[indie_obsessed]

 I came across a brilliant article about “The Holy Trinity”. No, i didn’t get it off the Catholic News, instead i got it off Stereophile.
 
Here’s the link! if you’re interested. http://stereophile.com/asweseeit/the_holy_trinity/
 
The article explains the ‘The Holy Trinity in audiophiledom’.
It consists of:

1. Music
2. Quality of sound
3. Ease of access to music MQE for short.

 
So the article goes on to say how everyone’s MQEs are different but they should all add up till about 100. So for example a real music lover who doesn’t care about anything else would be like, 90/5/5. That sort of thing. The article then delaborates about how as one ages, his/her MQE will change accordingly. Understandable right? Considering teenagers want their music accessible, with the digital musical kingdom is at it’s zenith. Also, but reducing the number for one side, say music, doesn’t compromise the fact that you still love music, but instead, you’ve grown to appreciate the other aspects of music appreciation too. So the question that sprouts out from this post would be, what is your MQE? Here’s mine. I absolutely LOVE music. Arduously. I can’t imagine my life without music. One day of not listening to any form of music, would leave me completely and vulnerable inside. Hence when i was younger, at say my mid-teens it would’ve been like any other music loving teenager, my MQE would’ve been 85/5/10. Why 85? Well i listened to ALOT of music then. why 5? I was completely oblivious to the audiophile world at that time. I didn’t know the existence of high quality audio equipment and different file formats at that time. Why 10? I didn’t really download then, it was more of buying CDs. I was anti mainstream at that time too, and moat of the music i listened to were indie, hence it was exceptionally difficult to get the CDs here in Singapore, and i had to result to buying on amazon. That didn’t deter me from getting CDs though, hence music access wasn’t placed on high emphasis. However, now at the age of 20, i somehow discovered the beauty of sound quality. With my slightly over $1000 basic sound system at home, and analogously valued portable rig, I’ve become a sound quality snob, and would mostly listen to lossless file formats (i’ll explain what these files are in future posts) and now, as my ears are so spoilt (in both sense of the word), i can only listen to high quality music. If not i’ll simply scoff at the poor sound quality. I still love music, and ease of access to music has gotten a wee bit on my nerves so… my MQE would now be: 50/30/20.

 

[Rossinator]

A day without any music is hard. I went camping for three days and damn, that wasn't easy. Really though I didn't go without music, I was listening to my music in my head. Hah. So I guess I honestly can go without music in some form or way at all. I like to think I really care about sound quality, and I bought my DT48 since some people say they are really high quality, but honestly I don't care that much. I can't hear clipping, I don't care if music is highly compressed, and I can't hear any/most of what people seem to hear in headphones, etc.
 
So I guess 90/5/5.

 

[logwed]

60/35/5, I'd say. Convenience isn't really an issue for me, I don't really listen all day, and there are plenty of days where I don't listen at all, so music itself isn't the most major part of my life as a whole. My rig is very expensive (for my earnings), so it is definitely a huge part of my listening experience, but I spend significantly more money on new music, so music rates higher. 

 

[Sonic 748i]

50/45/5, for me. I love good music but at the same time when the quality of the sound is Hi-Fi I can get even closer to the music and enjoy it even further.

 

[Prog Rock Man]

I would rate myself as 33.3% across the board as the music matters as much as the quality and the access I get with streaming gives me huge pleasure.

 

[haloxt]

I guess about 25/50/25
 
I refuse to listen to poorly recorded music or noise disguised as music, other than that I am not picky about music, I find value in all music genres. Spend much more money and time on equipment than music (I mostly listen to magnatune independent musicians now) because I think good reproduction is essential for finding the true meaning of the music. Prefer the convenience of my mp3 player optical spdif to cd player or computer transport, and have wasted quite some time and money trying alternative convenient transports, and trying to improve them.

 

[Happy Camper]

While I've gotten more tuned to better gear, I still listen to poor recordings if the music is worthy of the annoyance. I don't like mp3 artifacts but I can tolerate old recordings. In the last ten years access has been prominent but I still fall back to the music. So 50/25/25.

 

[khaos974]

That is PURE nonsense. One may be a 15/80/5 or a 40/40/20 and the second one would care more about equipment. The first one could be mostly uninterested in music, as long as they can dance on it in nightclub, it would be fine. And since they don't care for music, they won't care about the quality of the reproduction at all, BUT it has a lot of bass, that criteria would be absolutely essential. Ease of access => nightclubs, enough is said. The second one would be a more classical audiophile.
 
In the end the MQE thing is fine to describe the ratio, but it doesn't really say anything about how important M, Q and E are to us. The example above would be quite extreme, but take a look at an audiophile who listen to music seriously for 2 hours a day, and one who listen to music for 3 hours a day, plays multiple instruments, and is part of a jazz band/ a concertist, I'd wager that even if it's a 50/30/20 for both, the second one would care more about music than the first despite scoring 50. Between a excellent meal, let's say prepared by a chef at a truly excellent restaurant and a newly bought recording by a their favorite artist, the first may choose to go to the restaurant and listen later, while the second may decide to skip the restaurant and listen to the recording first.
 
The MQE ratio pre-supposes that the sum of musical enjoyment is always the same and that we all derive the same amount of pleasure from listening to music.
 
That said, probably a 50/35/15 for me.

 

[haloxt]

No it doesn't presuppose that, it states in the article that it does not. It's merely a ratio. Like 5% of 100 is 5, 5% of 1000 is 50. I still think it's pretty silly though, knowing how you rate your own MQE has little practical application as far as I can see, as pointless as Freudian psychology.

 

[Deep Funk]

Music: whatever suits me at the moment, depends which can mean everything.
Quality of sound: CD, FLAC and 320 kbps WMAs and I buy all my music on CD but sometimes a bad pressing or recording does occur.
Ease: depends, Ebay, web stores, music stores, fairs if it seems worth it I get it. 
 
I cannot really give a good estimation how to divide the 100%. Those values are variable. Splitting up 100% over three aspects seems somewhat silly to me too. An estimate rating from 0 to 100 in which 0 stands for 'don't care' for each aspect would better, I think.

 

[Young Spade]

 

1. Music
2. Quality of sound

 
I don't really know how I would divide that up by numbers but..... I would have to say that music makes up.... 80 percent of my time? I Think that number will go down though once I receive my Archos from Amazon but until then, I spend most of my money on music and audio equipment. I listen to it every day that I have free time (which is pretty much every day) for 2 hours at least.
 
Quality? I only rip/get my music at FLAC at the lowest right now; I'm trying to replace everything in my library that's mp3 with it. 

 

[bunyani]

owh.now i realize that im still at 80/1/19 .back then audio quality did not have a significant value for me. since my portble player are uite limited in space, i like to fill in my protable as much as i could.so the smaller files the better.lol, now im aging so fast..so feel a slight change to quality but not much changes .so now at 66/27/7

 

[Iniamyen]

Quote:

Music: whatever suits me at the moment, depends which can mean everything.
Quality of sound: CD, FLAC and 320 kbps WMAs and I buy all my music on CD but sometimes a bad pressing or recording does occur.
Ease: depends, Ebay, web stores, music stores, fairs if it seems worth it I get it. 
 
I cannot really give a good estimation how to divide the 100%. Those values are variable. Splitting up 100% over three aspects seems somewhat silly to me too. An estimate rating from 0 to 100 in which 0 stands for 'don't care' for each aspect would better, I think.

So rate your M, Q, and E from 0 to 100, then to convert to percentage, do the following:
 
M% = 100 x (your M) / (your M + your Q + your E)
Q% = 100 x (your Q) / (your M + your Q + your E)
E% = 100 x (your E) / (your M + your Q + your E)
 
The whole point is to express the *relative* importance of those 3 factors. If you don't like the system itself, talk to Stereophile, as the OP didn't invent it.

 

[Armaegis]

Under "ease of access" I would also consider your library organization (and if going digital, the software you use). As a part time DJ, this is critical for me to be able to search and sort, manage playlists, keep track of histories, etc.
 
I would say my SQE is somewhere around 40/25/35.