Audiophilephobia versus Audiophilephilia

Hi-Fi-Fo-Fum, originally broadcast on BBC Television, 12 April, 1959, as part of the program Monitor.

Directed by John Schlesinger. Narrated by Robert Robinson.

Jump ahead to 12.43 for an amusing scene of an audiophile soirée.

"Do they like music - or are they in love with equipment?" asks presenter Robert Robinson

(Alan Parsons's version of the same idea - "“Audiophiles don't use their equipment to listen to music. They use music to listen to their equipment”)

Well, well, well - I had no idea that audiophilia started so early....

I shouldn't imagine it was even a possibility during the era of shellac '78s, given the clunkiness of the technology. But I could be wrong there - maybe there were pre-WW2 hi-fi buffs

I do find the world of audiophile fiends distantly fascinating 

I remember being at a wedding and the guy next to me at the table was an obsessive 'phile, he had a whole system set up in a converted barn. The cost of the system was equivalent to a BMW or a Mercedes. 

But this chap was only at the shallow end of the A-phile spectrum. 

Here's the story of a guy who ruined his life in the expensive, family-alienating quest for Perfect Sound. 

There are some music blogs I check out - here's one, here's another, and there's a third who wouldn't want any attention drawn to his activities - that specialize in sharing optimized recordings, sourced in vinyl, but circulated as data-dense files - 96 kHz / 24 bit - usually in FLAC.  They list all the stages of the process  ("the ripping lineage"*) and itemize the high-end, expensive technology involved, from needle to cartridge to turntable to cables.... and all the other bits and bobs, like pre-amps and digital-to-analogue converters and what have you.

And then sometimes they also go deep into the vinyl source itself.  About whether it's an original pressing (cut in particular territories that are said to be better quality than others). About the whole mono versus stereo dilemma. And then if it's not an original pressing but one of these high-end, deluxe reissues, they get into the nitty gritty of the various 'name' figures of high reputation who did the mastering and cutting from the original master tapes (which is a whole other level of obsession - the superiority of various masters). In some cases, the reissued LP is mastered at half-speed to extract more data and  then deluxely spread across four sides of deep-grooved vinyl. And then you get into the whole thing of 180 gram vinyl.  Much talk about noise floors being reduced, and the correcting of master tape blemishes...  pops and skips cleaned-up if it's vintage original pressing. Oh and there's also the dilemma of discrepancies between different original pressings - in some territories, there'll be songs with a few extra seconds, or a different, slightly muffled mix. 

And blimey, I nearly forgot - there's that whole extra dimension to do with cleaning the vinyl. Expensive mechanical devices and brushes...  fluids and clothes. A lot of  doctrinal dispute on this question of how best to dislodge the sedimented gunk out of your grooves. 

Now I must admit I don't fully understand the rationale of taking this beautifully transferred pristine and optimized analogue source and then digitizing it and circulating it as FLAC, which even at the high level of 96 kHz / 24 bit is still compressing it down a bit. It seems a bit counter-intuitive - so despite being the analogue believer, you are turning back it in digital?

But I take it on faith that for all that, it's still superior - or interestingly different - to what I would hear at Tidal even at MAX quality, or what I'd get from playing a CD or a WAV through my computer.

Of course, with these shared audiophile offerings, I am playing it back on a less-than-ideal system, of the sort that would make these audiophile bloggers blanch and scowl, I should imagine. I can't be arsed to burn it to a blank compact disc and put it through my proper hi-fi - that would seem like one stage of transfer too many - so I play it on the computer, through pretty modest speakers, albeit boosted with a big black block of a woofer unit that sits balefully near my feet, like the monolith in 2001, A Space Odyssey.

These audiophile vinyl-sourced offerings do often sound great. And they sound different to what you can hear on streamers or the particular CD version of an album you might have.  Certain details are brought out more clearly. (That's not always great - there can be a tendency to wispy separation. What was it Mike Skinner used to say? "Subtle" - a synonym in his private lexicon for "boring"!).  

That's what I find interesting about audiophilia - not so much the fact that there is no end to how much more detail that can be extracted from a recording if you are prepared and financially able to keep upgrading, but more the idea there is no definitive 'version' of a recording, in terms of the differentials of the extraction process. The variabilities of format, the playback set up, the room it's played in.... this means that everyone is hearing something slightly different. 

The Prof Stoned dude goes a step further and remixes 1960s records he feels could benefit from it. Indeed he has gotten into using demixing technology,  that (AI?) process that enables you to separate sound-strands originally smushed together in a bounced-down 2-track or 4-track mono mix.

Over the years I've noticed that most music critics I've known tend to have fairly low-level hi-fi equipment. Presumably the priority was buying records, as many as possible, leaving little money left over for the mechanism of playback. Two rival definitions of richness there.  

Conversely, the people I've known who were obsessed with hi-fidelity often had really small record collections - and distinctly square taste.  I remember my Streatham landlady Beverley - a rare example of a female audiophile - telling me contemptuously "I don't even call what you listen to music"  Not because of the music itself but because of the sad little music center I then had. This is around 1986-87 when I was starting out as music journalist. She actually guided me through the process of buying my first proper stereo - Rega Planar turntable *, Cambridge Audio amp I think it was, good speakers, decent tape deck.... Beverley even got her brother to drill holes in the wall so my speakers could be properly mounted!  The kind of thing that a landlady would generally not encourage a tenant  to do. A testament to her vicarious commitment to Good Sound! 

But she only had a few records as far as I could see, and seldom played them. She wasn't having to grapple very often with the annoying glass platter of the Rega, where you have to pick it up and move a little rubber band underneath to switch speeds between 33 rpm and 45rpm. (This became the bane of my life when I had to do the singles overnight).

I don't agree with Bev, by the way:  the soul and essence of music is not depleted by the medium of its playback. If it's in there, it'll cut through on the fuzziest of transistor radios, the crappiest of kiddy record players and boomboxes, through a came-with-the-vehicle in-car stereo competing with the noise of the traffic.... a speed-dubbed cassette....   even the lowest-grade MP3.  

Still I do wonder, if I was wealthy, would I be tempted to go down this path? 

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Examples of rippling lineages:

Equipment:

Hardware:

- Technics 1210mk2

- Jelco SA-750D Tonearm

- Audio Technica AT33PTG

- Pro-Ject Tube Box SE-II

(Genalex Gold Lion tubes)

- RME ADI-2 A/D Interface

- Universal Audio UAD-2 Satellite Quad-Core (incl. various extra plugins I purchased over the years)

- Neumann KH150 & iLoud Micro monitors

Software:

- Spectralayers Pro

- DeMix Pro

- Cubase

- Izotope RX10

- Adobe Audition

- Click Repair

Most Important:

- My Ears

and

Equipment

Hardware:

- VMN40ML stylus on AT150MLx dual MM cartridge

- AT-LP1240-USB Turntable (internal preamp removed)

- Pro-Ject Phono Box S2 Ultra (dedicated Zero-Zone PS)

- Focusrite Scarlett 6i6 MkII

Software:

- Adobe Audition CC 2024

- iZotope RX 11 Advanced

- Audacity 3.x.x

- foobar2000 2.x.x

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^