Audiophiles

[fenderbender]

I was the kid who's "no good" uncle gave him a penthouse and I had some pages cut out and taped t the wall!!!! Needless to say that lasted until my mom walked into my room ten min later!!!

My mom yelled something about "horny little bastard" but I always consider myself to be a tittyophile!

[JJkizak]

Colterphoto1:

Now that's dedication.

JJK

[BLSamuel]

I was the kid in the 70's who had pages torn from Audio and Stereo Review taped to the walls in his bedroom. Remember Professor Lirpa's test results?

Ahhhh.... Good ole Professor Lirpa. Wonder what he's been up to lately? I miss Professor Lirpa.

[Gilbert]

It was in use in 1974, I know that. I think it might have been Gordon Holt or Harry Pearson to start using the term. At a time when the masses were being sold gear based on specs like low distortion and high damping factor, those gentlemen began actually listening to the subtlties in systems and found that the specifications were no predictor of sound quality (by their subjective standards). It might be that "audiophile" was intended to differentiate these subjective listeners from the legions of "spec hounds" and others touting ultra-impressive specs for horrendous sounding gear (ala Julian Hirchs). If you were around when the Crown IC150 and DC300 were introduced to much fanfare, you'd understand perfectly what I mean about specs not being a predictor of sound quality.

I think this was consistent with other subjective movements around the same time. For instance, people started to say, "hey - this McBurgher tastes like crap", and began getting interested in fine foods, gourmet cooking and wine and so on. People like Alice Waters came along with Chez Panisse and began teaching people about the subjective joys of good food as opposed to the quantity and cheapness of KraftMcDonaldsHormel, inc.

Some people just discovered that the number of microfarads in a capacitor have no more to do with the actual sound of a circuit than the number of calories has to do with the taste of a meal, or the amount of CGI has to do with the quality of a movie.

As I have said many times, this "stereo" market has many factions - "audiophiles", "enthusiasts", "music lovers", "gear heads" - they all have a totally different take and a totally different agenda. They often think thay are speaking the same language on forums, but rarely ever are.

Well worded description, thanks. I particularly like the anologous parallelisim with food.

I believe I fall into the Music Lover category, but am increasingly becoming or transforming into a Gear Head.