Blocking the propaganda

Outsider looking in here. Sorry if it is not my place to comment on such weighty matters but this seems to be a topic that generates a lot of navel gazing among serious audiophiles. There always seems to be some level of fetishism that seems perfectly reasonable to some but unreasonable to others. And to be honest, for those of us on the outside, the fetishism of even moderate audiophiles seems rather extreme to us. But that is neither here-nor-there because at many levels the outsider is in fact uninformed.

And this is a problem, if you want to call it that, in most serious and expensive hobbies, especially those in which there is a large subject element like hearing, seeing, tasting and simple preference. I see this same thing in photography.

And there are also gear heads in most hobbies of this nature. Their joy seems to be not in the music and not in the photograph and not in the performance of a sports car on an actual race track but in the specifications and potential capabilities of the audio equipment, car or camera or lens. I don't think there is anything wrong with that. But their objective and enjoyment is going to be different from those in whom the music and the actual image and actual lap times matter the most. In photography they are often called pixel peepers. Many of them have lavish gear. Many of them often can't recognize are truly good photograph much less make one. Many a 911 owner couldn't keep up with me in an old 350Z on a race track.

Then there are the name droppers.  Who has the mostest and the bestest and the latest. Those who will pay $2000 for a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle 23 and not be able to tell that it is hardly any better if better at all than a $110 bottle of Blantons. Nothing wrong with that either as long as they don't try to persuade someone that the Pappy is $1800 better.

I dabble in a number of 'high end' hobbies. One of my joys, and maybe this is a stupid fetish too, is getting to that point where I can appreciate something that is truly good but also recognize where the increments of 'better' become of little meaning and high cost. That's subjective too of course.

clearthink, that is very funny. I did not take into consideration that everyone might not know the various meanings of 'fetishism'.

But just so you know, even though you might not have intended to be judgmental, you probably offended the very very large numbers of people who do actually swing that way.....

clearthink, I was giving you credit for being funny. I guess it was misplaced.

onhwy61.....that was funny. Really funny.

For clearthink's benefit, right out of the dictionary:

fetishism: 1. belief in magical fetishes. 2. extravagant irrational devotion. 3. pathological displacement of erotic interests.

I was talking about the second definition. Maybe the first one.

Most Bentleys have very delicate fuel injectors and EFI processors that control them. Standard cheap filling station pump hoses tend to spend ages out in the elements and particularly in warm climates the heat that the hoses are exposed to can cause the release of certain hydrocarbons that can be misinterpreted by the sensors in the EFI system as indicating a lower oxygen content in the fuel than is actually there. This causes the EFI system to retard valve timing slightly. This does not harm the engine or the EFI but can result in a slight decrease in performance. Some say it is imperceptible but serious Bentley owners say they can feel it in the seat of their pants under hard acceleration.

Glupson, my explanation about Bentleys was pure fiction. A little satire aimed at the audiophile stereotype. Not really my place to do so since I am a beginner at this and have other hobbies that likely sound equally ridiculous to those outside the hobby. 

There are certain reviewers in the camera world that garner a following mostly due to charisma and attempts at being iconoclastic. Even when they are shown to be inconsistent and even dead wrong their “followers” will admit no flaw. 

As as far as cars, performance and race tracks the single most effective upgrade on any car of any type is tires. The very best of them won’t last a weekend. They’re not called ‘black crack’ for no reason. 

Anyway, I have found the internet to be a truly excellent tool in all of these sorts of things. The challenge of sorting out the signal from the noise can be daunting. Finding the right forum with the right people is huge. But they’re out there. I’ve only had my high end audio equipment for a week and have never had any desire or pretense to be an audiophile before I got it. Whether or not this forum is one of those jewels or not I can’t tell yet. But so far I’ve gotten excellent advice despite my level of ignorance in the matter and I’ve learned tons in this short week thanks to a number of kind and patient folks here 

I can tell that there are a few here that do not suffer fools and who may lack a little tact. But that’s not always a bad thing in the right measure. 

Glupson, it gets just as crazy if not more so in the automotive world. There are so many more intangibles than the simple physics would suggest. The fancier and pricier the cars the worse it gets. Any given machine that performs too well and too effortlessly is presumed to have lost some sort of spiritual essence..... for example. 

The car car world is fortunate to have race tracks though. That is where all the hype goes away. That is where a moderately experienced driver like me blows the doors off a 911 Turbo driven by a new or cautious driver in my pedestrian Nissan 350z while a gifted driver in a Miata on slicks passes us both and we are all made to look motionless by a Ferrari Challenge 458 that arrived in fancy 18 wheeler. The stopwatch does not lie. 

And trust me, the amateur photography world is nearly as bad as the audiophile world. And you can have a $30,000 Phase One body with a $10,000 lens and take bad pictures all day. There also seems to be quite a niche in photography for people who love the gear...and make no mistake, some of it is exquisite to behold...who rarely take pictures. They will tell you your $2000 Nikon is junk and they have the engineering knowledge to tell you why. And yet some of them do not have the talent to produce an actual work of art. Rather, they tend to produce what Ansel Adams called a sharp photo of a fuzzy concept. 

To to bring this around to the OP’s point, the manufacturers and the retailers prey on these aspects of all of these hobbies. And why wouldn’t they? For them there is nothing worse than someone deciding that what they already have is all they really want and need. 

Maybe I spoke too soon. But there are always flamers I guess.