[71 dB]

IMO if you spend more than 15-20% of your monthly income on a "component", and that's also including saving, then you're overdoing it.

Typical income level in western countries is about $3000-$3500 before taxes. 20 % of that is $600-$700. So, $2K or even $1K cans forces medium earners to overdo it. Elsewhere in the World the income level is even lower.

 

[71 dB]

I have $1200 headphones and I figure they're worth 3X my old $400 Sennheisers.

Why do you have headphones? You always tell us how speakers are superior and how you listen to speakers for the soundstage.

 

[bigshot]

Why do you have headphones? You always tell us how speakers are superior and how you listen to speakers for the soundstage.

I have Oppo PM-1s. They are very good cans. The speakers are still MUCH better sounding though.

 

[castleofargh]

My music listening was pretty passive in nature before high-school. Since my father is into jazz (of 50's and 60's), that's what I heard home. My influences were not Pink Lloyd or Genesis but Clifford Brown and Max Roach's awesome drum solos. My father HATES rock so I didn't learn about rock at home. Instead I learned from my father that rock is music for idiots. I was over 37 years old when I finally discovered rock music I do like: King Crimson. I have played it to my father, but he doesn't like even that kind of sophisticated rock. He is stuck with his jazz, but I have managed to make him appreciate classical music a bit: He likes J. S. Bach and also the operas of Rameau seems to entertain him. Who can blame him, Rameau was a genius and wrote insanely entertaining music.

What were my influences at age 14? Not anything really. I didn't feel there's really music out there for me. I didn't know 99.999 % of all music in the World is "hidden" and not played on radio or in other places for passive listeners. It took me much longer to realize I really need to discover with hard work my favorites such as Tangerine Dream (in Finland Tangerine Dream is almost unknown because they didn't perform in Finland until last year for the first time!). The Internet has made things 1000 times easier, but in the 1980's when I was a teenager you where in the dark. Yeah, a friend was perhaps into Genesis, but that's just one band! How about the thousands of other bands? Nobody exposes them to you. I wasn't able to see even MTV until 2001 when I moved to a house that had cable channels. I was 30 years old! I found "modern dance music when I was 17. It was 1988 and acid house was the big thing. S-Express became my first favorite "band". Then came rave, hardcore, breakbeat etc. I became The Prodigy fan. 1992 was the pinnacle of "modern dance music." After that it was downhill despite all the drum 'n' bass and trance. At the same time my friend at the university told me about classical music and how cool it can be. I got interested and started to listen to a classical radio station in the background while reading to exams. At first classical music sounded a bit weird for a guy who had a taste for "rave" music, but my ears adjusted fast and I started to really like what I hear. In December 1996 I heard Elgar's Enigma Variations on radio and my mind was totally blown away. I felt it was music that was composed for me by a divine creature. Next summer I got into J. S. Bach and these two composers are still my most favorite above the rest. The last 20 years has been discovering music I like and expanding my taste. The internet makes it possible.

It seems that many people have got a "rock education" at home, but I didn't have that I had Max Roach education. It might have been a blessing: I am not stuck on some stupid metal music like KISS or Metallica...

well, stats are stats. we all have our own lives that conditioned a great many things.


about stupid metal... I guess it's ok to be judgemental about subjective stuff, but art we don't like is still art.
evidence number 1:


aaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrg

 

[KeithEmo]

I think you've brought up an important point - but I think I might disagree with your conclusion.

A hobby is something you do for fun; and many hobbies aren't especially utilitarian; and many are VERY expensive.

I believe that "audiophiles" really fall into two groups: those who like listening to music and consider their equipment a way to do it, and those whose hobby is collecting, building, or trying out audio equipment. For the former, the most sensible thing is to find equipment that they find adequate, and then stop spending money on equipment. However, for those whose actual hobby is AUDIO EQUIPMENT, I guess it would ruin all the fun if they stopped buying new equipment to play with.

I also think this is true of any hobby. You can buy a bicycle that works just fine to get you to the corner store, and provides all sorts of wonderful exercise, for a few hundred dollars. Yet you can also spend tens of thousands of dollars for a bike. And we all know how big a difference there is between the price of an economy car and a sports car. And, yes, there are professional bike riders who actually "need" those $10k bikes, and race car drivers who need fast cars, but there are also people who just ENJOY customizing their bike, or working on their car. I know people who go to the shooting range to perfect their skills - with a single very accurate target pistol. But I also know others who try a different one every time, because they just enjoy trying out different ones. Why is it any more foolish to spend thousands of dollars customizing a car that never goes on the track than it is to spend a small fraction of that on audio equipment... even if you don't really need it, and even if you just collect it, or sell the old one and buy a new one every six months?

Perhaps what we're really missing is a place like a shooting range... where, for $20 an hour, you can listen to any headphone or headphone amp from a long list, without having to buy it.

Part of the problem is the "hobby" aspect, which results in churning through gear and adds to the cost.

 

[KeithEmo]

I personally find that both speakers and headphones have their advantages.

I find speakers to sound more natural, and enjoy them more for casual listening, so I do most of my listening with speakers.
However, I find that good headphones are better at revealing fine details, although at the expense of sounding natural.
I have never heard a speaker, of any type, at any price, that reveals as much fine detail as even a medium-priced electrostatic headphone.
(And I find a mid-priced electrostatic, like the Koss ESP/950, to sound more revealing than any planar or dynamic headphone at any price.)
I also find even the most comfortable headphones to be constraining - wires reduce my mobility and even wireless ones still block wision and situational awareness.

I have Oppo PM-1s. They are very good cans. The speakers are still MUCH better sounding though.

 

[gregorio]

[1] Yet you can also spend tens of thousands of dollars for a bike. And we all know how big a difference there is between the price of an economy car and a sports car.
[2] And, yes, there are professional bike riders who actually "need" those $10k bikes, and race car drivers who need fast cars ...
[3] Why is it any more foolish to spend thousands of dollars customizing a car that never goes on the track than it is to spend a small fraction of that on audio equipment... ?

1. Have you ever ridden an expensive, competition bike? Have you ever driven an economy car and a sports car? If it were possible to do a blind test, would the differences between an economy car and a sports car exceed the threshold of what humans are able to reliably detect and if so, by a negligible, barely detectable amount or by a massive amount?

2. Why would professional bike riders "need" those $10k bikes or race car drivers need expensive race cars if those competition bikes and race cars had no discernable improvement in performance over standard/consumer bikes or cars?

3. If one spent many thousands of dollars on performance enhancement customisations for a car and the end result was a car whose performance was indistinguishable from a standard car, that would indeed be very foolish. Just as foolish as spending many thousands on higher performing/higher fidelity audio equipment that also was not distinguishably higher performing or higher fidelity than standard.

The above seems so blatantly obvious to me that I can't even imagine what my everyday life would be like if I were incapable of understanding it!
Unlike the vast majority of the components in an audio reproduction system, transducers can make a significant difference but here too we run into huge audiophile fallacies, falsehoods and inconsistencies about what the word "fidelity" means and what is a personal preference as opposed to something that is actually "better".

G

 

[71 dB]

I have Oppo PM-1s. They are very good cans. The speakers are still MUCH better sounding though.

I think I have invested less money on my headphones and multichannel speaker system combined than you on that Oppo PM-1. I have always tried to maximize the "bang for the buck" aspect. I don't understand why I should spend my hard earned money on expensive audio gear if I can have satisfactory sound for much less. If I won in lottery things would be different, but I don't do lottery, because I understand the probabilities, I'm good at math. There's much more important things than the last drops of sonic quality such as paying the rent and having food. Those things are a "must". Having "very good" cans is not so I leave that to those who make $5000 a month or more.

 

[71 dB]

well, stats are stats. we all have our own lives that conditioned a great many things.

about stupid metal... I guess it's ok to be judgemental about subjective stuff, but art we don't like is still art.
evidence number 1:


aaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrg

Well, I didn't say metal is the most stupid music. Your evidence number 1 is deliberately silly. The track is far from the best of pop, but even it has hooks which take talent to create. As far as I know metal music is not deliberately silly. It's often unintentionaly stupid and that's much worse than being deliberately silly. In that sense your evidence is actually a success. Not a success I personally want to listen to many times, but a success nevertheless.

 

[GearMe]

My music listening was pretty passive in nature before high-school. Since my father is into jazz (of 50's and 60's), that's what I heard home. My influences were not Pink Lloyd or Genesis but Clifford Brown and Max Roach's awesome drum solos. My father HATES rock so I didn't learn about rock at home. Instead I learned from my father that rock is music for idiots. I was over 37 years old when I finally discovered rock music I do like: King Crimson. I have played it to my father, but he doesn't like even that kind of sophisticated rock. He is stuck with his jazz, but I have managed to make him appreciate classical music a bit: He likes J. S. Bach and also the operas of Rameau seems to entertain him. Who can blame him, Rameau was a genius and wrote insanely entertaining music.

What were my influences at age 14? Not anything really. I didn't feel there's really music out there for me. I didn't know 99.999 % of all music in the World is "hidden" and not played on radio or in other places for passive listeners. It took me much longer to realize I really need to discover with hard work my favorites such as Tangerine Dream (in Finland Tangerine Dream is almost unknown because they didn't perform in Finland until last year for the first time!). The Internet has made things 1000 times easier, but in the 1980's when I was a teenager you where in the dark. Yeah, a friend was perhaps into Genesis, but that's just one band! How about the thousands of other bands? Nobody exposes them to you. I wasn't able to see even MTV until 2001 when I moved to a house that had cable channels. I was 30 years old! I found "modern dance music when I was 17. It was 1988 and acid house was the big thing. S-Express became my first favorite "band". Then came rave, hardcore, breakbeat etc. I became The Prodigy fan. 1992 was the pinnacle of "modern dance music." After that it was downhill despite all the drum 'n' bass and trance. At the same time my friend at the university told me about classical music and how cool it can be. I got interested and started to listen to a classical radio station in the background while reading to exams. At first classical music sounded a bit weird for a guy who had a taste for "rave" music, but my ears adjusted fast and I started to really like what I hear. In December 1996 I heard Elgar's Enigma Variations on radio and my mind was totally blown away. I felt it was music that was composed for me by a divine creature. Next summer I got into J. S. Bach and these two composers are still my most favorite above the rest. The last 20 years has been discovering music I like and expanding my taste. The internet makes it possible.

It seems that many people have got a "rock education" at home, but I didn't have that I had Max Roach education. It might have been a blessing: I am not stuck on some stupid metal music like KISS or Metallica...

We had some similarities growing up in our 'musical upbringings'...my Dad loved Jazz and Big Band. So, Brubeck, Lewis, Jamal, Montgomery, Parker, Davis, MJQ, Byrd, Goodman, Ellington, Basie, Miller, etc. were the staples of my early musical life...as well as piano lessons -- ugh!

He was also open to 'good' popular music and listened to Blood Sweat & Tears, Chicago -- even some Guess Who, BTO, Yes, Looking Glass, and others. That said, he even listened to the other music I played on his Telefunken Console. Though I'm sure he didn't really like it much! In retrospect, I'm thinking it was to encourage me to listen to music...and probably the direction of my musical tastes.

It would've sucked to have that other music 'hidden' as you describe. I still love Jazz and Big Band but can't imagine if I couldn't have grown up listening to the music I did and having the freedom/capability to explore various genres. To me musical variety is truly a 'spice of life'. I have music from all major genres (some more than others ) and typically listen on shuffle.

 

[Phronesis]

I think you've brought up an important point - but I think I might disagree with your conclusion.

A hobby is something you do for fun; and many hobbies aren't especially utilitarian; and many are VERY expensive.

I believe that "audiophiles" really fall into two groups: those who like listening to music and consider their equipment a way to do it, and those whose hobby is collecting, building, or trying out audio equipment. For the former, the most sensible thing is to find equipment that they find adequate, and then stop spending money on equipment. However, for those whose actual hobby is AUDIO EQUIPMENT, I guess it would ruin all the fun if they stopped buying new equipment to play with.

I also think this is true of any hobby. You can buy a bicycle that works just fine to get you to the corner store, and provides all sorts of wonderful exercise, for a few hundred dollars. Yet you can also spend tens of thousands of dollars for a bike. And we all know how big a difference there is between the price of an economy car and a sports car. And, yes, there are professional bike riders who actually "need" those $10k bikes, and race car drivers who need fast cars, but there are also people who just ENJOY customizing their bike, or working on their car. I know people who go to the shooting range to perfect their skills - with a single very accurate target pistol. But I also know others who try a different one every time, because they just enjoy trying out different ones. Why is it any more foolish to spend thousands of dollars customizing a car that never goes on the track than it is to spend a small fraction of that on audio equipment... even if you don't really need it, and even if you just collect it, or sell the old one and buy a new one every six months?

Perhaps what we're really missing is a place like a shooting range... where, for $20 an hour, you can listen to any headphone or headphone amp from a long list, without having to buy it.

I think that’s all fine as far the hobby aspect, and lately I’m sort of in hobby mode with audio gear myself.

But I think it becomes problematic when people spend money they really can’t afford to spend, especially when it’s for the sake of sonic improvements which are actually non-existent. IMO, if someone has to save for many months to buy a piece of audio gear, and has to sell it if unexpected expenses come up, they can’t afford it and should instead buy something they can afford. I see a lot of people like that in head-fi. Some of them buy cables costing $500+ and talk about how they make the bass more articulate, smooth out the highs, etc.

I also see guys straining to buy sports cars costing over $100k, and then hardly driving them to reduce depreciation, so this is certainly not a mindset unique to audiophiles.

 

[KeithEmo]

1)
Can a human reliably detect the difference?
Yes.
Would the difference affect any practical aspect of how most people use it?
No.

2)
You sort of missed the point.....
PROFESSIONAL BIKE RIDERS probably do get a little more speed, or something else, out of that $10k bike.
HOWEVER, many hobbyists just "like having nice equipment".
Many hobbyists walk into a bike store, with their tax refund, which they consider "disposable income" and say "What's the best bike you have?"
And many hobbyists buy a $2k camera to take (usually bad) pictures of their kids and their cat.

3)
I might suggest you check out how much chrome trim costs...
And fancy paint jobs...
And real wood interior trim...
They may impress the owner, or his friends, but they surely don't improve the actual performance of the car.

It is blatantly obvious to me that MOST hobbyists spend most of the money they do to get things they ENJOY.....
Which is quite different than "things that actually affect performance".
Or, to look at it differently, when we're talking about a hobby.....
The main performance criterion is "how much you enjoy it".... so nothing else really matters.
And, if you enjoy driving that car more, knowing that the fancy paint job impresses your friends, then I guess, for a hobby, that apparently counts as "performance enhancement".

At a more basic level - by definition a hobby is something that you do for fun...
So any idea about what you "need" to do it is somewhat moot...
The most economical solution is just to stay home and not do it at all...
Beyond that "whatever turns you on" is "a good investment"...

1. Have you ever ridden an expensive, competition bike? Have you ever driven an economy car and a sports car? If it were possible to do a blind test, would the differences between an economy car and a sports car exceed the threshold of what humans are able to reliably detect and if so, by a negligible, barely detectable amount or by a massive amount?

2. Why would professional bike riders "need" those $10k bikes or race car drivers need expensive race cars if those competition bikes and race cars had no discernable improvement in performance over standard/consumer bikes or cars?

3. If one spent many thousands of dollars on performance enhancement customisations for a car and the end result was a car whose performance was indistinguishable from a standard car, that would indeed be very foolish. Just as foolish as spending many thousands on higher performing/higher fidelity audio equipment that also was not distinguishably higher performing or higher fidelity than standard.

The above seems so blatantly obvious to me that I can't even imagine what my everyday life would be like if I were incapable of understanding it!
Unlike the vast majority of the components in an audio reproduction system, transducers can make a significant difference but here too we run into huge audiophile fallacies, falsehoods and inconsistencies about what the word "fidelity" means and what is a personal preference as opposed to something that is actually "better".

G

 

[Phronesis]

Here's another angle on expectation bias: if someone has done blind testing and couldn't consistently notice significant differences, they'd expect the relevant classes of gear to sound the same, and would have an expectation that they're not missing out on anything by not trying more gear, so they can just enjoy the gear they have. The thought that there could be gear out there which really would sound better to them (but they may not be able to find it) would be an unwelcome thought.

The above is NOT an argument that there are significant differences in the sound of gear like DACs, amps, cables, etc. I'm just pointing out another type of expectation bias which comes into play with all of this stuff.

 

[sonitus mirus]

Here's another angle on expectation bias: if someone has done blind testing and couldn't consistently notice significant differences, they'd expect the relevant classes of gear to sound the same, and would have an expectation that they're not missing out on anything by not trying more gear, so they can just enjoy the gear they have. The thought that there could be gear out there which really would sound better to them (but they may not be able to find it) would be an unwelcome thought.

The above is NOT an argument that there are significant differences in the sound of gear like DACs, amps, cables, etc. I'm just pointing out another type of expectation bias which comes into play with all of this stuff.

I can only speak for myself when I say that the process to arrive at my current thinking was a painstakingly lengthy one. While testing to see if I could hear any difference between mp3 and lossless files, there were dozens of times where I swore I was hearing an obvious difference, only to prove to myself via an ABX that I could not identify this difference. When I carefully listened again, what I was certain was a significant change in sound was not so clear after having performed the ABX.

I was having such a difficult time finding any differences that I seriously questioned if my processes were faulty or somehow inadvertently responsible for the outcomes I was seeing. I attempted to make certain that everything dealing with the conversion, saving, and playback were carefully done so as not to mess something up that would invalidate and corrupt the testing. I would start at a very low compression where I would always identify differences and work my way up in quality levels until the differences could no longer be found.

I attempted to find music that was supposedly the most difficult to compress and still found no differences when subjected to an ABX. I found the same with many hi-res files. I made purchases of music for the sole reason of using it for testing. I signed up for streaming services and used hacks to capture/steal the digital version so that these files could also be used for testing.

Naturally, I began to wonder if maybe my ears or my equipment were too inadequate to resolve such differences. This is actually true; though not in the same sense that many audiophiles would have you believe. What I discovered was that practically no one possessed the hearing or equipment capable of identifying any differences. It wasn't just me, or at least nobody was providing any reliable information to suggest they were special. I was able to successfully pass the Philips Golden Ear Challenge via a pair of Denon D5000 headphones using Schitt equipment that costs under $300. I was also able to pass the challenge with a pair Gibson/KRK Rokit 8 powered speakers using all of the inexpensive DACs I had available to me at the time.

I even created a cable apparatus so that I could volume match any pair of headphones using a multimeter. This was excellent for verifying that various amps I was using did not sound better or worse than another.

I could go on and on with all the various testing I have done. I found test files that allowed me to identify where my threshold resided with regards to such things as frequency response, dynamic range, stereo imaging, delay, and noise levels.

The debates continue, with no new evidence to suggest the game has changed at all. At this point, I really don't care if there is some slight difference only a few people might hear with certain equipment playing specific material. I am thoroughly enjoying what sounds to be perfectly clear music that I can play at a much higher volume level than I would ever require. Perhaps I am missing something as a result of my personal expectations, but I'd rather be ignorant and save some money than be ignorant and throw money away.

 

[bigshot]

If I won in lottery things would be different.

Well, Oppo's R&D team asked me to evaluate the PM-1s and gave them to me, so winning the lottery isn't totally out of the realm of possibility. I totally understand not wanting to drop a grand on headphones. I don't really use cans enough to justify that much money myself. But if you have money to spend, the one place where more cash actually results in improved sound is transducers. I've spent much more on my speakers than the rest of my system. But even that is dwarfed by the money I've invested in music. Music is the best place of all to spend your money. Music is the number 2 focus of my life, so it's worth it.