no.22 - The Arrogant Audiophile

I am sick of the audiophile who pretends to have the hearing of a dolphin and must listen to his music without distraction in a hermetically sealed sound-proof room.

These are the guys who claim you must spend hundreds of dollars on cables and wires to have what they consider a passable system, but when put to the test, they can't tell the difference between their beloved $100 cables and a coat hanger.

These are also the same folks who, for years, claimed you could draw on the outside edge of a CD with green Eberhard Faber Design Art Marker (No. 255) and magically improve the clarity of sound. This would work because... well lasers are red, and that's the opposite of green, right?

These are folks committed to the science of music, as long as that "science" involves jacking up prices of components and does not involve any manner of objective analysis.

It's all crock, even this 5.1 Dolby garbage. Really guys, it couldn't be 6 point Dolby? The sub woofer really means so little to you as to only account for a tenth of a point?

Frankly, if I am going to listen to Patsy Cline sing "Crazy" I would like it to be playing quietly on the one functioning speaker in my car stereo, on a fuzzy A.M. station from about forty feet away, as a storm approaches at dusk on the plains.

What the "audiophiles" don't realize is that, day after day, many of us are listening to compressed MP3's on our little white ear buds and we are happy. Do you know why? Because listening to music is not passive. We bring ourselves to the music. The imperfect music enhances our imperfect lives.