John Darko
What is an audiophile? My friends ask me this from time to time. They’ll suggest that it’s all about owning exotic equipment. I push back: being an audiophile is less about the gear we own and more about how much attention we give to music. Is it foreground or background? If it’s foreground, how much do we care about the sound of music?
My friends also ask me: why are most audiophiles old? The answer to this, I think, is two-fold.
Firstly, when we are young, we are broke. Only as we get older do we see an increase in our disposable income. And we might choose to spend that newly-found disposable income on a better hi-fi system. But why audio hardware? That brings us to the second reason: I suspect – but cannot prove – that we take an interest in the sound of music because the music itself no longer gives us the emotional rush of our younger years. And as we get older, we look for something to bridge the gap: the sound quality of that music. As we age, we care less about getting drunk and more about the quality of what we drink. It’s why so many dudes get into cameras, cycling and whisky as they head deeper into their thirties and forties.
Talking of whisky, we need to talk about listening bars. In the past few years, bars paying heed to the quality of their sound systems have been on the rise, both in number and in the press. Many are promoted as “listening bars”. I dig this from a conceptual point of view because venues like this promote the importance of sound quality beyond the walls of the audiophile ghetto.
But hang on. There’s a problem. And it’s in the name. The listening bar’s origins lie in Japan where ‘Kissa’ bars play jazz music as foreground entertainment instead of a background to conversations. That jazz music is usually played on vinyl through high-efficiency speakers and tube amps. Tannoy, Shindo and Garrard have become de rigeur. Jazz Kissa bars work in Japan because the idea of “others before self” is woven into the fabric of society. Japanese people will often graciously sacrifice their desire to talk in a bar so that others may enjoy the music being played. But the USA, the UK, Europe and Australia/NZ aren’t like Japan. Western societies are full of individualists. If you’ve been to the movie theatre in the last twenty years, you’ll know that some people can become indignant when asked to be quiet for the benefit of others. It’s why I doubt listening bars will take hold in the West as they have in Japan: people who’ll shut up and listen – especially after a few drinks – are in short supply. And remember: it’s not a listening bar until everyone stops talking. Until then it’s just a bar with a nice hi-fi system.
Now let’s shift our focus to China where many hi-fi components are made. Hi-fi manufacturers choose Chinese factories because the country’s lower labour costs result in a more competitive price for the consumer. It’s how manufacturers can respond to people asking about domestically-made goods with “But why does it have to cost so much?”. Things are changing and local economies are becoming more price-competitive but the bigger downside of “Made in China” relates to politics. There are many political reasons not to like products that are made in China but this isn’t a politics website so I’ll not get into them here. Whilst I acknowledge that “Made in China” is a turn-off for some people, it’s much easier to take issue with “Made in China” when we’ve zero intention of buying the product.
Pointing out a so-called ‘dealbreaker’ in this manner is one way we deal with products we thirst after but can never afford. I often point to the bigger, more expensive houses on the other side of town and say, “But what would I do with ALL that space?”. But who am I kidding? I could never afford a million-dollar house. My question about “all that space” is my engaging in what the Internet calls “COPE”.
And yet a million-dollar house is what we need if we want to swim at the deep end of the audiophile pool. The more luxurious our loudspeakers the more we need to wake up to the room being the most impactful component in the playback chain. What we hear from our loudspeakers isn’t just the loudspeakers themselves but the acoustic interface between the speakers and the room. Obstinate denial can only hold for so long.
If we want to own a pair of say, B&W 800 Series, Magico or Estelon, we need a room that’ll do them justice. A 6m x 5m apartment lounge room like my Berlin pad introduces too many low-frequency standing waves. The juice isn’t worth the squeeze: putting really expensive full-range speakers (20Hz to 20kHz) into a room like that would be a waste of money. The smaller the room, the higher the frequency of its standing waves. Uber high-end loudspeakers need a room large enough that its standing waves will sit closer to or below 20Hz. How large? I’d say a minimum of 10 meters along each wall. If we intend to acoustically treat the room for reverb – and we should – it’s probably best that we don’t do it to our lounge room lest we upset the rest of the family with compromised aesthetics. That upshot? For über expensive hi-fi gear, we need a room that’s a) separate, b) large and c) acoustically treated. And in most first-world countries, that means a million-dollar house.
Perhaps my talking incessantly about the importance of the room is my version of “cope”. Perhaps I cannot cope with super-expensive speakers. Think you’re immune? Cope is all over the Internet. When we write “the difference between X and Y is night and day” on a Facebook group or in a comments section, we might ask: who are we talking to? Are we talking to the person who enquired about product Y? Or are we talking to ourselves? “This destroys that” might, in fact, be the sound of us trying to self-validate a recent purchase.
That’s maximization. What about minimisation? When we write “There is no difference between this and that”, we might be coping in the opposite direction: with what we could never afford. If a $200 Blu-Ray player is all our budget allows as a CD transport, we might be extremely resistant to the idea that a better-built and more costly dedicated CD transport will sound better. Or maybe we don’t want to afford it because we have other priorities – which is fair enough – but that doesn’t mean the audible difference between this and that is zero.
Taking this to the next level, we might even say something like “$2000 is too much for a pair of speakers and anyone who spends that is an idiot”. The real idiocy believing what we think is true for us is also true for everyone else. A pair of recent YouTube community polls (above) tell us that there is no universal threshold for speaker price tolerance. This reminds me of Ricky Gervais talking about how some people take offence at his jokes. He suggests the offended parties often conflate “I find this offensive” with “This is offensive”. They externalise the personal as universal (when it isn’t). Not everyone is offended by his jokes. So when we claim $2000 is too much for a pair of loudspeakers, what we are actually saying is “$2000 is too much for a pair of loudspeakers for me.”
You’ve probably heard the saying “Comparison is the thief of joy”. What follows treads a similar path.
“Our hi-fi happiness can be calculated as follows:
The joy of what we own minus our envy of what others own”
I think that neatly sums up the audiophile condition. Some of us a) fuss too much over how other people choose to spend their money and b) believe that our way of seeing the hi-fi world is the only way to see the hi-fi world. So I’ll end by repeating the words of Joey Swoll who calls out narcissistic behaviour in public gyms: we need to do better; we need to mind our own business, if only for the sake of our own happiness.
