Audiophiles on a budget

[Vladimir]

I don't recall someone who owned entry level Technics or Marantz amp + Jamo or Mission speakers + Kenwood or Sony CDP, being worried what tone controls and cables might do to the sound. How can people with budget gear be snobs / esoterics? An audiophile with an integrated amp by default was an oxymoron. What changed? *unknw*

 

[Thompsonuxb]

People stopped caring about the equipment and became interested in what the kit they had could actually do?.

Being a owner of Mission speakers I can honestly say they make you listen to music.

(very underrated brand during the days of the 7** series )

Even WHF? listed the 782se as the 'best speakers a grand or so could buy' - this when the likes of PMC, Spendor, MA and others had speakers in the same price category...... Maybe they should have charged more for them.

As for tone controls I'd struggle to buy an amp without them.

 

[drummerman]

I think different cables, mains conditioners and even power leads can make a difference to any system, budget or not.

How much to spend on those 'extras' ... difficult but the often quoted 10% or thereabouts seems a reasonable starting point. - Don't be afraid to experiment beyond that if you can do so without committing to a purchase (or have the right to return) or even go very cheap (or DIY).

Let your ears, wallet (and eyes) decide, not comments of cable naysayers or believers. - However, trust me unconditionally

 

[davedotco]

I don't recall someone who owned entry level Technics or Marantz amp + Jamo or Mission speakers + Kenwood or Sony CDP, being worried what tone controls and cables might do to the sound. How can people with budget gear be snobs / esoterics? An audiophile with an integrated amp by default was an oxymoron. What changed? *unknw*

It all changed when the term hi-fi stopped meaning hi-fidelity and started meaning any old rubbish that makes a sound.

Personally I have no problem telling the difference between hi-fi equipment and audio equipment but since any kind of definitive quality evaluation is no longer allowed, just about any old tat is dished up as hi-fi.

 

[rainsoothe]

I don't recall someone who owned entry level Technics or Marantz amp + Jamo or Mission speakers + Kenwood or Sony CDP, being worried what tone controls and cables might do to the sound. How can people with budget gear be snobs / esoterics? An audiophile with an integrated amp by default was an oxymoron. What changed? *unknw*

It all changed when the term hi-fi stopped meaning hi-fidelity and started meaning any old rubbish that makes a sound.

Personally I have no problem telling the difference between hi-fi equipment and audio equipment but since any kind of definitive quality evaluation is no longer allowed, just about any old tat is dished up as hi-fi.

but he said audiophile, not hi-fi. Audiophile means one who loves sound (or music in this case) - so what's budget got to do with anything? You could be a homeless dude, if someone brings you to a hi-fi store and u love the sound of some mark levinson stuff playing eric clapton, then you're an audiophile.

 

[davedotco]

I don't recall someone who owned entry level Technics or Marantz amp + Jamo or Mission speakers + Kenwood or Sony CDP, being worried what tone controls and cables might do to the sound. How can people with budget gear be snobs / esoterics? An audiophile with an integrated amp by default was an oxymoron. What changed? *unknw*

It all changed when the term hi-fi stopped meaning hi-fidelity and started meaning any old rubbish that makes a sound.

Personally I have no problem telling the difference between hi-fi equipment and audio equipment but since any kind of definitive quality evaluation is no longer allowed, just about any old tat is dished up as hi-fi.

but he said audiophile, not hi-fi. Audiophile means one who loves sound (or music in this case) - so what's budget got to do with anything? You could be a homeless dude, if someone brings you to a hi-fi store and u love the sound of some mark levinson stuff playing eric clapton, then you're an audiophile.

I hate the term 'audiophile' and avoid it whenever I can.

I was simply making the point that in modern usage the term 'hi-fi' is meaningless, and therefor the 'a' word, defined as someone who enjoys hi-fidelity sound reproduction is redundant.

My personal view is that hi-fidelity equipment is that product that makes a genuine attempt to reproduce music as it was performed and recorded, subject to real world constraints of size, price etc. Most mainstream product (some honourable exceptions) does not come remotely close to doing this, so is, to me, the modern equivilent of a 1960s radiogram or 70s music centre. Ie; it has a 'nice tone'.

I have spoken about this before, it has very little to do with budget, more about the manufacturers intent and the way the equipment is chosen and built into a system by the purchaser.

 

[Vladimir]

An audiophile is a gear fetishist, someone who is both a snob and an esoteric to an extent, a stubborn hedonistic idealist. Objectivists and HT fanatics today are more geeks than audiophiles.

I see people panic over buying an integrated amp with budget of £700. "Oh that is a very big investment, better go and audition every shop in London". Really?

 

[davedotco]

An audiophile is a gear fetishist, someone who is both a snob and an esoteric to an extent, a stubborn hedonistic idealist. Objectivists and HT fanatics today are more geeks than audiophiles.

I see people panic over buying an integrated amp with budget of £700. "Oh that is a very big investment, better go and audition every shop in London". Really?

See, thats why I hate the term so much, "gear fetishist" indeed.....*shok*

If I was to try and define the term, I would describe such a person as someone who listens to recorded music in the home and is prepared to spend the money and make the effort to make the experience as realistic as possible.

Said person may be limited in what he can afford or what he could do in his home, but within those constraints builds his system to deliver the most realistic performance he can.

 

[chris_bates1974]

Vladimir, for some people £700 may be a very big investment. I think wanting to listen to different options is much more wise than than just blind spending it.... It seems you are passing judgment on people for taking a little care, which is an odd thing to do. It might be some young guy who has saved bloody hard for his £700 and doesn't want to make a mistake....

 

[rainsoothe]

I don't recall someone who owned entry level Technics or Marantz amp + Jamo or Mission speakers + Kenwood or Sony CDP, being worried what tone controls and cables might do to the sound. How can people with budget gear be snobs / esoterics? An audiophile with an integrated amp by default was an oxymoron. What changed? *unknw*

It all changed when the term hi-fi stopped meaning hi-fidelity and started meaning any old rubbish that makes a sound.

Personally I have no problem telling the difference between hi-fi equipment and audio equipment but since any kind of definitive quality evaluation is no longer allowed, just about any old tat is dished up as hi-fi.

but he said audiophile, not hi-fi. Audiophile means one who loves sound (or music in this case) - so what's budget got to do with anything? You could be a homeless dude, if someone brings you to a hi-fi store and u love the sound of some mark levinson stuff playing eric clapton, then you're an audiophile.

I hate the term 'audiophile' and avoid it whenever I can.

I was simply making the point that in modern usage the term 'hi-fi' is meaningless, and therefor the 'a' word, defined as someone who enjoys hi-fidelity sound reproduction is redundant.

My personal view is that hi-fidelity equipment is that product that makes a genuine attempt to reproduce music as it was performed and recorded, subject to real world constraints of size, price etc. Most mainstream product (some honourable exceptions) does not come remotely close to doing this, so is, to me, the modern equivilent of a 1960s radiogram or 70s music centre. Ie; it has a 'nice tone'.

I have spoken about this before, it has very little to do with budget, more about the manufacturers intent and the way the equipment is chosen and built into a system by the purchaser.

doesn't matter, you were beside the point, Vladimir used the term, that was the subject of the post.

@Vladimir - imo, if you spend all your savings (except for maybe going on a trip with the missus) on audio gear, you're an audiophile. If you spend 1k pounds on a quality amp and all you earn is 400 a month, you're an audiophile. The fact that you can't afford Wilson Audio speakers doesn't make you less of an audiophile then someone who can budget for them.

 

[Vladimir]

I simply do not understand how student and poor newlyweds gear stopped having tone controls and started sounding better with branded cables and Tacima plugs. In a racing Ferrari you take away all comfort, make everything stiff and light, throw away the carpets even, just to get more performance out of it. What's the point of puting racing seats and aerodynamic spoilers on a factory standard Vauxhall Astra diesel?

When I reach a certain level of performance, with let's say Mark Levinson amplification and Vivid Audio loudspeakers in a dedicated acoustically treated listening room, only then I do need large welding cables capable of passing on gobs of current. Only then those small amounts of resistance in the cable may matter and I want tone controls out of the picture, or anything that stands between me and perfect sound.

I don't know. I haven't put much thought into this, it's just an impression of things, buzzin in my head. I need to hear what you guys think.

 

[rainsoothe]

I simply do not understand how student and poor newlyweds gear stopped having tone controls and started sounding better with branded cables and Tacima plugs. In a racing Ferrari you take away all comfort, make everything stiff and light, throw away the carpets even, just to get more performance out of it. What's the point of puting racing seats and aerodynamic spoilers on a factory standard Vauxhall Astra diesel?

When I reach a certain level of performance, with let's say Mark Levinson amplification and Vivid Audio loudspeakers in a dedicated acoustically treated listening room, only then I do need large welding cables capable of passing on gobs of current. Only then those small amounts of resistance in the cable may matter and I want tone controls out of the picture, or anything that stands between me and perfect sound.

I don't know. I haven't put much thought into this, it's just an impression of things, buzzin in my head. I need to hear what you guys think.

Oh, if that's what you meant... Then I can't really unser that ) Pretty zig-zaggy line to connect the dots for me though.

 

[seandynan]

Interconnects are one of the first noticeable upgrades on a budget system. Two stories:

(1) The wife and I were given a present by my audiophile brother - a pair of decent interconnects between the CD player and amp for our newlywed, all-Rotel hi-fi. The difference was like night and day, even to my cloth-eared wife (just proving that Joesephine Average *can* hear a difference in different components).

(2) A housemate had an entry-level NAD audiophile system. He had his Missions wired to the amp with honest-to-God bell wire. And upon that system he played 70's UK punk for the most part. Then one day he rewired his speakers with 13-amp mains cable. The sound was so good but he reckoned it spoiled his punk...so he changed back to bell wire.

 

[Vladimir]

(3) I don't have a wife so I must put faith in engineering.

 

[marou]

Interconnects are one of the first noticeable upgrades on a budget system. Two stories:

(1) The wife and I were given a present by my audiophile brother - a pair of decent interconnects between the CD player and amp for our newlywed, all-Rotel hi-fi. The difference was like night and day, even to my cloth-eared wife (just proving that Joesephine Average *can* hear a difference in different components).

(2) A housemate had an entry-level NAD audiophile system. He had his Missions wired to the amp with honest-to-God bell wire. And upon that system he played 70's UK punk for the most part. Then one day he rewired his speakers with 13-amp mains cable. The sound was so good but he reckoned it spoiled his punk...so he changed back to bell wire.

The Audiophile's Wife had good advice on the lines of: if he's been tinkering with his system, next time you hear it ask him if he's changed something - it'll make his day.

 

[matthewpiano]

The test for me is how accurately and naturally a system portrays acoustic instruments in classical, jazz, and folk music. If it gets these things right, you invariably find it also presents electric music as accurately as the production allows.

My system achieves this very well and I'm very confident, following a great deal of hi-fi box-swapping over the years, that I wouldn't get anything that achieves better in thse regards without spending significantly more.

As for the toys, my system doesn't have any. The Rega kit is very simple, with the effort concentrated on the audio engineering. However, that doesn't mean I disagree with tone controls. I don't feel the need for them personally, but if they help others to enjoy their music more consistently on their systems, then where is the harm?

 

[davedotco]

I don't recall someone who owned entry level Technics or Marantz amp + Jamo or Mission speakers + Kenwood or Sony CDP, being worried what tone controls and cables might do to the sound. How can people with budget gear be snobs / esoterics? An audiophile with an integrated amp by default was an oxymoron. What changed? *unknw*

It all changed when the term hi-fi stopped meaning hi-fidelity and started meaning any old rubbish that makes a sound.

Personally I have no problem telling the difference between hi-fi equipment and audio equipment but since any kind of definitive quality evaluation is no longer allowed, just about any old tat is dished up as hi-fi.

but he said audiophile, not hi-fi. Audiophile means one who loves sound (or music in this case) - so what's budget got to do with anything? You could be a homeless dude, if someone brings you to a hi-fi store and u love the sound of some mark levinson stuff playing eric clapton, then you're an audiophile.

I hate the term 'audiophile' and avoid it whenever I can.

I was simply making the point that in modern usage the term 'hi-fi' is meaningless, and therefor the 'a' word, defined as someone who enjoys hi-fidelity sound reproduction is redundant.

My personal view is that hi-fidelity equipment is that product that makes a genuine attempt to reproduce music as it was performed and recorded, subject to real world constraints of size, price etc. Most mainstream product (some honourable exceptions) does not come remotely close to doing this, so is, to me, the modern equivilent of a 1960s radiogram or 70s music centre. Ie; it has a 'nice tone'.

I have spoken about this before, it has very little to do with budget, more about the manufacturers intent and the way the equipment is chosen and built into a system by the purchaser.

doesn't matter, you were beside the point, Vladimir used the term, that was the subject of the post.

@Vladimir - imo, if you spend all your savings (except for maybe going on a trip with the missus) on audio gear, you're an audiophile. If you spend 1k pounds on a quality amp and all you earn is 400 a month, you're an audiophile. The fact that you can't afford Wilson Audio speakers doesn't make you less of an audiophile then someone who can budget for them.

I read the post to be about peoples attitudes to hi-fi equipment, not specifically about a word that everyone seems to define differently.

I think there has been a fundamental change in the way hi-fi equipment is percieved which is what Vlad was getting at.

As Mathewpiano explained there is a right and wrong in hi-fi and the easiest way to determine it is to listen to real instruments and unprocessed voices. If you play such a recording and know what real instruments sound like then it is childs play to tell if a system is hi-fidelity or not.

This is an absolute, qualitative evaluation that tells you a lot about what you need to know about a system but it is rarely used these days, hence the quite apalling standard of so many systems.

 

[Frank Harvey]

An audiophile is a gear fetishist, someone who is both a snob and an esoteric to an extent, a stubborn hedonistic idealist. Objectivists and HT fanatics today are more geeks than audiophiles.

I see people panic over buying an integrated amp with budget of £700. "Oh that is a very big investment, better go and audition every shop in London". Really?

So are you saying that people who enjoy the equipment as well as the music are snobs?! And that someone spending £700 isn't allowed the same reasearch/auditioning/purchasing rights as someone spending £3000?!

 

[Native_bon]

First I look for emotion in human voices. Not only does a good system need to sound like the real instruments but also portray the musical message. Start & stop without over hangs especially with bass notes. In terms of bass I think my system comes very close to doing just that.*biggrin*

 

[Vladimir]

Audiophiles pride on their gear and their know how around it. Whether it is deservingly so, is a whole different matter.

And yes, people are free to research. They can shop the frozen food aisle for TV dinners all day, but at the end their meal wont be gourmet regardless of choice and aspirations.

 

[ID.]

Marketing and reviews saved us from ignorance and let even those with entry level kit know the importance of cables and other tweaks to our systems.

 

[Thompsonuxb]

Audiophiles pride on their gear and their know how around it. Whether it is deservingly so, is a whole different matter.?

And yes, people are free to research. They can shop the frozen food aisle for TV dinners all day, but at the end their meal wont be gourmet regardless of choice and aspirations. 

And right there Vlad you kill your own argument.

In the other thread I mention preference, to which you say no.

But if your tv meal is covered alongside your gorment food a blind test.

Do you think you could tell the difference which is the tv dinner?

 

[Vladimir]

And right there Vlad you kill your own argument.

In the other thread I mention preference, to which you say no.

But if your tv meal is covered alongside your gorment food a blind test.

Do you think you could tell the difference which is the tv dinner?

I'll explain, but not tonight. Making yawns wider than my 27" screen. For good night I'll link you a delicious 'TV dinner'.

 

[jmjones]

Sorry Vlad, I'm afraid you have it wrong. TV dinners is the wrong comparison. A good cook takes a cheap cut of meat and makes a masterpiece dinner. Is it as good as a filet mignon? Maybe not, but better than it would otherwise have been, and certainly better value for money.

Back in the middle 70's I bought a Sansui SR-222, an amp from the same company and had a set of speakers made by a friend. First step, most enjoyment of my whole audiophile/hifi career. I remember listening to Brian Ferry walking past my open window and thinking it was real.

Everything else has been an improvement, but none of it beats that first cooking lesson.

 

[Thompsonuxb]

And right there Vlad you kill your own argument.

In the other thread I mention preference, to which you say no.

But if your tv meal is covered alongside your gorment food a blind test.

Do you think you could tell the difference which is the tv dinner?

I'll explain, but not tonight. Making yawns wider than my 27" screen. For good night I'll link you a delicious 'TV dinner'.?

Lol.....was nodding off when I typed that. Glad you got the gist of it....

Focal are an interesting brand - their speakers sound impressive.

I do love a YouTube hifi video - do wish they'd play something a little more demanding though.