Do you agree with John Atkinson (and me)?

It is certainly true of me at this stage in my life, but I would not be quick to judge younger audiophiles.  Especially in the current environment where streaming is so prevalent.  Truth be told I am not sure in my younger days that it was true for me even when vinyl and reel to reel tape dominated my setup.  The hobby is progressive after all.

I recall an episode of Mash where this happened:

Frank Burns asked Hawkeye "Why do people take an instant dislike to me?"

Hawkeye replied "Saves time Frank".

There’s no wrong way to do it. We’re each unique. Whatever brings the most pleasure is the right way. How other people approach their systems doesn't concern me enough to have any disdain for them.

I always collected a lot of recorded music.  Still do to today.  I always knew I had spent much more on the music than the stereo.  Even if you add up all that I spent on equipment during my life, it is dwarfed by what I spent on recorded music.  Hell, I have been buying music for 60 of my 68 years.

My guess is that it would be flipped if I were starting out today.  I would most likely be streaming and probably less focused on the systems.  Systems are just not as interesting today, more of a commodity.

Rich 

The size of the physical music collection is completely unrelated to how much someone should spend. This is true especially today where the absolute best quality a human could want is available via a stream. Few people want huge record collections and we have learned that vinyl has less range than most CDs or good streams. Thank goodness we have learned that MP3 is garbage... well, some of us, not the younger people however, some still don't get it and don't care. I recall a time back in the late 1980s that friends got into playing "full digital recordings" on CD of things like the 1812 Overture to show how the pure silence went to crazy levels with the cannons as a measure of the system. I still have these same friends :-) They also loved the demo discs, and listening to their hardware, but their main music genre was popular rock bands of the time. One of these guys had, and still grows his music collection, and had some of the old equipment in use to this day. It's still great. Others with absolutely incredible systems beyond my means have a limited collection of physical media, or even digital files saved. Talking about basing the system cost on the size of the collection would never make sense, but nowadays it's like talking about how much a fish should spend on a bicycle.

@billstevenson My son is a young audiophile. The only music he owns on recorded media is what I’ve given to him. With current trends, that's not likely to change.

I have no idea what I’ve spent on cds and vinyl. And 8 track tapes and cassette tapes. I’m sure it’s a lot less than my gear.

In the streaming era, this is like arguing about angels fitting on the head of a pin. It has completely lost relevance to the modern landscape.

fwiw I’ve never known any of those stereotypes, people that owned high end systems and played only demo discs.  
 

  The one Trope that I am intimately acquainted with is the 25-40 year old ‘hipster’ that thinks vinyl is so cool that they shell out $30-$60 for a classic rock reissue and then play it back on a phonograph in a box gizmo that costs $80.

My music collection certainly cost more than my gear, but loving music and loving the way it sounds don't have to be mutually exclusive. 

Why ask why?  Who really cares, anyway?  Totally irrelevant!!!  

There is this thing called music streaming services these days.  You can listen all day to anything and own nothing. 

My music library is over 110 million tracks at Tidal. Is this enough music for a good system?

How do you know you have 110 million tracks?  Did you count them or are you so gullible as to believe what THEY tell you?  There's massive fraud in streaming!

You wonder why people would try and make it a quantifiable matter with music as well; my list of albums is longer than yours, not to mention more expensive than the totality of hardware gear comprising my setup. Thus, apparently, I’m the more music loving-audiophile - and in effect, it seems: the more real audiophile.

Seems to me we have enough of self-entitlement, dichotomies and labels going on as it is (something also about people owning tube equipment and reel-to-reel decks being nicer?).

@knotscott wrote:

There’s no wrong way to do it. We’re each unique. Whatever brings the most pleasure is the right way. How other people approach their systems doesn’t concern me enough to have any disdain for them.

+1

My system started with wedding money age 19, became truly involving when I inherited my uncle’s Fisher President II Console age 25, all tube components with 4 way: 3 horns/15" woofer’s firing down. My current speakers still use those drivers.

Buying some LPs while working part time and borrowing money for Pratt Institute 1966-70. (declared myself financially independent to get away from evil step father)

After that: gifts, finds, bargains, swaps, favors, always on the prowl: Friend Wayne at Harvey’s 45th st alerted me to items about to hit their used shelf, friend Phil at Leonard Radio 44th st; restore used, very little new equipment. Even after I started my own company and had decent amount of disposable income, I prefer used Vintage equipment.

Content: Working for others: limited new purchases, luckily a friend gave me around 50 Jazz LP’s that had water damage, I cleaned them and learned about Jazz for free. Payday, every two weeks, off to 5th avenue Record Hunter clearing out LPs, Madison avenue shop clearing out 8 Tracks (6 for $5). Tower Records, Colony Records to find specifics, owner took me down to the basement once, holy moly. 8 Tracks: I picked curious stuff I would never risk real money on, planned on listening when I retired, sadly most of the pressure pads of the 8 tracks dissolved. I keep an 8 Track player and dual cassette going in my garage/shop system. The Sony Front Loading Drawer TT gave me the extra room in the stack, and protects from sawdust.

Smoking Money for Music: I quit smoking 1988, age 40, a carton a week was $700/year. I decided the bills were getting paid, I’ll give myself a treat, spend it all on music or music equipment, a few new Onkyo pieces, LPs and CDs, and one year I ordered 42 special oversized leather binders from Herringtons that fit 8 cds/page (80-100 cds/binder) deeper pages/full pockets with their booklets rather than just the curve of the CD between the rings. On shelves, left side here

I gave myself a rise in pay every year, whatever a carton a week x 52 cost, up from $700. in 1988 to over $4,500 now. never thought what it would add up to, just a treat to help me quit. I stopped when I retired age 62 in 2010.

Equipment: starting 2019, thru covid era, I overhauled 3 systems, mostly used vintage and restored. Main/Office/Garage-Shop,

my virtual systems on this site

The quality of streaming, transport and decoding continues to improve and at some point it will equal or surpass physical media.  I suspect that the line is the sand is closer than many listeners think.  Since streaming is so inexpensive for the end consumer, listeners can reallocate physical media funds to better equipment!  

Remember when automobile automatic transmissions were called "slush boxes" and no real car enthusiast would drive anything but a manual transmission?  Technology has evolved and now a high end sports car have only some variation of an automatic transmissions.

I'm fatigued from the format change in physical media.  Vinyl to cassettes to CDs to stored high rez files.  RIP physical media.    

Tape

I forgot to mention: Years ago, before they got expensive, primarily eBay I bought over 500 pre-recorded Reel to Reel Tapes (since sold over 200 of them) and moved up thru several generations of decks, stopped at Teac’s last Prosumer X2000R 6 head Auto Reverse Tape Decks, 2 for me (main and office), Gave my X1000’s to my sons, but there is no content from their era.

Finally got to use one Vertically in my office, had the Mickey Mouse Dust Cover in a box for a long time

They are 7-1/2 IPS, my best sounding content, but limited by the era’s content availability, and my friend’s 15 IPS Reel to Reels are the best content I’ve heard.

My record collection is worth more than my gear. I credit great sound in my home has contributed to buying more music and trying different genres.

While streaming is not my primary source, there are many discs I do not purchase, that in the past I would have purchased, but after a listen or two on streaming I feel no desire to hear again...throws the whole ridiculous equation off ... and i also have never known anyone with a very good system and very few discs...

onhwy61

There's massive fraud in streaming!

There is? Tell us about it, @onhwy61!

I thought that editorial by John Atkinson rose to the level of courageous because he was basically saying that you don't need to spend crazy money to get great sound. That's hard for anybody in the hi-fi publishing business to say because of the risk of offending your high-end advertisers. Perhaps it is easier for John to risk it now that he is semi retired. I have heard similar remarks from noteworthy folks like David Hafler, Steve Guttenberg, Herb Watson and many others whom I respect. Sometimes you have to read between the lines a little bit to get the message. 

Veblin goods. We exist in a hobby that sells a lot of Veblin goods.

I lost track.

So many records, so much equipment..

I still have a lot of vinyl going back to the 70's, and it's in great condition. I don't have any of the equipment from that time.  One thing the OP comments on is the "listen to the system vs the music".  Sorry, but this has always been a word salad I've never understood.  Can music possibly sound better on an inferior system?  And sure, some recordings make your system sound great.  Because they are great recordings.  Sometimes I wonder how much naval gazing goes on in this hobby. 😆 

A clarification of my viewpoint on the topic:

I made my comment in the ’How much is too much to spend on a system’ thread was made NOT because I consider "The hi-fi shouldn’t be worth more than one’s music library" to be "right" or "correct", but merely because I thought it to be an idea that should be included in the conversation. It can be argued that a $10,000 (or even $100,000) system and a 1,000 piece record collection makes more sense than does a $1,000 system and a 10,000 piece record collection!

I consider the pursuit of building an audiophile-level hi-fi to be a noble one, and one not separate from amassing an extensive music library (while that term might strike some---you know who you are ---as pretentious, I prefer it to record collection, which to me has a negative connotation. I don’t "collect" records, I buy them to allow me access to the music they contain).

The Classical store manager I mentioned above was (I believe) unaware of the fact that a superior reproduction system allows the listener to better appreciate (and in some instances better understand) the music heard through the system, perhaps as a result of him having never heard a really good system. Especially in Classical music, which often has many musical lines being played at relatively low volume. Those lines are easily masked by the lack of transparency in a poor hi-fi, robbing the listener of the full measure of the music.

In fact, the sound of music is inseparable from the music itself. Yes, a conductor’s ability to lead his orchestra (the above store manager loved Leonard Bernstein, referring to him as Lenny) and the abilities of the orchestra’s musicians play the major role in determining the quality of a performance, but so does the literal sound they make. As does the sound quality of the recording of the music.

John Atkinson’s original ’back in the day’ analysis of his writer’s systems and record collections was done before the advent of streaming, and when he now says "The same is true of me, even in these days of streaming", he loses me. How can the relationship between the cost of one’s hi-fi and the worth of their music collection be calculated when one has access to every recording available via streaming?

This is not a new topic. In the 1970s I hung out with Gordon Holt and I still recall that when he got a phone call from a reader he'd ask about their record collection. And too many times he owned about 10 records, all of them audiophile sound approved rather than music approved.

No, I do not agree.

The expenditures are both independent variables, subject to uncorrelated pricing structures.

I am tempted to sneer at your Tower Records store manager who I assume is listening to the garbage put out by a poor man's shitty low fi sound system.

And the TAS writers who mocked owners of high end systems seem completely out of touch with audiophiles like me who simply enjoy having good equipment.  (And whose purchases are important to their jobs.)

Some of the most rabid audiophiles also own very large record collections. Michael Fremer has a quite nice system and a massive music library. But my gawd, what a mess of a listening room!

@jwei: When I heard a really good system for the first time (Decca pickup, ARC electronics, ESL loudspeakers), I found the sound being produced to be thrilling in and of itself, like live music. No shame in that. And hearing records sound better than you had before can lead one to listen to music more, the best premise of all for having a good system.

I have (approx.) 3,000 LPs, 2,500 CDs, and 1,500 Hi-Res downloads - and a subscription to Presto Music streaming.  The streaming SQ never seems quite as good.

Of those 7,000 albums there are a probably two hundred that I listen to most frequently in the course of a year - but every so often I dig into the shelves, almost at random, for something different.

My appreciation of the performances is certainly increased by having a pretty good setup,  I have friends who have huge collections, and greater knowledge of music than I, but poor taste in gear, and the listening experience does not compare, the emotion of the performance does not come through in the same way.

@retiredaudioguy: For me hearing a good system raised my expectations. Listening to music through a poor (or even mediocre) system was no longer good enough---I knew I wasn’t hearing it as well as possible, and I was left wanting. In spite of that, hearing a song on the radio can still bring joy, but I can’t wait to get home to hear it on my system.

This is an audiophile site, not a music site. Other than occasional lists of favorite albums or bands, there is essentially no discussion of music on this site. And that’s fine. Music reproduction provides a thrill of its own, which is not necessarily a musical thrill. Good recordings of thunder storms or trains can sound thrilling on a good system. As the OP (or someone above) put it, no shame in that.

Moreover, just comparing the size of one’s music library as an indicator of one’s love of music rather than audio reproduction misses the mark. There are libraries and there are libraries. Used book stores often sell books by the yard for interior decorating. Owning a lot of books doesn’t mean you’ve read them. And even if you have, there are books worth reading and books for decorating.

Get over it. On this site, we share a passion for music reproduction technology. Stereophile is read by people with that passion. With all due respect to John Atkinson, asking whether or not a Streophile reader has a music library that cost more than his system is not just beside the point, it is potentially insulting, and it begs all these other questions as well.

On a good evening of streaming, I'll listen to music from more albums that you'll listen to in a week.  

@snilf: When one clicks on ’Start A New Discussion’ in the Audiogon Forum, one of the topic choices offered is ’Music’. Those interested in discussions of hi-fi gear exclusively are free to ignore threads which include the discussion of music. That to me would be like a TV cooking show which discusses only the hardware used to cook food, with no mention of the food itself. Hi-Fi magazines such as Stereophile include record reviews, one of the reasons I still subscribe to the mag (continuously since 1972).

I think it is a mindset. When I was building better and better systems for myself decades ago, I sought out the HP List stuff and had some secret pleasures that were not "audiophile" but I enjoyed the music, for example, Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus. 

I accumulated a lot of records, especially when vinyl was declared dead. I only had the time to start "curating" several rooms worth in roughly 2006. I then started to focus more on records I didn't own, started to cull, and became much more focused on the recorded performances for their own sake. I began to expand my listening to include material beyond hard rock, classical and soundtracks to embrace a variety of material with which I was unfamiliar and became very selective at the same time, seeking out good pressings, often but not always OG pressings (the definition of which can vary, depending on your perspective).

I wound up dumping approximately 12,000 LPs leading up to a move from NY to Texas, bringing approximately 5,000 or so records here and adding perhaps another 1,000 since 2016-7. 

My main system is "mature" in the sense that I have had a lot of the core components for years- circa 2006-7, but have made some incremental improvements. I'm pretty satisfied with it, and with my vintage system (which recreates what I was running in 1975 and uses some of the very same components, sympathetically restored). 

I rarely listen to the same record between listening sessions, although if I have a visitor I will often pull a few known "demo" records out to play for them.

The mindset part is where your focus is: I'm happy to say that I can enjoy the benefits of what I assembled in the way of these systems (even the vintage one) and concentrate on what I'm listening to, not for analytical purposes or to abate audio nervosa, but simply for enjoyment. I'm at a point where I may not be able to listen to all I have in this lifetime; I've slowed considerably on record purchases, largely because the market is inflated in price and grading, and a lot of the rare stuff is now exorbitant. I will on occasion buy a reissue of some rare record simply because I'm not going to pay 4 figures for an OG. 

The mindset thing was also hard for me to break away from when I was in gear acquisition/upgrade mode. Perhaps it's the flip side of " most high end audiophiles are geezers." And perhaps I'm simply more relaxed about life. 

A further though:

In their reviews of hi-fi products, Stereophile writers include information about the records (both LP and CD) they employ as source material in helping them appraise the sound quality of the components they are reviewing. Art Dudley went deep into the records he used to aid him in his evaluations of hi-fi components, as does his good pal Herb Reichert. Fellow Stereophile reviewer Ken Micaleff too.

@whart: Hi Bill, I’m very pleased you decided to join in the conversation, and love your post. Another lover of the Twelve Dreams Of Dr. Sardonicus album!

If I ever make another trip to Austin, I expect to be welcomed for a visit . The last time I was in Austin (2008) I reconnected with my former band mate guitarist Paul Skelton, along with the guy he was playing guitar with at the time, Cornell Hurd, an Austin Texas Western Swing institution since the late-80’s (from 1973 through 1975 I was in a Jump Blues/Swing band with Cornell’s younger brother Drew). Paul was being treated for lung cancer, and seeing him onstage at Antones with a plastic tube running from an oxygen tank into his nostrils was a grim sight. He died in 2009, another victim of the dreaded tobacco leaf.

Find what you love and let it kill you.

I have over 3k vinyl, over 3.5k cd's, doubt there was much time when my physical media outlay exceeded my system. I purchased most physical media 80's-90's, between record shows, sales and purchases at used record stores I rarely paid retail. I was regularly purchasing vinyl for as cheap as $3 a pop, highest priced generally around $15, cd's perhaps same on average cost per cd.  I'm mainly streaming today, moving in on 10K albums in my library, cd's ripped to NAS.

My records are worth more than my systems. 

Streaming is cheating. 

@bdp24 He is messy. Have you seen the kitchen?

But my gawd, what a mess of a listening room!

@mahler123 ...pinhead angels have become how much per T drive x number of T's

on the 'drive' which drives nothing as done before....
Nothing moves anymore, if one wishes.....control 'knobs' became 'quaint', "How....Retro...", they coo....

@willywonka ...110 mil?  Mmmm...there's 2,525 million seconds in an 80 year lifespan, no breaks for sleep, eat, excrete, repeat to listen to all that, a lot of which you'd rather not or have done.....  OK, break time is over...

@bruce19 Well put, actually.  V goods...Vgods?  We're already surrounded and didn't bother to surrender 'till just recently....

Vintage v. SOTA, what we had when v. what's at hand at present.
The price one pays for that which improves what's experienced used to seem to have more of an effect on what was heard....  Of late, only 'those who can' and the truly committed ( and may have been *L* ) can lay or nay 'getting closer' or fell....

@bolong ....*ironic L*  I've got mine....you?  Good.... ;) 

People are strange: Yup. We have met the enemy, and 'they' is us....

@noromance So?  Keep the media if it has it's charms that you like....simple.  I've got LP, cassettes, cd mine and CD's, hard and SSDrives, the odd dongle....

The idea is to smile and enjoy....how is up to you, and what scratches That Itch. 
As for self, that's a conundrum unto itself....
 Yes, I enjoy more than I introspect. but the analytical is there, Listening... the sounds, the mix, any notable nuance.....

'Plays into my Walsh fixations"...*L*  That's mostly my intent of late...

Streaming just enlarges what I can abuse them with.... ;)

Clarity, as always, my goal....

My posts? *meh* L*

When I was younger, it wasn’t even close.  During college, I’m pretty sure I never had more than 75-100 lps max.  Who could afford a large collection?  I’d sell stuff to help purchase new, and of course Chicago had a great FM station - WXRT.  In grad school, in Boston, same thing, no money, great station - was it WBCN?  Anyway, I have way more lps now than I ever did in my youth, both because I can afford it and because I have a nice house I’ve been settled in for 25(!) years.  Even so, it’s “only” about 750 lps, so my systems cost way more.  But as others have pointed out, I have a pretty small number of go-to lps that I listen to frequently, so I’d be surprised if I listen to more than 250 during a typical year (not including streaming, of course).  

I think I was driven into the Audiophile passion by my passion for Music (classical).

I spent the 70s and 80s listening to LPs an a reasonable 'HiFi' system - Ohm Walsh speakers and I forget the rest.

I changed jobs in 1990 and one of my colleagues was a TAS & Stereophile reader and, knowing that my wife and I were avid music listeners he suggested I bring some of my discs (black or shiny) to his apartment.

It changed my life, I rediscovered what the Quad ESLs had given me in about 1970.

So, I guess for me being an audiophile is a means to an end, not an end in itself.  Though there is nothing wrong with its being an end in itself.

@bdp24 - A friend of mine who used to work for the Banana Records chain and later Capitol Records used to be the manager of Cornell Hurd and the Mondo Hotpants Orchestra.... 

For me, it’s always been about music and enjoying music and finding a system that makes my music sound better. When my parents owned a record store in Denver in the 80s, the gear used in the shop was a couple of run-of-mill turntables, a few receivers, headphones for people to listen to albums to, and basic 2-way speakers for ambient music in the shop. None of that was fancy. Our home hi-fi was a Marantz receiver, bookshelf speakers, a TT, a reel-to-reel tape deck, and eventually, a CD player.

Listening to music was the primary purpose. I have fond memories of putting on the Stones’ Hot Rocks on the TT, sitting in my dad’s recliner and listening with headphones to that record over and over.

Now, I have music playing almost all the time at home with the family. I do dance parties with my kids, stream music for wall-paper purposes, and then when everyone else is in bed, I put my headphones on and do some purposeful listening.

To each their own I say. If you’re an audiophile forever searching for the next magic box that sounds better than the last and you only listen to the same 50 albums from 50 years ago, great. For me, considering my financial constraints of raising 3 young kids and 20yrs away from retirement, a good mid-hi-fi system to enjoy my growing music collection is where it’s at for me.

It is kind of an appalling judgment about people and their situations that you know nothing about...and the idea that streaming doesn't affect the equation ???

Here’s another way of thinking about the issue.  I catalog the jazz lp section of my 750 lp collection on Discogs.  According to Discogs, my 395 lp jazz collection is worth about $10k.  So let’s assume my total collection is worth about $15k.  That’s a decent amount invested, imho.  I also have about $100k invested in my 3 main systems.  But according to the music lover vs. audiophile paradigm, I’d be more of a music lover if I’d only spent $5k on a system.  This is an obvious logical fallacy.

Judging people based on the value of their music collections is a rather appalling prospect. Perhaps some skrimp and save just to have a mid grade audio system, not much left over for vinyl and cd acquisitions. These people don't have enough disposable income to continue to acquire more equipment or hard copy, system and music values are static. This just one example of making bad value judgements. Judging people by comparing values of equipment/music collections no matter the level of expenditure is pointless. Personally, I've never made any value judgements as to what media people use to listen to music or the amount of their expenditures on equipment or music. This may say something about the size of their bank accounts, but as to any readings of principles, ethos, etc, total nonsense.

A lot of the "Vinyl Community" posters on YouTube (they refer to themselves as members of the VC, the younger members undoubtedly unaware that those initials were also used when referring to the Viet Cong) mention how many LP’s they own. I’ve never counted mine, as I feel it is the quality of the collection that matters, not it’s size. That brings to mind the old Blues song "It Ain’t The Meat It’s The Motion". Maria Muldaur included her recording of the song on her second album, Waitress In A Donut shop (it’s in my collection).

@noromance: Lasagna, my all-time favorite meal, bar none. I do some cooking, but lasagna from scratch is above my abilities. The frozen Michael Angelo's I get at my supermarket is pretty darn good.

My LP collection is worth more than my equipment collection.  Both go hand in hand.  A good system enhances the sound quality of a good LP.  A bad system can ruin the reproduction of a good LP, and a bad LP will be nakedly exposed by a good system.