@oppen

But.. It's true...

@oppen Yes, I see now that this is a true statement.

@oppen I don’t think we need gold-plated connectors to be certain there can be no lies detected here.

@oppen the funny thing is that they can't hear the difference anyway, they just think they can.

@oppen Not incorrect, though...

@oppen yes, but what is the best sounding toslink cable?

@oppen He's not wrong. It seems insane unless you've done this.

@oppen While I'm not an audiophile, I do test headphones with Beethoven's 7th and The Who's Won't Get Fooled Again.

@oppen @Eetschrijver An audiophile is someone who has 27 speakers and one test-record.

@oppen my brain just said "art collectors don't use their money to appreciate your art, they use your art to appreciate their money" and now I can't un-think it

@oppen So true. Never met an audiophile who actually likes music.

@oppen i remember his earnest interview begging audiophiles to fix the room first

@oppen @padeluun how dare this Alan Parson person! Does he even have a decent turntable? Does he have 000AWG speaker cables? Does he have good power conditioning equipment? 🤭

@oppen
https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/interactive/2024/ken-fritz-greatest-stereo-auction-cost/

@oppen I remember shopping for speakers with my sister once (way back when that was a thing you did) and two stereo bros laughed at us when they heard my sister say that a pair of speakers was too ugly to put in her room and I knew immediately that these guys would never, ever have a girlfriend.

@oppen

I heard this exact statement from a salesperson in just such a store. He had stopped buying expensive stuff.

@oppen

not sure if this is true

for decades, starting maybe in 1960s, this guy had a standing offer of US $10,000 (a lot of money back then) to anyone who could, in a blind test, show there stereo system outperformed a 2,000 dollar system, which at the time was reasonable hi end

@oppen I saw the truth of this firsthand, when my brother brought me along to visit his friend's audiophile shop and "auditioned" my band's new CD on various gear there.

@oppen

Completely true. Also, too many fancy houses with fancy home theaters seem to have been built to show off the theatre and the stadium seating and the big sound and the slick lighting and the laser projection and the tell is always the screen: small, dinky, surrounded by cosmetic wall coverings. The least important thing is the movie for these folks, lol! For example:

@oppen
@snazzyq 👀

@oppen This is such an interesting insight, useful far beyond the audio example. Much of consumption seems unrelated to actual enjoyment of music or art or nature, or the company other people.

@oppen He's just projecting!

@oppen this is "my type" lol

@oppen I work in a record store and goddamn if it ain't The Truth. Dudes come in and drop $300 on some hard-to-get Mobile Fidelity record and when you ask them what they thought of it, they wanna talk about their speaker cables, or the wood plank their turntable sits on, or some other arcane shit that has nothing to do with the music. I just bought FIVE (5!) MoFi copies of "Highway 61 Revisited" off a guy because "they're not quiet enough". WTF is he listening to???

@oppen perfect definition :)

@oppen Most recorded media isn't that good to warrant a huge expense for equipment to play it on.

@oppen When the man's right, he's right.

@oppen@merveilles.town So true and it's hard to figure out if any of the Hi-Fi product are just overpriced or a decent price. It's so annoying seeing audiophiles/Home Theater YouTube's videos showing expensive equipment and not enough for people like me who are on a budget and don't have that much money to cash on the "high-end"

@oppen pretty true 😅

@oppen It's totally true, especially if you test codecs

@oppen lols, at a certain point I suppose it becomes true.

@oppen Hahahahahahahahahaha.

@oppen If Parsons actually said this, it's classic. Also, the quote isn't wrong...

@oppen I can see why. 🤣 (Alan is right, though.)

@oppen

#AMEN!

@oppen Get the “Casino Royale” soundtrack out.

@oppen it may be true in a sense, but after audiophiles listen to their equip long enough and choose what meakes them happier than others, they will just settle in and start listening to music until their set up rots or breaks in some way.

@oppen Yeah. One of the many reasons I do not like to call myself an #audiophile or a CD collector 😉 I love #music and I only buy CDs I know I'll listen to. And I'm pretty much aware the law of diminishing returns: https://peter.czanik.hu/posts/lie-just-a-little-more/ If I wanted a new hifi with audible improvement, that would cost almost a year worth of salary for me. I am happy with my current setup, which is a fraction of that price 😜

@oppen
Ok, fair enough, but if someone can tell me how to keep the local radio station from broadcasting into my turntable, I would really appreciate not having "Kars for Kids" in the quiet parts of King Crimson.

This unexpectedly blew up. Sorry if I don't reply to everyone, if I hadn't muted the thread I'd have had over 1000 notifications by now. New followers: prepare to be disappointed.

@oppen@merveilles.town He's just telling the truth.

@oppen OH, AND WHERE IS THE CW TO SHOW FOR IT, HUH?

@oppen hilarious! Directed towards McIntosh owners and their kind.

@oppen it's an absolute truth

@oppen

Alan Parsons didn’t say this; a commenter on Slashdot on a post about Alan Parsons said it:

https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2663265&cid=38987087

The Slashdot post links to an Alan Parsons interview in which he says nothing like this.

@oppen i mean it's true

@oppen Reminds me of this post about how hobbies can be broken into a matrix based on whether you like the hobby or the gear, and whether you like doing it or just discussing it.
https://brooker.co.za/blog/2023/04/20/hobbies.html

@oppen
I appreciate the more neutral spin I've seen on this quote, that audiophiles listen to their equipment and music fans listen to the music. Both approaches are valid.

@oppen @grincheux I love it

@oppen @cory I feel seen

@oppen Yet another musical genius who contributed to this masterpiece album. #DSOTM

@oppen My brother, an audiophile, responded: "Audiophiles don't listen to Alan Parsons." To which I replied: "Exactly. They listen to their equipment."

@oppen Douglas Adam once said ...
”I think a nerd is a person who uses the telephone to talk to other people about telephones. And a computer nerd therefore is somebody who uses a computer in order to use a computer. ”

@oppen

I don't. Transparent sounding reached for as far I need. So I can't hear the equipment. If I hear it it's a failure.

@oppen
|
Absolutely true, and in the news recently too.

@oppen if you're not listening to it in the original 10w practice amp then you're not experiencing the musician's original mixing.

@oppen also covered by Flanders and Swann many, many years earlier.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EL5SzTSMxLU

@oppen

He's sort of right. I used good source material to NOT listen to my equipment. 😂

@oppen The audiophile subculture would be such an interesting topic to study. It probably has been studied in terms of cultural history quite a bit.

@oppen That is 100% true.

@oppen
Since this is going to be a "how should you HiFi" discussion, I'll leave some thoughts:
- the late 90s were the best time to buy great HiFi equipment. By then, the industry had adapted to the much better sounding CD format and produces good and great components. With the advent of digital, even portable formats and players, the market for really good equipment stagnated and shrank, leading to good stuff getting expensive and affordable stuff becoming mediocre to bad.