It often surprises me to see people with time, money, and knowledge settling for subpar experiences that have night and day differences to me. Even at my brokest (pretty darn broke), speakers, headphones, and glasses were always worth researching and some saving up, and the difference between what I’d end up with and the average always feels like it paid off tenfold.
I’ve got a surprising number of friends/acquaintances who just don’t seem to care, though, and I am trying to understand if they just don’t experience the difference similarly or if they don’t mind. I know musicians who just continue using generation 1 airpods or the headphones included with their phone, birdwatchers who don’t care about their binoculars, people who don’t care if they could easily make their food taste better, and more examples of people who, in my opinion, could get 50% better results/experiences by putting in 1% more thought/effort.
When I’ve asked some friends about it, it sounds as much like they just don’t care as they don’t experience the difference as starkly as I do, but I have a hard time understanding that, as it’s most often an objective sensory difference. Like I experience the difference between different pairs of binoculars and speakers dramatically, and graphical analysis backs up the differences, so how could they sound/look negligibly different to others? Is it just a matter of my priorities not being others’ priorities, or do they actually experience the difference between various levels of quality as smaller than I seem to? What’s your take on both major and, at the high end, diminishing returns on higher quality sensory experiences?
Big fan of good quality music reproduction. I’m no audiophile, but I have a HiFi I’m happy with. Had the same set of speakers for 20 years, bought an Audiolab 6000a last year after suffering with a poor second hand receiver for a few years and it’s so nice to have dynamics and some punch back. Mostly paired with a Wiim mini or a NAD CDP.
I can tell the difference between 320 mp3 and FLAC (there’s some online comparison test / quiz that I can get right 80% of the time). I don’t have particularly good hearing, bit once you know what to listen out for then its quite apparent when it’s not there. Storage is cheap so all my CDs are ripped to FLAC now, because even if I can’t hear the difference on every track, why not?
My Mrs happily listens to music through her phone speaker or some cheap Bluetooth headphones. I know it shouldn’t, but it really annoys me. She’s also the kind of person who won’t stop to take a stone from their shoe and end up with a big painful blister on their foot
Never let perfect be the enemy of good enough. Do you want to do the thing or do you want to stress about the thing for days, delay it for months while you save up then suffer regret anxiety about whether it was the correct choice? For a lot of people the latter is the part they enjoy about the hobby. For others it isn’t worth the time and resources requires, they’d rather do the thing now with what they have and enjoy it as it is. Where does the inflection point lies between hassle and enjoyable results is personal and everyone has different criteria for different goals and contexts, and that is OK.
I always wanted my music to sound nice, but could never afford the best equipment.
These days I have a set of Sony MDR-7506, and while I appreciate there are ‘better’ headphones, the detail I hear when listening to lossless audio through them is astonishing. I can listen to tracks I’ve heard dozens of times and hear elements that I’ve never noticed before. And these headphones are relatively cheap at £80.
What are your tips on glasses? I choose standard uncoated lenses nowdays after finding that anti-reflective/anti-scratch coatings often scratched easily or had an optically-rippled surface, but maybe things have improved?
Going to a legit optometrist that either cuts their own lenses or tells you where to get good ones rather than trying to find the cheapest option online is probably the biggest thing. They tend to recommend or automatically go for the other top tips, like avoiding any coating that will ripple/peel/fade over time, using high-index materials for high prescriptions (expensive, but drastically reduced the necessary thickness and curvature + distortion of the crystal), and spacing the lens centers to your personal measurements.
