status symbol for me as I never leave the house with it.

 

[jagwap]

There was an adage going about: if you spend more on the music you are a music lover, if you spend more on the gear you are an audiophile (or in this discussion a gearophile)

I was easily in the music lover category, as I rearly paid retail for the gear, and had to for the CDs. Now I live in a country where you cannot buy music, it's all counterfeit. So I have 1.8TB of music, and an OK system. However I do pay retail for headphones, and I have a few too many, so it is getting unclear which side of the line I am on. When the gear is between 7 - 55% of retail it is blurry, especially when I start sticking new circuitry in, or more importantly ripping it out.

I am a music lover who will only buy gear if it gets closer to the WAY the musician plays. I'm looking for "feel".

 

[71 dB]

I think you need to be a millionaire to be a gearophile properly. I am not a millionaire so I have to limit the gearophile side of myself. I tend to use my gear until it stops working. Saves money and is also eco-friendly. Being an audiophile is (or at least should be) more about knowledge. You know what impulse responsies are. You understand how human hearing works. You know how speakers interact with the room acoustically. You know how the output impedance of a headphone amp affects the sound and so on. Perhaps you don't know all of this, but at least some of it and it's interesting for you. As for me myself, I think it goes something like this:

49 % musicphile
49 % audiophile
2 % gearophile.

 

[71 dB]

It's interesting because I participate in a couple of classical music forums, and it seems a lot of people talk about classical music without talking about music. They start threads on things like "Which composers were gay?" and "Was Wagner a Nazi?" They rarely discuss music. I find that if there is an area discussing specific recordings, there is less of this and people actually speak in musical terms. It's good to have a historical background in specific works, but some people focus on that to the exclusion of the music itself.

I don't think I have seen you on Good Music Guide -board where I have posted for some 12 years or so, althou recently mostly about american politics rather than music. I have seen you on Blu-ray.com, a site I use to know about what has been (or will be) released on Blu-ray and where, but I am not registered there.

Those "Was Wagner a Nazi?"-discussions are indeed tiring. A lot of people of today will be comdemned by the future generations just as we condemn Nazis. People just are too dumb/selfish/ignorant to live in a way the future generations can accept. Doesn't even matter how good people we are: How can we even know the moral norms of the 22th century for example? What if all people in 2119 think eating meat is barbaric? Sorry, but in the 20th century eating meat was the norm and some weirdos were vegeratians. In 2019 people are suggested to reduce consumption of meat. So, I have eaten a lot of meat in my life. Wagner perhaps had Nazi-like opinions, but then again, he wasn't a human rights activist. He was a composer.

I am not much into discussing specific recordings. What interest me about classical music is how different composers have gained ther status in the minds of public and the scholars. Why is for example Dittersdorf so overlooked when during his time he was highly regarded? How much better of a composer Haydn really was? 10 % better? 100 % better? 1000 % better? Why is it I personally enjoy Dittersdorf's music A LOT while a lot of classical music lovers merely laugh at his funny name? I like to talk about skewed history of music where a few selected composers have been raised on the podium on the expense of others.

 

[Whazzzup]

Iam unconcerned about this topic, in general and it smells of aloofness. Let’s make fun of all these gear heads or music heads or hifi heads. Then let’s get others to justify their gear or defend the concept that I’m about music and I find these gear heads.....
It’s always about the music, it’s always about the gear, it’s always about head or hifi.