Do you agree with John Atkinson (and me)?

You make a good and important point @vthokie83.

Having a large album library (on LP and CD) is the result of a lifetime of buying physical "media" (I hate referring to music as media, but it’s now the common nomenclature), starting in the early-60’s. I was one who kept buying LP’s for as long as they were being produced into the early-2000’s, and kept most of them. When a lot of the music I wanted to own was released on CD only (starting in the early-90’s), I finally broke down and bought a CD player (a Philips CD-80).

Being a younger music lover now is a completely different situation. Would I start buying LP’s and/or CD’s now if I was young? Who knows?! I’m not one of those people, and they aren’t me. And once again, for those whose source of music in the home is not physical, the question posed in this thread is immaterial.

Having a personal music library (okay, a record collection) and being an audiophile have something in common: they are both enthusiast endeavors. LP’s and CD’s are important possessions to those who own them, just as one’s hi-fi is important to an audiophile. It’s an expression of their personality, their passion in life. My interest in people who don’t love music is limited, but I can easily accept a music lover not being an audiophile.

I had one very close friend, the smartest person (by far) I’ve ever known. His main passion in life was music (the other being chess), but being very musically educated could "hear" music by just looking at the musical score (the sheet music). He always had a crap hi-fi, and treated his LP’s with utter disregard. He spent his final years recording J.S. Bach works on his computer. That was the only music he cared about as he approached death. In his younger years in was Dylan, The Beatles, Brian Wilson, The Band, Randy Newman, and then Elvis Costello.

A lot of great comments here. In my case, the LPs and CDs I already possess would take me more time to listen to than I have time left on Earth. Yet I continue to buy more used and new ones. I love records! I also love good sound, but my system is now "good enough" for me, so I can just relax and enjoy the music. No more audiophile nervosa.

An old San Jose band mate of mine (a bassist) visited me in SoCal in the mid-2000’s, and when he saw my pair of Infinity RS-1b’s said "Ya know, people don’t have big speakers anymore." I thought to myself "Most never did." I subsequently visited him in San Jose, and saw that he listens to music through his computer, including it’s stock speakers. Oy! He had seen my LP and CD collection, and told me all his LP’s were in the storage space in his carport. What a shame.

@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.

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).

@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.

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.

@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).

@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.

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.

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?