I believe audiophilia manifests itself in two ways:
- A musician or engineer actually does get so
“in tune” with a type of tube, amp, mic, monitor, preamp, guitar wood, guitar string, guitar pickup, speaker type, speaker size, cone
material, cable or other audio associated device, that his or her ears become “overtuned” or over sensitive to even the slightest
nuances. Use any mic without a transformer, and it sounds “harsh.” Use any tube except a $250.00 NOS Telefunken, and you’ve
destroyed the device. Use African rosewood as opposed to Brazilian rosewood on a fretboard, and the guitar is substandard. Folks, I pity the poor souls who fail to see beyond such petty considerations. Which, by the way, are inconsequential
to the end listener, the single most important part of the production chain. Now there certainly are differences between brands,
materials, types, and in many cases, even price points, but such differences, when present, are only worth consideration when
clearly noticeable. It is up to the audio professional to learn to distinguish between differences only noticeable
to us because of our learned oversensitivities, and those differences that will make a discernable positive or negative
impact to a greater audience. For example, my Avalon, Vintech, and Pacifica preamps all sound perceptibly different from
one another, and they all sound appreciably better than my older budget models. However, while these are all the same type of
device, the circuitry design is significantly different throughout, thus creating a different tone to each. But replacing one
well spec’d tube in say, the Avalon for another and then saying “It’s a whole new sound now” is simply ridiculous! Yet I read
this type of nonsense in recording forums all the time.
- The second way audiophilia manifests itself is psychologically. The
psychology of acoustic perception can be powerful. In short, the psychological factor causes us to hear with a predispositional
bias. Here are some ways we “hear” with our mind, not with our ears:
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The disease of audiophilia
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