Do you have the audiophile 'disease'?

Back in 1957, Time magazine reported on "audiophilia," a disease that afflicted the "middle-aged, male and intelligent" and found them to be compulsive and fascinated with bizarre sounds. Hey, that describes me!

(Credit: Robert Wright)

My wife happened to find the article, "Audiophilia," online with no author listed. The article reported that a new neurosis was discovered, audiophilia, an excessive passion for hi-fi sound and equipment. The Audiophiliac was amused.

I admit it, we audiophiles are an obsessive bunch who endlessly fuss over our hi-fis, but no more than car freaks fiddle with their fuel injectors, or computer geeks agonize over bits and apps. Each group has its nut jobs, but they're at least passionate about what they do.

They're involved in something, striving to make it better, to get ever closer to some ever-elusive goal of perfection. If audiophiles take some satisfaction in that, what's the problem?

I'm not sure what to make of the Time piece, whether it was tongue-in-cheek or what. The discoverer of the disease, Dr. Henry Angus Bowes, clinical director in psychiatry at Ste. Anne's Hospital for veterans at Ste. Anne de Bellevue, Quebec, noted that some audiophiles turn up the volume up until it reaches the physical level of pain. Ouch! There is an extraordinary fascination with recreating the actual sounds of instruments. Yeah, so?

Do you have the disease? More important, is there a cure? Maybe we need a telethon.

[Galbrezu]

Definitely recently caught the bug, but with sound quality thos good who WANTS a cure :P.

[J. Blow]

Yea but the difference is that audiophiles have fallen the way of stupid, unproven, and outright false and absurd claims that they can "hear". Idiotic claims for $30K interconnect and speaker cables, $17K CD players that correct "wobble", tubes that sound "warm" I could go on and on.

I love great audio but with the digitization of most components there isn't much to play with anymore. Spend most of your time and effort on speakers and speaker placement, that's 95% of any gain you'll see.

[cvaldes1831]

True audiophile-quality sound is live music, no contest. Andras Schiff playing live at a concert hall is better than Andras Schiff playing on any recording medium on this planet.

[alegr]

But how often you can afford going to Andras Schiff concerts? Can you afford his full cycle of concerts of Beethoven sonatas in Walt Disney hall?

On guardian.co.uk, there is a set of his pre-concert lectures on all Beethoven sonatas. Unfortunately, they seem could not afford a second mic, to record the piano and his speaking separately. You'll have to fiddle with volume all the time.

[pjhenry1216]

I think its just an old article from when the medical field was just figuring itself out. If you look at a lot of stuff throughout early to mid twentieth century, a lot of medical stuff was based on very little evidence and a lot of bias.

[protagonistic]

I agree, do we need a cure? As an exercise in futility try and find a really good sound system for your computer. There are a couple of good ones, but no outstanding sets. :-)

[HlLLARY CLITON]

yea but will my insurance cover the cost of treatment

[timmyj75]

With all due respect to the commentators, I have to side with Guttenberg on the nature of the audiophiliac. They are the nerds of the audio world. The ones who you roll your eyes at and yawn as they drone on about their latest attempt at reaching aural nirvana.

Yes, somewhere in the range of 95% of audio replication may be in speaker placement and yes the true highest quality sound is live music. However, the audiophile is the one who is obsessed with the remaining 5% of the sound quality and the one who feels that since you can't be in a concert hall all of the time you should try to so closely replicate the experience that it echos the grandeur of the live performance instead of ringing hollow.

[Orengeman]

A telethon would be great (and perfectly appropriate for this group). People would call in and knowingly pay 5x - 10x the value of a product as a donation (you know pledge $50 get a tote bag, pledge $100 get a cd, pledge $150 get a dvd). Except here, since there's no pbs, npr, ms society, etc to receive your donation, the money (and good will) would go towards allowing Steve to keep some of the "ultimate" high end equipment he reviews.

[anomalator]

I'm totally in favor of a telethon. Especially if it helps me to upgrade my audio system!

[cvaldes1831]

I must say that without audiophiles, we wouldn't have bargain basement used audiophile gear, and admittedly I am a happy beneficiary of the local audiophiles' propensity to upgrade to the "latest and greatest" every year.

So keep it up, audiophiles. Keep buying and getting rid of stuff!

[Andronicus]

I think that audiophiles need to engage in more double blind tests. A friend of mine tried this with some so-called audiophiles. He had two reasonable high end amps he was testing. He would switch between them and have the induvidules pick whitch sounded better. What he found was that without exeption the "audiophiles" would pick the amp that he had slightly turned the volume up on. This shows that it was all 100% placebo effect. I think that this is the case for most audiophiles. Most peoples ears are not of good enough quality (especialy amongst middle aged men who are the most common audiophiles) to hear any of the suble differences between say a $8000 set of speakers and a $9500 set.

[GRobLewis]

I recently read an article that explains the "I can hear the difference between oxygen-free copper wires and silver-plated wires" phenomenon: due to reflections and phase cancellation effects, the frequency response of a system can vary drastically over distances of an inch or two. So when you get up to change components, if you don't reposition your head in EXACTLY the same position it was in, you will definitely hear a difference.

[soundman45]

I had Audiophilia so bad I went to school and became a recording engineer because of it. 20 plus years later I realized it was all my HiFi systems fault.

[alegr]

So you quit that career after that realisation?

[BirdDog01]

At the time of the Time article I had been afflicted with a mild case of the disease for about 4 years. I suppose I was already middle aged at 13.

As to the comments: Speakers differ in sound far more than other components. Phono pickups are a close second. Turntables, speakers, and the listening environment are the easiest things for the hobbyist to tweak, and the last the cause most domestic difficulties. Speakers are seen by the spouse as either ugly things to hide or as pedestals for dust catchers to be located without regard for sound. The advent of stereo made the situation worse. At age 13 I could place a single horn enclosure in a corner of my bedroom without overly distressing my mother. I've never had it so good since.

The louder sounds better phenomenon is an old trick of the audio salesman.

I have long been convinced that there is little to be gained beyond a certain point. That is why I have never replaced my AR3a speakers from 1969. Parts are still available.

[DaveOCP]

Turning up the volume on one of the amps in a blind test completely invalidates the results of the test. It doesn't prove anything. In order for such a test to be even remotely accurate, the amps must be precisely gain-matched, which eliminates the "one is louder than the other" variable so that listeners can try to determine which one actually sounds better.

In any case, blind listening tests of audio equipment simply don't work. Read Robert Harley's piece on the subject. They fail every time.

Yes speakers, proper placement, and room treatments are critical to getting great sound. Hooking up $10K speakers to a $500 receiver though because "all amps sound the same" - which one blind listening test "proved" - is doing yourself a massive disservice. Tubes DO sound warm. Listen to some acoustic guitar and female vocals on Conrad Johnson or BAT gear, and then listen to the same music on something solid state and aggressive like a Krell or ATI. The difference is HUGE.

Every now and then, the mainstream media writes a "audiophiles are so stupid, they spend thousands of dollars on pair of speakers" piece of hack "journalism" and yet you never see a "car enthusiasts are so stupid, they spend $70K on a BMW that will be worth half that in 3 years!" piece. I pay no attention to those articles. If you're not a real music lover, you simply will not understand this hobby.

[gerrydtrini]

Dave you miss the point Andronicus was trying to make. Firstly the so-called audiophiles found the music sounded better simply because it was louder! Secondly, blind tests prove that audiophiles if they are called upon to make a judgment based solely on the sound, they could not tell the diff between the solid state amp and the tube. Contrary to what U say audiophiles are not music lovers they are equipmentcentric and status driven !!

[Tom_ETS]

I have been afflicted for more than 30 years.

While the nature of the affliction presents in different ways, the common thread is the search for great sounding music. Most people enjoy listening to music. Audiophiles seek to probe the depths of that enjoyment. Is the analogy the wine drinker verses the alcoholic? Audiophilia is not quite that destructive.

The gold standard is live sound. It would seem simple just to go and listen to live sound and skip the whole audio reproduction thing altogether. But getting great live sound is much harder than building a great audio system. I can count on one hand the number of great live sound experiences I?ve heard. Most often the live experience is ruined by; poor or excessive amplification, poor room acoustics, other loud competing noises, and poor performances.

If you don?t like orchestral music, you are basically out of luck to get great live sound. One of the above issues is bound to ruin the experience. People who listen to my system often comment on the ?better than a live concert? sound. That is because live concert sound is often very bad.

My system can not even come close to matching the following, mostly because the dynamic range can not be duplicated, or come even close;

Live Un-amplified Sound
Jazz Ensemble
Professional Musicians
Small, acoustically designed auditorium

The sound will blow you away. How often can you hear such a setup? Almost never.

So we try to grab a small piece of that sound for ourselves, whenever we want.

[Edmiya]

I'm almost there here in Japan, just yesterday (or today for you) before reading the article on Cnet i was tuning my 26 years old Techinics speaker (SB-F88 it was 22 years forgotten on my parents house garage) to work with my 11 years old Yamaha receiver (DSP-A3090 i was only 17 when i got it paid from my pocket I'm getting old ) and a Sub woofer (Yamaha YST-SW 150 when it was my main setup i use to have 2 ) it sound like all the bass are coming from the Techinics speaker bass is deep but not strong, bass and treble are on flat mode on the receiver the secret is the crossover set up inside the speaker sounds great now just perfect for my computer room (before i was using a pair of Bose 302V...Now broken,,,how ? it was only 3 years old)) Now I'm using this set up only to listen music from my computer (i have over 2,500 CDs, 700 Records, 180 MD's, 65 DCC tapes and now everything is also inside the iTunes) also my old MD, LD and DCC deck also is now on the computer room , the receiver break dow and i spend 4 months to find the parts (Selector) and fix it , but i can't live without music and on this time i purchase (thanks to the Cnet review) a new Denon receiver AVC-3808 the japanese version of the AVR-3806CI (No tuner but 3 extra component video inputs and 2 HDMI outputs) now it is my new main set up with 7 B&W bookshelf old speakers and 2 Subs one set up for 150Hz (Bose) and the another one for frequencies below 60Hz (yamaha), Pioneer DVD Player DV-383 (Zone free also works with PAL DVD's) New Pioneer CLD-R5 LD Player (Still available on japanese stores New not used) with an home made FM to PCM demodulator for the AC-3 discs) New Marantz CM6001 MD/CD deck , a 28 years old pioneer turnable PL-50L (older than me) , Sony Bravia TV KDL 50J5000, apple TV and a PS3 60Gb (Got as a birthday gift, 2 years a go and it is the second reason for the upgrade on the receiver and TV Set) This is just the beginning of my Audiophilia, my next upgrade will be in 10 years from now or after i turn 30's , 40's or after i finish to pay my house, the next setup must be all Mcintosh stuff at this time this time was impossible to get it also i got another new toy a Nissan GT-R ( 6 months of waiting list just received it amazing car for the money) the Bose Sound system is good but inside that car the best music is the engine sound, also i have to spend a lot on my stupid weeding next year (is enough cash to start to build a mcintosh dream system) as i get my Mcintosh set up i will be on the terminal stage of Audiophilia ......humm i hope so can't wait for...... if someone has a mcintosh in the home theater setup please let me how good is it , the people i know they just have an stereo set up , but really nice for sure 3 or more times more expensive of my GT-R

[Bill Veik]

Too bad the doctor's name wasn't Bose.....................

[molotov]

Molotov says; yeah! Move!

[workshopmusic]

Musicians sometimes get a bad case of audiophilism. A guitarist for example may start down the geek path when his/her ear can detect the subtle out-of-tuneness of "perfectly tuned" strigs as you go up the neck. There are gizmos, tunable bridges, micro screwdriver sets etc. for this. Then you're hooked.

A bad case, really, is when the enjoyment of music becomes impossible, when audiophile perfection becomes in effect the enemy of what's already quite good.

[sleepysurf]

Thanks to the power of Google, I found these two follow-up Letters to the Editor, from the original 1957 article...

Marital Hi-Fi

Sir:
Re Psychiatrist Bowes's theory on audio-philia?the excessive passion for hi-fi sound and equipment [http://Jan. 14|http://Jan. 14]: at least one-half of Dr. Bowes's evaluation of "hifi addiction" seems to be in perfect pitch. My husband (aged 40) is a devotee. However, we have four children; he is not maladjusted sexually; he is not concerned with "bizarre recorded sounds"; but, like the addict quoted by Dr. Bowes, hubby will also "not be satisfied until he can hear the drop of saliva from the French horns." I do request that he turn down the volume?not because I sense a rival to my shrill and discordant self, but so the fillings in my teeth will stop vibrating.
MRS. FRANK MIWA St. Paul, Minn.

Sir:
About Dr. Bowes's discovery: now I know why Eve ate the apple; Adam was listening to hifi.

And:
Eve ate the apple Cause Adam was careless. Now hi-fi threatens to make him heirless.
LILLIAN RUDOLPH
Denver