As I hinted at in a recent editorial about the stranglehold boomers have on the audiophile hobby, “what even is an audiophile?” is a peculiarly fascinating question. As my podcast cohost Brent Butterworth is fond of saying, biking magazines aren’t filled with editorials about what it means to be a cyclist, nor were knitting magazines (when those still existed as more than an expensive but gorgeous curiosity) clogged up with navel-gazing pieces about the identitarian components of being a knitter.
To be fair, I can think of one hobby that’s so-afflicted, as gaming publications often grapple with the notion of what it means to be a “real” gamer as opposed to someone who merely plays games, and it’s interesting to me that there’s also a generational component to that gate-keeping, although in this case it’s Gen Xers and elder millennials who defend their turf aggressively.
At any rate, Brent and I were discussing this on a recent episode of Audio Unleashed, and I brought up a conversation I had with a young comrade of mine, who expressed surprise that I had—in their estimation—good taste in music. And their surprise came from the fact that I write about hi‑fi. To them, there’s a negative correlation between being an audiophile and actually enjoying music on its own terms, rather than as a means to an end, and I dropped that anecdote in passing only to quickly forget about it.
But that prompted a comment from one of our Patreon supporters, Mark Snyderman, who frequently leaves us insightful feedback (and occasionally tells me to shut my yap about politics, as if everything wasn’t tainted by politics these days, but that’s neither here nor there).
Mark’s message got straight to the point, so I’m going to reprint it here in full:
Another terrific show, guys. I was surprised to hear that the two of you were surprised about Dennis’s friend’s comment that audiophiles don’t have good taste in music. From my own experience, this seems obviously true. Not all audiophiles by a long shot, but a lot of them. It’s not that they have poor taste, as much as they just don’t know very much about music at all.
They know a relatively small number of “audiophile approved” recordings that show off their stereos. Nothing wrong with that, if it’s what floats your boat, but it puts a lie to the old audiophile saw that “it’s all about the music.” That’s just not true for many audiophiles.
Here’s a game you can play with your friends that makes my point. You have a choice of listening to music for the rest of your life in only one of two ways: either on the best stereo you’ve ever heard, but limiting yourself to only 100 records of your choosing, or on a decent Bluetooth speaker, but with the entirety of Spotify (sub-CD resolution) at your disposal.
I’ve played this game many times, and most people know instantly which they would choose. It does tend to separate out the music lovers.
Turns out—for me at least—Mark was right. I would hate to have to make this choice. But if forced, I’d take the good Bluetooth speaker and lossy streaming over a world-class hi‑fi setup and 100 records any day of the week and twice on Sundays. Notice that I said “lossy streaming,” though, not “Spotify.” Sorry, Mark. I know you hate it when I talk politics, but Spotify is uniquely evil, and many of my favorite modern recording artists are fleeing that sinking ship anyway. So that complicates the choice.
But to me, when you take that moral dilemma out of the equation, the choice seems obvious. Hell, I’d say a majority of my music listening is of the streaming-to-AirPlay-speaker variety anyway, and I use the various Bluesound and orphaned Sonos speakers around my house slightly more than I use either of my dedicated sound systems.
To opt for the 100 records option would cut me off from so many opportunities to discover new artists like Aurora and Dodie and Wet Leg and Alon Mor and—although I’ve been a fan for a few years now, at my age they still count as a recent discovery—King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard.
So many of the under-30s in my circle feed me a constant stream of new tunes, the majority of which bounce right off of me, but a precious few of which literally change the soundtrack to my life forever. If the only way I could listen to those tunes was on a Bluetooth or Wi‑Fi speaker, I’d be missing something, for sure. I’d be missing a lot, in fact. But, again, if those were my two options and I had to pick one, I feel like I’d be missing infinitely more by hoarding 100 precious records and only being able to listen to them alone, in my listening room, with full frequency response and some spatial special effects.
So do I have to hand in my audiophile card now? Well, joke’s on you: I was never a card-carrying member. That, despite the fact that I think high-quality audio reproduction is incredibly important. To me, the physiological effects of listening to a beautifully dialed-in stereo system (or surround system, for that matter) that’s well-behaved and full-range, with good soundstaging and imaging, truly make life better in meaningful ways. No Bluetooth speaker is ever going to give me 100 percent of the sense of being inside the music the way my stereo system does on the regular.
And yet, as important as that physiological connection with the music is, it’s not as important as the music itself. And Brent said pretty much exactly the same in his response to this question in the Patreon-only segment of a follow-up episode.
But that’s an n=2 sample. I was really curious about how others in the industry and hobby would respond when presented with what I originally referred to as Snyderman’s Maxim, but have taken to calling Snyderman’s Choice in homage to William Styron’s seminal 1979 novel and the Meryl Streep film adapted from it.
I put the question out there in a mass SoundStage! email, and the responses started pouring in immediately. SoundStage! founder Doug Schneider bristled at the validity of the forced choice, saying:
The binary thinking is a big problem: listening vs. measurements, digital vs. analog, audiophile or music lover.
There are some audiophiles, I guess, who only listen for some kind of sound effects, but I think, at worst, most audiophiles who tend toward the “non-music” side like a limited number of recordings that are recorded well. By that I mean they’re just not listening to everything. Rather, they gravitate to a number and legitimately like the music and the whole presentation.
At the same time, there are music lovers who will listen to anything anywhere on anything, but many gravitate to something “reasonable” sounding—or at least what they think is reasonable.
Doug
And part of me agreed with that immediately, although I think I view the binary choice as more of an indicator of what’s more important to the listener than it is a belief that people either care about music and not audio quality or vice versa. And when I got Doug’s response, my first thought was, “Yeah, obviously, nobody’s going to claim to be an audiophile but not a music fan. It’s a spectrum.”
Until the next response came in from our electronics measurement specialist, Diego Estan, whose honest confession was a surprise, but a pleasant one nonetheless due to its unapologetic nature.
For me, definitely 100 songs on a great stereo over unlimited music on a BT speaker. Heck, even if it were 20 songs.
I’m more an audiophile than a music lover. But I do only listen to music I like. I’m really just more enamored with the whole 3D soundstage trick. This is what I crave, less so the music. I do not listen to music in the background, ever. I use podcasts instead of music for things like chores, commuting, etc. I rarely even discover new music. I listen to stuff I’ve liked for years.
Diego
Did you catch that? Diego is so committed to his answer that he chose Door #1 thinking it was 100 songs, not 100 records. And unlike me and Brent and Doug—who would all be giving up something genuinely meaningful by taking Door #2, it sounds like Diego’s choice would be no skin off his nose at all.
(Image courtesy of Stefan Stefancik via Pexels)
SoundStage! Solo editor Geoffrey Morrison had one of the hottest takes on all of this:
I fell in love with music using cassettes and trash ’80s/’90s foam-covered headphones. I grew my palette and musical tastes downloading countless tracks at 128kbps from Napster and the like. I greatly prefer high-res lossless streams via whatever my favorite headphones are now, but the emotion of the best music can be easily conveyed regardless of the technology. I prefer high-quality audio, but I need music. Given your trolley problem, I’d take the BT speaker without hesitation.
Also, and this is tangentially related to your question, but holy shit is this a rich-people problem. Are poor people who listen on shitty speakers less fans of music because they can’t afford better gear? Fucking gross.
Geoff
And so the pendulum swings.
A much more in-depth response came from regular SoundStage! contributor and master of proofreading, S. Andrea Sundaram, and it touches on something I already mentioned above:
What does it mean to be a music lover? Could you be a music lover if you only loved 100 albums, regardless of their fidelity? I believe there are surveys/statistics about how most people’s musical tastes solidified in their late teens and early 20s, and that this is the music they love for the rest of their lives. That doesn’t mean it’s the only music they listen to, but it may be the only music they love. The question, as stated, suggests that being a music lover requires either constant exploration or at least love of more than 100 albums. I like exploring, but I’m not convinced that is the only way to be a music lover.
I started looking into statistics, but can’t find anything on the average number of tracks or artists a listener listens to published by the streaming services. Those numbers would be inflated anyway because many people stream constantly while paying little attention to the music—it’s just the background noise of their lives. Does constantly listening to music make them music lovers? I don’t think it necessarily does. This may be my bias because when there is music playing, I find it very difficult to concentrate on anything else.
I’m generally happy with jazz and pop played through my Bluetooth speaker (HK Invoke), but I really don’t like listening to symphonic music through it—anytime I try, I end up turning it off or switching to something else. Dynamic range is one of the elements of music, and Bluetooth speakers just don’t do it sufficiently for symphonic music. If I were confined to listening through a Bluetooth speaker, I’d be giving up listening to some of my favorite music.
If I didn’t have the option of constant discovery, might I get more out of the albums I have? I have a few hundred albums in my collection that I’ve only listened to once or twice, and some not even all the way through. Maybe I would discover more in them on repeated listening.
Probably a couple dozen of those albums I’ve only listened to once were things I picked up after reading about them in the audiophile press, so maybe the person who commented on audiophiles’ poor choice in music has a point.
Andrea
I feel like at some point, there needs to be a more in-depth dialogue between Andrea and me, because he’s hitting upon a much more meaningful distinction than the divide between music fans and audiophiles: the divide between those who do and don’t continue to seek out new music after hitting certain demographic milestones. Most of the music that resonates hardest with me was released when I was between the ages of 15 and 35, to be sure. And I can pin the end date down that precisely because I think of any Andrew Bird record more recent than Armchair Apocrypha as “his new stuff” and anything before it as classic Bird, and that album came out when I was 35.
And yet, I consider any week that goes by without my having fallen in love with a new record as a completely wasted week. Those new artists I listed above—Aurora, Dodie, Wet Leg, Alon Mor, and especially King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard—get way more play on my stereo and in my headphones than any of the records I’d consider my all-time favorites (well, not counting the fact that KGLW’s Nonagon Infinity cracked my top-seven list). Hell, I love Aurora so much, I’m considering taking a rare road trip to see her limited-engagement concert film despite the fact that the closest cinema that’s scheduled to exhibit it is a two-hour drive north.
So, yeah, there does seem to be quite a gulf between those of us whose musical tastes ossified at a younger age and those who will continue to look for uncharted aural territory until the day we die. Are the former better represented in the audiophile community? That’s something worth digging into, although it’s hard to explore that sort of thing without seeming like you’re championing one position or the other—especially if you strongly identify with one position over the other.
Patron and friend John Higgins of The Verge definitely seems to be in my camp, though, given his comment on that segment of the Patreon release of Audio Unleashed:
As a lifelong musician—and for many years it was my primary career—listening to music was a way to grow as a musician, as a member of society (by being able to appreciate someone else’s life experience and perspective), and emotionally. Limiting myself to only 100 records would not only keep me from discovering new music; it would keep me from discovering myself.
That brings up another interesting point: does being a musician influence one’s placement on this spectrum? Joseph Taylor of SoundStage! Xperience—himself a kick-ass guitarist—had a slightly more guarded and defensive take, but . . . well, judge for yourself which camp he belongs to:
This is one of those instances where I think it’s OK for me to criticize my fellows, but not so acceptable when it comes from the outside.
There’s a germ of truth to what your friend says, and if you hang out in some forums, attend some audio shows, or read some mags, you might get the idea that audiophiles focus on a few well-recorded LPs, CDs, etc. But if you actually dig a little deeper, or hang out with friends who are audio enthusiasts, you usually find that they have varied tastes and enjoy listening to all kinds of music because it moves them. That’s not to deny that some records are appealing because they sound good, whether it’s Dark Side or Wee Small Hours. But I, for one, don’t care that lots of people think Boston’s first album is a sonic masterpiece. Still don’t like it.
My initial reaction to the choice offered was, “Why would I listen to music on a halfway decent Bluetooth?” However, I was in a flower shop recently that was playing classical music. I thought it sounded pretty good and was surprised to learn that it was coming from an Echo speaker.
I still prefer something that plays music in higher fidelity, but, as Hans Fantel asked, “Fidelity to what?” Also, if I’m in a situation where I’m limited to a certain amount of music, 100 LPs is more than you might think. I sometimes think a large collection, like a massive selection available through streaming, is like the information glut we live through now. Before I made my final decision, I’d make a list of what those 100 LPs would be.
Joseph Taylor
After a few more days of reflection, Joe re-replied with this:
Final decision would be the Bluetooth, but with a tiny bit of reluctance.
Is any of this conclusive or proof of anything? Of course it’s not. But the interesting thing to me is how easy a decision it is for some of us—no matter how much we acknowledge that it would also be a painful choice—while others struggle with it and try their best not to commit to one answer.
Ultimately, it really doesn’t matter which choice you make, though. Not to me, anyway. And, of course, it’s all academic.
But which would you choose if you absolutely had to? And would it be a difficult choice? What would you be giving up, one way or the other? I genuinely would love to get some answers to those questions in my inbox.
. . . Dennis Burger
dennisb@soundstagenetwork.com
