Why I Say “Audiophile” in my SubStack Title

For starters, words mean different things in different contexts, both situational contexts and socio-cultural contexts. All I mean by saying this is that there is no single, fixed, good-forever-and-for-all meaning for many of the words we use. “Audiophile” is one such word. On a forum dedicated to audiophile listening, I found that for many users, audiophile was used as a derogatory epithet or slur for people who view music-listening in about the same way that many wine connoisseurs view wine tasting. The practice of this kind of audiophile is, in these users’ view, filled with fuzzy slang that lacks connection to the “real” world. Audiophiles intended to be described in this way undoubtedly view their practices in a different, more approving way. I have also read that to be an audiophile, one should be dedicated to the accurate reproduction of music as it sounds when played on acoustic instruments and in person. This view requires a narrow range of acceptable audio performance—and how does one handle music that does not involve acoustic instruments? Is there a limitation of music type present in this definition? It would seem so. Finally, sometimes, “audiophile” equipment is contrasted with “fun” equipment, implying the audiophile listening experience is supposed to be a grave undertaking where the truth of the world is at stake. So, there are a variety of ways this term is used.

Roughly, there are the measurements of audio equipment and there are the “subjective” impressions of the music played through it. I will, rather than say one camp of convinced listeners is wrong or right, agree with Robert Harley when he says, in his book The Complete Guide to High-End Audio, that the measurements we make of audio equipment performance are meager statements of fact that fail to capture key aspects of what the equipment sounds like to a listener. The understanding, by the sciences, of psychoacoustics and related fields—of the relation between sound viewed through the lens of science, as a physical phenomenon, and the phenomenological experience of music heard as music and not as an abstract concept like sound—is still in its early stages. More is not known than is known.

I think that audiophiles who are only concerned with the experience of hearing music, and who willfully downplay the measurements of audio equipment, or who adopt alternative interpretations of them, can err on the side of having their impressions confirm their expectations; but, I am equally convinced that audio enthusiasts concerned with these measurements, to a degree far greater than they are concerned with a person’s experience of listening to the music, are equally susceptible to erring on the side of allowing their impressions to confirm their expectations. Criticisms of the poor measurements of many tube amplifiers, for example, compared to many solid-state amplifiers, can lead someone who is only concerned with measurements to hear a tube amp as sounding inferior to a comparable solid-state amp. Similarly, marketing copy can sway someone to hear a certain tube amp in the way the brochure describes the amp’s sound, or a consensus opinion among a type of music listener (for example, that certain amplifiers sound “warm”), is likely to sway the audiophile. Either group would not necessarily be incorrect, but they are equally susceptible to being swayed by their expectations to hear what the words or numbers give them over to expecting to hear. And this all goes equally for any piece of audio gear.

I don’t have a grand theory of listening. I don’t have a new science of psychoacoustics. Neither does anyone else whom I’ve heard expound on the subjects, though my reading is, admittedly, limited. Like many things in life, my venturing into the realm of listening to higher fidelity audio recordings on higher fidelity equipment, involves my muddling my way through. It is not unexpected that audio discourse involves many disagreements and even heated arguments or loathing of “the other side.” This is true of human opinions generally. Let them go on. I may be swayed by one argument, then another, and ignore many others. I do not premise my worth on my being “right” about audio, and I treat my involvement in this hobby with an enthusiastic learner’s and experimenter’s attitude. I’m not building amplifiers at this point, but I did get to do some soldering for the first time in a long time, when bypassing the crossovers in my speakers, to implement an active tri-amping set-up. I think this is supposed to be fun and a way to commune with interested people. Anything that detracts from the fun of it, and from this spirit of communion, I would rather do without. It is a search for truths; but it is not an ideological struggle between warring factions—at least, it isn’t that for me.

So, in conclusion, I use the word, “audiophile,” and I apply it to myself. By it I mean something like “lover of listening to recorded music on high-quality equipment.” “Audiophile” is widely used (and so given to divergent meanings) and seems to connote a relation to music, and not, say, spoken-word poetry or audio-books—though these are not ruled out. I think “music appreciator” has too many overtones of sophisticated understandings of music history and music theory for me to apply it to myself, though I am an appreciator of music. I am not a scholarly music appreciator, and I think the term has connotations of scholarly study of music. So, audiophile it is. There are probably meanings of “audiophile” that I have not addressed here and may not know of. Please put any you know into the comments!