HiFi Subjectivist ¦ Audio Forum ¦ NVA User Group

How many Hi-Fi forum posts do you read where you can clearly see that people seem to have totally forgot what you buy an Hi-Fi for! The meaning of buying an Hi-Fi to listen to music is apparently not in the equation. Looking at it seems to be but not listening, How people can sit & listen to the majority ive heard is beggars belief anyway so looking & not listening is obviously the best way for them..

Bit of advice listen buy go home & play some music, stop throwing money at it.

Sorry to shit-bomb this forum this afternoon...

HiFi is a hobby, music-loving is a basic necessity of life to so many. The thing as I see it with hobbies, is that it takes over the little boy in the male enthusiast (not usually girl in the ladies as they have more common sense usually imo) and turns them into anal hobbyists, where the gear itself and sometimes the making of it too, takes some kind of priority. The real anal anoraks also seem to become very defensive if their viewpoint is challenged and so it goes on.

I'm not being critical, as I'm one myself and it definitely takes one to know one!!!

I think ideally, 'we' can enjoy the gear part while also enjoying the music coming out..

Its also rife with Delusional people too imho.

Dave: There is hobbyists & there is cuckoos that dont know what the hell they are doing constantly being Fleeces & led by people that know exactly what they are doing, only to be left disapointed

For christ sake is it not easier to just go buy a stereo that sounds good from the offset than throwing heaps of money trying to polish a turd?

It's probably reasonable to talk mostly about hifi on any forum that is mostly about hifi...

I do think that a lot of tweaks only address the symptoms, not the cause...

We have been witnessing the Cuckoos at TAS recently. They seem to fly between forums.

The problems with this somewhat strawman argument are:

1. Whats so good about reality anyway? I am all in favour of loosing touch with it whenever possible

2. The suggestion is that any system that makes a noise is as good as any other system.

The second, is clearly not true, and every now and then if you make the effort, you get a chance to hear a system that is clearly better than what you have at home, in all the ways that means that the enjoyment of music is increased, nothing to do with how many or how shiny the boxes are or how much they cost.

Having experienced such a system, it would seem reasonable to attempt to be able to experience that sound at home whenever you wish, so to me, attempting to improve our systems seems entirely rational.

The fact that some seem to have lost the way, or aim at sounds we don’t ourself like, doesn’t invalidate the goal of improving our own system.

The problem with this argument is that you have access to special knowledge that the idiots don't and we are talking HiFi.

Me I like what I like for now.

I'll never be able to follow an "upgrade path" because I can't afford it. I don't give a toss what colour my hi-fi is, or if it's from China, or Mars. I don't care if anyone else likes it. My main system was a one-time best-bang-per-buck purchase and will not be altered. I love music. My systems all play music, some better than others, but I enjoy all of them.

So, to answer the O.P. a large proportion of posts are about the details of shiny new hi-fi specs rather than the joy that they bring when actually listening to hi-fi, which bores the arse off of me in the main, but we read hi-fi forums. The clue's in the name. Read a music forum and you may find the odd post about how someone's new amp, or speakers, whatever, make their favourite album better, because to those people discovering something they've never heard before on a familiar track is a voyage of discovery and an expression of love, not an example of inky-blackness or superb bass timing et al.

I all-but ignore the majority of posts on hi-fi forums because they bear no relation to my reason for listening to electrically recreated sounds. There are other posts of course, like this one, which do catch my attention. The problem is, as the post is on a hi-fi forum, all of the hi-fi lovers then go on to tell me how wrong I am, because I'm not really one of them and I don't know what I'm talking about. You'd think I'd know better by now, wouldn't you?

It is why I very rarely post on anything to do with "equipment" though, because I genuinely don't know what I'm talking about. I just wish that stopped a lot of other people from posting too.

I haven't a pot to piss in most of the time, and ended up in debt up to my eyeballs following the upgrade path in the early 2000s. I am probably still paying for pieces of hifi equipment (musical fidelity in my case) that i havent owned in 15 years.
Facing up to reality after getting made redundant it all went. It was either that or get evicted.

So when we got back on our feet, i started building stuff instead. It was much more fun. And more recently buying the odd bit, but we are talking peanuts for broken stuff that I can now fix.

I now listen to a modest (in monetary terms) system that I dont have any urge to change.

I will build myself another turntable this year, not because I am unhappy in any way with what I hear, but simply because I can. And I have some new ideas.

My love of music goes hand in hand with my love of making things. Anything. The missus wants a coffee table, i dont go to a furniture shop, i make something instead.

I am not in the least bit interested in whether the latest tweak, cable, whatever bollocks is en vogue at the time promises to be the tweak to end all tweaks, and will guarantee Nirvana, because to me it is all marketing.

There are certain people and brands I will go to if I want something rather than jumping on whatever bandwagon is doing the rounds.

That said, I go to owston yearly and come home having always heard something that has piqued my interest, and have no problem with anyone else buying some stupid tweak, that is completely their choice.
My next door neighbour doesnt have a clue about hifi and asked me about a turntable just before Christmas so i told him to look for something dead simple, a project debut or a rega planar, that kind of thing. He bought a project, I checked it and set it up for him and he is happy playing his old records. I would ventuee that he enjoys his music more than some who have 5 figure systems. Not that its any better, but simply that he doesnt care, he just likes the music in the first place.

Point is, when a system bugs a person to the point that they are considering sticking the hand in the pocket, surely there is an inherent characteristic that they dont like. Surely its better to look at that than throwing some madcap tweak at the problem.

Problem is, some people take the entire thing too seriously, and lose track. If you have the money to do it, fine, who is anyone to tell someone how to spend their money. But if 'audiophiles' took a step back once in a while they might see that they are in the wrong path for them, or indeed confirm they are on the right one

My take would that public human social interactions are often about 2 things: belonging to groups and; consolidating personal status / reputation / identity.
Nothing I see on hifi forums (including my own posts) suggest hifi forums are any different in these regards. No reason they should be.