[ThePandemonium]

No one really appreciates my headphone collection, but all my friends LOVE my home theater system.  They will ask me to watch movies in my room every weekend, they like the movie theater feel.

 

[pj_rage]

I think my friends appreciate that my rigs sound much better than anything else they've heard, but that they simply don't care enough to spend that kind of money on it.  They are perfectly fine with awful sounding headphones and earbuds.  I can respect that.  As long as they can recognize the difference, at least they can make the decision for themselves.  There are plenty of things that I don't own the best of, that others do, and with those things, I recognize that better products exist, I just don't care enough to spend my money on the better product -- I'd rather spend it on something else.  Like headphones

  They do ask if there is anything cheaper that sounds good too though.  $100 total seems to be the upper limit for what my friends would want to pay for an upgrade.

 

[ASilva]

Appart from my brother? None... They don't even like in-ears because they are "weird". Only listen to stock earbuds or some chinese knockoff that you can buy for 1€ at a random store. One of them got AKG normal buds for 7€ and seemed very proud

 

[seekadds]

my close friends can appreciate the gear, acquaintances generally just think i'm crazy. but even my close friends (since they either can't afford it or they don't want to spend that much) argue for their own sake that the upgrade is not worth it. maybe they are right, but hey, you can't put a price tag on entertainment, and reading these forums and having "nice" gear definitely makes listening more fun for me. 

 also, i spend almost half my waking hours with headphones/iems in either at work or on my commute, so i figure i could at least treat my ears. i don't think anyone i know personally uses headphones as often as i do.
 
typically people that see my gear like the style and the idea of it, but believe that their stock headphones are just as good or barely worse. i'm too nice to say "ok let's A/B your stock 'buds versus my Ortofon e-Q7, then you tell me yours are just as good." i'm no crusader out to save the ears of every poor audionoob. if they have the interest, they will see the light.

 

[spiritos]

My lil' brother has upgraded his earphones and is gonna buy the re0, a good friend of mine has got the hots for my Ety's that's pretty much it, my wife thinks I'm a nut case, other than that she got a new pair of Audio-technica's for her MP3 player from me as a gift

 

[LFC_SL]

Some guys appreciate the geek factor
 
The majority of girls fully understand when I use the analogy of the handbag. Thanks

 

[rawrster]

The friends that know I'm into this got no issues. They can see that we all have our thing where we spend money on. Some of them are into cars, computers, shoes, bags, whatever. I don't force it on them but if they ask about it I'll let them know what I think.

 

[ZeusofBoost]

None of my friends care much about headphones. That and they cant afford nice gear. Im probably gonna give my S4's to my little brother when i get my Turbine Pro Golds. Maybe he'll get hooked and start buying nicer headphones.

 

[kchui999]

I only let my audiophile friends listen to my rig.  Everyone else has no idea what they're seeing, but they really like how my MK III looks

 

[jjeremycai]

Zip. No one believes my justification of my purchases; they just call me a "sound whore." 

 

[agaro]

Most of my friends simply don't get it, they download all their music in poor quality from the internet, and sadly they see nothing wrong in it. They think it's crazy to spend more than $25 for headphones. I'm really happy that this forum exists so I can convince myself I'm not crazy. 

 

[Mr Joboto]

"WHAT, YOU BOUGHT 900 DOLLAR HEADPHONES?!?!?!!"
 
end of audio conversation.

 

[Region2]

Friends?  This is why I buy headphones, to block people out 

 
Out of my friends, maybe one thinks I'm not crazy and even then he thinks I spend far too much, but I don't like doing things by halves.
 
I couldn't really care if none of them understood if I could get the little lady to understand, then I wouldn't have to sneak around late at night seeing my lovely musical mistresses on the sly.

 

[EraserXIV]

for the most part the appreciate it, but don't think the price is justified. we all have different priorities.

 

[Young Spade]

Most of my friends think I'm crazy. Talking about getting a 300 dollar amp is just out of the question for most people. Putting my portable rig on the desk during class (in a case) because it was heavy on the pockets brought out a classroom discussion on how much that all cost. I'm pretty modest and tried to keep it under wraps but some people just think it's crazy.
There are a couple who think it's pretty cool and admire it; not like I gloat about it or anything.