How much does it cost to be an audiophile?

I would disagree with the initial premise that it's about the pursuit of "perfect sound reproduction". There's many people who do that, but that's not what the audiophile world really has become. It's about a bunch of hand waving and big checkbook spending to impress other audiophiles. Oddly, that describes a lot of "hobbies".<p>Nobody who feels that a $4,000 power cable is important has any semblance of sanity remaining. It's the homeopathy of consumer electronics.

If working in the audio industry and studying the topic at university has taught me anything about audiophilia, then that would be the fact that audiophiles tend to fail to take room acoustics seriously.<p>Realistically, any half decent source and amplifier will introduce practically no distortion compared to what the combination of the speaker (and placement) and the listening room introduce. The only thing that makes loudspeakers viable really is our uncanny ability to make sense of room acoustical distortions. Thus, we can sense the true sound even though it has been mangled by echos, reverberations and room modes.<p>However, we can still hear the distortion--and much more so than the comparatively small distortions introduced by sources, amplifiers or cables.<p>The thing is, if you really want some stellar sound from your home stereo, it does not make much sense to spend more than a couple thousand bucks on audio equipment without significantly improving your room acoustics. A $1000 sound system in a good room will always outperform any system in a bad room. So if you really want to improve your sound, you should probably look into room acoustical measures.<p>I have heard some &#62; $40k sound systems in purpose-built rooms. The result is really amazing. If you close your eyes, even a trained ear will have difficulties discerning the recording from the original. In one recording studio, they had a $100k sound system. However, they also had a room to match it: The room was physically decoupled from the outside world (the whole room was standing on rubber feet, so to speak), it had special double windows, a purpose-built air conditioning and above all, loads of sound absorbing material and architecture.<p>And frankly, if you really are serious about sound quality, this is the kind of effort you have to make in order to get there. Spending the same money on more expensive speakers won't help.

Before laying down any money, I'd recommend heading over to hydrogen audio (<a href="http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/" rel="nofollow">http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/</a>) and reading around for a while, or asking questions. As part of their terms of service, they require listening test data to back up any claims of audible differences. It makes for some pretty interesting discussions, and it's changed my outlook quite a bit. It's also probably saved me quite a bit of money.

Audiophile &#38; Student checking in here. Most people don't realize that there is gold on craigslist that older crowd is throwing out due to their wives nagging ("These speakers are too big.." etc) I've put together an amazing system using Polk SDA-2b's, Parasound HCA-1200, &#38; Onkyo TS-DX787(as a preamp)(donated) and behringer uca-202 DAC for under 300 dollars. Cables are all monoprice and it blows my mind that people pay more for snake-oil cables.<p>Being an audiophile is rather cheap once you gather the knowledge on forums (audiokarma.org) and patience at craigslist/thriftstores/ebay.

You know, blind testing is a really nice mind hack. For instance, I've discovered that I can't tell the difference between two brands of tea I liked, one of which is cheaper and easier to find.<p>This is a huge win! I haven't lost Refinement Points because I don't need to buy fancy tea. But I <i>have</i> gained money and convenience.<p>If you're an audiophile, wine lover, or anyone else who spends a lot for quality that "others can't appreciate", I humbly suggest that you put yourself to a test. If you pass, your sophisticated taste is validated. If you fail, you can spend a lot less money and be content knowing you're getting just as good an experience.

The premise of "perfect sound" is almost antithetical to the current state of the audiophile world. Some of the most expensive, well reviewed "audiophile" systems have <i>worse</i> specs than your run of the mill, mid-fi system. Heck, look at the obsession with vinyl, no matter which way you look at it, no matter how much superstition you have, the simple <i>fact</i> is that it has poorer fidelity than a CD. That "magic" quality that makes vinyl sound better than digital? Distortion. Albeit a quite pleasing distortion, but a distortion non the less. Plain and simple.<p>The world of audiophile gear is <i>nothing</i> more than smoke and mirrors. The human ear, just like the human eye, is.. well, rather poor. We have a very small spectrum in which we operate. So these magazines like stereophile will plop an osciliscope onto the latest piece of gear and marvel over the fact that it's flat from 0 to a kazillion and then talk about its "creamy, refined mids." Someone please kill me.<p>Audiophile USB cables, audiophile mode-correcting rocks, audiophile amps with .00000000000001% THD, that damn marker to color your CDs with? All hooey. I once read in a forum an anecdote about a guy switching from Monster, to some other overpriced cable and being able to tell the difference from a room away. This was not a tongue in cheek post.<p>The big problem is that this stuff is eerily close to religion. A bulk of the hard-core, $7000 CD player audiophiles I know are actually rather well educated -- engineers of one type or another, but they slip into cognitive dissonance when it comes to anything relating to audio. A phrase uttered far too frequently is "You can't measure what I'm hearing." Once that mindset is adopted, confirmation bias is king. Here's a $4k pear audio cable. It'll increase the air in the high end by around 15%.<p><a href="http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-blogs/audio-designline-blog/4033511/Audio-Myths-Workshop-video" rel="nofollow">http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-blogs/audio-designline-bl...</a>

The logarithmic scale is the key insight. It would be interesting to ponder whether there are any hobbies that involve buying stuff regularly that <i>don't</i> feature this. I know from experience wine is very similar (and, of course, value can be had if you know what you want to compromise).

A $100-500 set of headphones, decent headphone amp ($50-500), and FLAC files will probably get you to "98" on the log scale, too.<p>(I'm a little wary of buying used headphones, at least without replacing all the soft parts and cleaning thoroughly, though.)

Very high quality audio reproduction can be hacked too, and audio enthusiasts like myself know how to find deals and hacks to get superior performance with much less money. For example, I have a circle of friends who upgrade the OPAMP chips on their sound cards ($10) or use Sonic T-Amp ($30 triclass T-Class digital amp rivaling hifi tube amplifiers) paired with passive studio monitors from Wharfedale, Celestion, or Tannoy (around $200 on ebay when recording studios upgrade to powered monitors).<p>edit - added references:<p><a href="http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/sonicimpact/t_2.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/sonicimpact/t_2.html</a><p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_T_amplifier" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_T_amplifier</a><p><a href="http://www.auzentech.com/site/products/opamp_intro.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.auzentech.com/site/products/opamp_intro.php</a>

There is conclusive data on what we want from reproduction systems: [1][2]. Sad that a place calling itself priconomics can't even google for the most straightforward econometric study on the topic.<p>Engineering for the above metrics is straightforward, and not particularly costly. Even a 10k system can tie for top rank in blind tests if you pay attention to the details that actually have leverage against perception. If you're paying 250k for a home audio system, you're being sold an expensive trinket through a narrative of fetishism.<p>[1]: <a href="http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=12794" rel="nofollow">http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=12794</a><p>[2]: <a href="http://www.waynejones.net/wayne/documents/T&#38;MW_Harman_Article.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.waynejones.net/wayne/documents/T&#38;MW_Harman_Ar...</a>

"At the same time, it’s hard not to think that audiophiles are on the wrong side of history. As the rest of the world joyfully listens to Spotify and Pandora on their iPhones, audiophiles still listen to CDs! The march of technological progress has many casualties, and sound quality may just be one of them. The product desires of audiophiles are so idiosyncratic and contrary to popular tastes; they have an uphill battle to protect sound quality against faster, cheaper and more social access to music."<p>This is not how I see it going down. There are a couple reasons why older formats of music aren't going anywhere and will always serve as compliments to the newer digital formats.<p>The biggest difference between buying CDs/Vinyl vs. a subscription to Spotify/Pandora is ownership. For the foreseeable future there will be a significant market of people, including audiophiles and DJs who want to own the music they buy rather than lease it. And it's now possible for regular to receive the benefits of both formats by buying CDs, ripping them to a media server and then streaming them to your phone or tablet using services such as Audiogalaxy and Google Music.<p>The other reason is the lack of innovation in high quality audio formats. As evidenced by the failure of SACD, the demand is simply not big enough to support the research and marketing of new physical mediums designed solely for music. In the future we will be forced to rely on CDs (which are never the weakest link anyways in an audiophiles system) or piggyback onto other, more popular formats such as Bluray for 5.1+ high quality audio.

By the time most people could afford any of this equipment their hearing has probably degraded to such a point that they can only hear 12kHz to 14kHz anyway.<p>Although unscientific, I played some tones on youtube in the office and the twenty somethings could hear almost 20kHz and the forty somethings couldn't hear anything by the time the frequency sweep was just below 15kHz.

Usually priceonomics provides statistics from a large poll of customer/purchase record, .etc. That <i>is</i> information you couldn't gain elsewhere. Somewhat like an analytics publication.<p>This article is just a description of a shopping experience, together with the research result you have to do before you buy something that is a new category to you.<p>Oh well.

I could (but don't) call myself an audiophile -- I love the world of sound around me.<p>I notice the aural qualities of every room I enter; when I'm in a small space with hard walls, I hum a bit to identify the pitch that will make the room resonate. (I'll bet some with perfect pitch could measure the space between two walls quite accurately with their eyes closed by learning the wave sizes...).<p>I notice when someone's speech or laugh in my house causes sympathetic vibrations on the strings of my acoustic bass guitar in the corner. Or on the metal cover of the radiator.<p>I've spent decades learning to produce sound, from various instruments including the built-in ones (like whistling, body percussion, various forms of vocal music including Tuuvan throat singing), to making music from objects never intended to be instruments. When I listen to others making music I pick it apart in my head.<p>There are lots of people with better-trained ears than I have, who make better music as well -- so moving on: how much money have I spent on audio reproduction equipment?<p>Probably less than $500 in my lifetime.<p>The music I'm listening to the most right now are performances of the Brandenburg Concertos, from YouTube, played from a Macbook Air speaker in another room, while I march up and down the stairs with a baby over my shoulder.<p>I like the way it echoes up the narrow stairs, and how there's one spot partway up that's more resonant than anywhere else. I can't hear subtle details -- so what? I know what that sounds like already; my brain can fill in the missing bits. And there's no possible playback that can reproduce actually <i>performing</i> music -- imagine tje cello vibrating against your body and filling your ears, the thrumming pushback of the bow against your hand -- and these are the things worth having in your head when you listen to someone more accomplished playing a piece.<p>I'll probably get a decent set of speakers someday (though I can't imagine paying more than I'd pay for an actual well-made instrument), but any playback is unavoidably a shadow of the actual performance; I can't imagine caring deeply about getting a perfectly crisp shadow (as long as I get a reasonably clear one) when I'm just using it to imagine the real thing anyway.

Um... You COULD spend a lot of money, or you could learn some basic electronic and woodworking skills. I built a set of ZDT3.5's (Google it) for $250. I built (from various kit pieces) my own T-amp for $75 to power them. Your Mac already has a great sound card capable of extreme sample playback rates. A couple of FLAC recordings later, you're in business.

It depends on how much wire coat hangers cost.<p><a href="http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/coat-hanger-wire-is-just-as-good-as-a-high-quality-speaker-cable/19366" rel="nofollow">http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/coat-hanger-wire-is-just-...</a>

Answer: how much have you got?

For Music:<p>1. USB DAC 2. Magnepan Speakers 3. Stereo Receiver<p>For movies or games you'll want surround and a sub