@sagur80 unfortunately, I do suffer from the audiophile afflictions you mentioned. Being an engineer, i cant help but analyze my system for its weakest link or to think about what my next move should be to improve the sound of the music i love so much. I love family and music (in that order), but i also love the systems analysis, reading The Absolute Sound, Stereophile, Audiogon discussion form topics, and looking (more like hunting) for the next upgrade. One of my most favorite things to do is to wake up ~4am on the weekend, go upstairs and sit back and listen to music before the rest of my world wakes up.
It’s all those things that make me wonder (and the reason for my original post) how rare we are as i have zero acquaintances who share this wonderful hobby/obsession.
How rare is an audiophile
I’ve been extremely busy lately and not had a chance to sit back and listen to music on my system for a few weeks. I’ve streamed my favorite music in the car and on a small JBL Flip-4 portable speaker; which by the way “punches way above its size class.” I continued to enjoy music whenever, wherever, and however i can during this “dry spell.”
So now its 5 am Sunday morning. I know i’ll be spending most of the day listening on the JBL when my wife and I drive out to a lake house we bought recently and are furnishing and getting ready for 4 generations to enjoy lake life this summer and for years to come.
I’ve let my system warm up and hit play on my CD player. I now find myself in total bliss listening to Chris Standing’s newest CD “The Lovers Re-mix Collection.” The effect of the quality of the sound of the music my wife and i are enjoying right now with a cup of coffee is hard to explain, but it brought literal tears of joy.
I started thinking, how many people are like us? What % of the population are audiophiles (whatever your definition of an audiophile is)?
I know the answer is heavily dependent on which country you live in. I live in the US along with ~332,000,000 fellow citizens (please, lets not get political on the meaning of population or citizen).
Are we the 0.1%ers? Are there ~332,000 audiophiles in the US?
i’d be interested in what others think about how rare our species is.
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Younger audio enthusiasts are into headphone rigs. Who can blame them. Not everybody's going to have tens of thousands for stereo stuff. When I went looking into headphones I realized the interest was by younger guys on youtube rather than old guy magazines. I don't think interest has declined but insane pricing was never sustainable. |
HiIFI+ last year said this: "The percentage of the population under the age of 42, but old enough to be interested in audio is 43%." Those older are considered more inclined towards audio. The increasing population growth results in, "in financial terms the total market is about 3X what it was." > https://hifiplus.com/articles/changing-demographics-critical-to-audio-marketing/ EXTREMELY conservative estimates peg the number at 150,00 (based on "hard" data that doesn't take into account all the headphone systems & more. |
@mahler123 Well, I have 7 living audiophile friends. I asked 3 of them today if they ever discussed music or audiophilia with their physicians (and myself included that's 4). None of us discussed music or audiophilia with our physicians except one who wen to an audiologist (for ear wax). Oh, I remember I did 51 years ago when I was 16 when I had tinnitus (due to severe earwax buildup) that it disturbed my music performance and listening_. |
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