What Meatloaf and Beer Have Taught me about Audiophiles


Recently in life and online I've had some curious observations about human behavior I thought I'd share.   To begin with, I have recently discovered that a surprising number of My Fellow Americans do not like meatloaf.   As a meatloaf maker and meatloaf cognoscenti I was absolutely astonished at this.  Some people who otherwise like burgers and the like hate meatloaf.  

If you make meatloaf and love it your immediate reaction to this is "but you haven't tried _my_ meatloaf."  That's our natural knee jerk reaction because we just can't imagine.  Related to this I have a bartender.  We'll call him Calhoun because his name is Calhoun.  An otherwise respectable fellow who knows beer and tequila better than most.   I would go in to see what the latest rotation of Indian Pale Ales were.  About once a month they'd get some new "dessert beer."  That is a brew made to taste like a sweet food substance.  The least offensive of which were peanut butter and the worst strawberry shortcake beer.  Calhoun would proceed to push me to sample these unholy abominations every time he could. 

Of course I'd tell him "I don't like flavored beers." Which was partially a lie as a coffee or espresso flavored beer would probably be divine.. but we digress.

Sometimes he was so adamant that the latest beer flavor was the one that would change my mind I'd go ahead and try them.  Of course, they were invariably disgusting. 

My point to all this is that being on both sides of this argument.  It's really hard to accept that our fellow audiophiles don't like something we feel is sublime and we will push our fancies onto them in the hopes of enriching their lives for the better.   It's hard for us to respect that someone else can love music and the stereos that play it and yet not have found their happy place the same way we have.

By the way, I use the Betty Crocker meatloaf recipe and add a tablespoon of chipotle powder.  Amazing. 

erik_squires

Showing 4 responses by stuartk

@mapman 

I use the soup analogy.   No two soups taste the same, many are delicious. Yum! Some cost more to whip up than others.  People like some and can’t deal with others.  It is what it is.  Nothing to lose sleep over.

I like to cook and I think the above is an excellent analogy.  It’s got me scratching my head, wondering what the sonic equivalent of  "croutons" might be. 

Actually, I often think in terms of sonics when adjusting seasonings. Does the dish need more bass? More mids? More highs? 

 

@ghdprentice 

Audiophiles are crazy fanatics trying to reproduce music that sounds like the real thing, as accurately and nuanced as possible into the home. Most folks and certainly many on this forum are not audiophiles.

If you choose a particular seat in a particular venue, listen to a particular orchestra, and use it as the primary reference/baseline for your home system, that I can grasp (at least conceptually).

But to speak of "live music" as if it’s one thing, instead of countless performances by countless artists in different genres in countless venues with what can be wildly differing sonics, yes-- that seems crazy. One might as well say one is trying to reproduce restaurant food at home. 

@ghdprentice 

As a listener, when I think of all the live music I've heard, there's such an enormous degree of variation that I have great difficulty imagining how all of that could possibly be encompassed accurately by one system. But then, I don't have your experience/expertise.  

@ghdprentice 

Ultimately that experience and some others drove me  to find a ruler to measure sonic characteristics. Ultimately, I realized it was real acoustic music. 

Thanks, George, I’ll keep this in mind...