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.
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.
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Sure there are going to be some trade offs. The more you invest, in general the less tradeoffs. I used to go through periods when I would explore different genre of music. Rock was my first love, then jazz fusion, classical, traditional jazz... then electronic. I was going through a system upgrade during my electronic phase, I carried around five of my favorite electronic music CDs. They were just magical and often ethereal. I chose some equipment on the basis of those CDs. Wow, they sounded great... but when I would put on a jazz, vocal, or other album. They sounded terrible. I had inadvertently optimized for a single sound... one that often had no real touch points in reality. It was completely artificial, what a mistake. Well, unless I was listening to electronic. Ultimately that experience and some others drove me to find a ruler to measure sonic characteristics. Ultimately, I realized it was real acoustic music. If all you listen to is rock... then you can optimize just that (hint, go for MacIntosh + B&W). But if you listen to more... it is really worth shooting for the real thing. |
Regarding good sound and music genres, I tend to agree with what @atmasphere has asserted often over the years: a good system sounds good with all kinds of music and genres, acoustic or electronic. Having said that I get it where some lean towards acoustic music and like to season their sound for that. Personally, I find doing that almost always negatively impacts electronic music forms. Whereas if good with electronic music forms, results are also similarly good for acoustic, but not always optimal for all who prefer less attack and edge to the sound. |
Getting a handle on room acoustics should always be job # 1 for any serious "audiophile" before making any changes, but otherwise, biases in sound preference is perfectly fine. No need to control that any more than biases in people’s favorite soup recipe. It’s a matter of personal preference. Not to say objective sound quality of all preferences is equal. It isn’t. But room acoustics, objective performance of hifi gear integrated and working together in a system, plus (subjective) personal preferences, are the three things that together make the good sound world go round for sure. |
I inherited a Betty Crooker picture cook book with plenty of good recipes in it. I go for the Italian style as outlined in that book...which is essentially meatloaf with a small can of tomato paste in the mixture. I'm ashamed to admit that I just recently starting pre-cooking the onions and garlic prior to incorporating them into the mix. Plus I like an extra egg in there and light on the breadcrumbs please. BTW, I add Chipotle powder to almost anything, love that smoky taste. For some reason my SO beats the crap outa the mixture which causes it to be tougher that it should be. Go figure. Regards, barts |
@gdoke Excellent idea honestly, the problem is the portions. The powder makes it easy to control without waste. |
@barts , You prefer chipotle powder over a good smoked paprika? I imagine chipotle adds a bit more 'kick'... |
@thecarpathian I think they are different. Chipotle is spicy and smokey, which adds a kind of bbq sauce like quality. |
Every ear is different, and preferences are different. However, I do not accept snake oil claims, like a $1,000 speaker cable sounds any different than a coat hanger. Or tar'upgrading' a power cord will change the sound. Those are just lies, and people lean into their confirmation bias and believe it. |
You pretty much nailed it. My wife makes great chocolate chip cookies and mixes that ever so gently with a wooden spoon, but when it comes to beatin' the meat...not so gentle! Smoked paprika comes in hot and sweet as I'm sure you know. Chipotle is smoked jalapenos which can have many different levels of heat. Plus I don't use very much. Try adding Stubb's Liquid Smoke some time, go easy with it. Regards, barts |