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- Jun 20, 2001
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The title says what I’ve seen some saying. And my answer is “That is, at the very least, partially the point.” Where did the most seasoned veterans of the headphone audio hobby start? With kilobuck rigs from the get-go? Uh, no. Let’s look back at most of our first posts, and witness our own humble beginnings.
I started in this hobby long before there was a Head-Fi, as a teenager in the mid-80’s with a wee bit of money saved up and what I believe was a Crutchfield catalog and a subscription to the now defunct Stereo Review. I ended up buying a Sony D-7 portable CD player (I think it was the second model Sony introduced in the States) and a Sony MDR-V6 (which I believe was just released at the time). (I wanted the AKG K240, but it was about $15.00 or $20.00 over my budget’s furthest stretch, which was a lot to a teenager back then.)
My interest in audio grew substantially, thanks to that portable rig. As a college student, I worked at one of the highest-end audio stores in the Metro Detroit area, where my music and audio tastes blossomed further. I fell out of the headphone scene for the speaker scene for a while, and made an embarrassing return to headphones some time later with an Aiwa noise-canceling headphone that both sounded abysmal and broke like it was made of rice paper (I know, because I went through three of them--don’t ask me why now, as I have no good answer). Long story short, I think it fair to say that, like many veteran members here, I’ve come a long way since then.
I was having a conversation with the editor of a high-end audio magazine a while ago, and he said he was amazed with Head-Fi because he viewed it as one of the few beacons of recruitment for the audiophile hobby. As he put it, “You’re breeding audiophiles at Head-Fi.” We are. And it’s those newbs who are largely to do with it. Audiophilism--whether one's sound is piped out of headphones or loudspeakers--is a fringe hobby, and will always be. But, like it or not once you’re already there, the fringe is formed from a subset of the mainstream--and the higher-end element is the fringe of the fringe. And the more people paying attention to what we’re doing, the bigger the fringe gets. This site is still growing. And there is indeed a larger percentage of newbies, as a result, than ever before. In the last month, Head-Fi had 335,877 unique visitors. Given that many gray-haired audiophiles have been involved in the hobby since childhood--and I’m one of them, though my hair isn’t yet gray--an audiophile, once bred, has a good chance at being one for life. And I’ll argue that, as it stands, few sites--if any--will bring more new blood into the audiophile hobby than Head-Fi. Will all who visit Head-Fi become high-end audio enthusiasts? Of course not. But you’ll get no new ones without new blood.
Long story short, welcome aboard, newbs. But do us all a favor, and use the search functions available on the site (and there are a couple of different types of search you can use now) before you ask about the best $50.00 headphones so that you can tap into what is already a vast store of knowledge on that any many other audio-related subjects that exist in the millions of posts here.
I started in this hobby long before there was a Head-Fi, as a teenager in the mid-80’s with a wee bit of money saved up and what I believe was a Crutchfield catalog and a subscription to the now defunct Stereo Review. I ended up buying a Sony D-7 portable CD player (I think it was the second model Sony introduced in the States) and a Sony MDR-V6 (which I believe was just released at the time). (I wanted the AKG K240, but it was about $15.00 or $20.00 over my budget’s furthest stretch, which was a lot to a teenager back then.)
My interest in audio grew substantially, thanks to that portable rig. As a college student, I worked at one of the highest-end audio stores in the Metro Detroit area, where my music and audio tastes blossomed further. I fell out of the headphone scene for the speaker scene for a while, and made an embarrassing return to headphones some time later with an Aiwa noise-canceling headphone that both sounded abysmal and broke like it was made of rice paper (I know, because I went through three of them--don’t ask me why now, as I have no good answer). Long story short, I think it fair to say that, like many veteran members here, I’ve come a long way since then.
I was having a conversation with the editor of a high-end audio magazine a while ago, and he said he was amazed with Head-Fi because he viewed it as one of the few beacons of recruitment for the audiophile hobby. As he put it, “You’re breeding audiophiles at Head-Fi.” We are. And it’s those newbs who are largely to do with it. Audiophilism--whether one's sound is piped out of headphones or loudspeakers--is a fringe hobby, and will always be. But, like it or not once you’re already there, the fringe is formed from a subset of the mainstream--and the higher-end element is the fringe of the fringe. And the more people paying attention to what we’re doing, the bigger the fringe gets. This site is still growing. And there is indeed a larger percentage of newbies, as a result, than ever before. In the last month, Head-Fi had 335,877 unique visitors. Given that many gray-haired audiophiles have been involved in the hobby since childhood--and I’m one of them, though my hair isn’t yet gray--an audiophile, once bred, has a good chance at being one for life. And I’ll argue that, as it stands, few sites--if any--will bring more new blood into the audiophile hobby than Head-Fi. Will all who visit Head-Fi become high-end audio enthusiasts? Of course not. But you’ll get no new ones without new blood.
Long story short, welcome aboard, newbs. But do us all a favor, and use the search functions available on the site (and there are a couple of different types of search you can use now) before you ask about the best $50.00 headphones so that you can tap into what is already a vast store of knowledge on that any many other audio-related subjects that exist in the millions of posts here.
