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I wouldn't classify them as audiophiles. I'd suggest the term "morons" as a more fitting description.
How can one listen to music one does not enjoy and think it sounds good?

That just doesn't compute for my brain. Oo

I mostly agree with all of this. But I wonder: Do such people really exist?
I don't think I've ever known any such people. But the thought is entertaining.

Cybergene:
The audiophiles I know and the audiophilia as I understand it is to concentrate on (quality) equipment at the cost of music.

Granyala:
I wouldn't classify them as audiophiles. I'd suggest the term "morons" as a more fitting description.
How can one listen to music one does not enjoy and think it sounds good?

macmacmac:
Do such people really exist?
I don't think I've ever known any such people. But the thought is entertaining.

It may be moronic to be more focused on equipment than the music it's playing, but it isn't as rare as macmacnac suggests. In fact I'd say it's a tendency more than a state, and as such, nearly every one of us has behaved in audiophile-like ways on this forum from time to time in, for example, thousands of posts on pivot lengths and latency values. I, too, have been guilty as charged.

These people who buy cables costing hundreds of dollars and who spend a long periods testing their setups with 'reference tracks' have merely caught a more virulent strain of the same virus.

Regarding Grado, the SR60 is my choice for digital piano: colors the sound in a nice way, open-back and light so you feel the music is coming from the piano, limited spatial reproduction with not a lot of details so erase the bad artifacts of many DPs (and VSTs). I don’t think accurate/studio headphones work with DPs (think AKG K702). SR60 is great for music too, again not the most accurate but sometimes it’s nice to listen to music with something different and a warm sound signature (similarly vinyls are not accurate but sound nice). Thanks for posting the videos.

Regarding the audiophile topic this is a good read:
https://www.kenrockwell.com/audio/audiophile.htm

I wouldn't call it a good read. To summarize:
1. He doesn't like audiophiles.
2. He is not an audiophile.
3. He deigns to give us a short history of audio in the late 20th century.
4. And finally he tells us to give him money ... despite the paucity of information offered, which was last updated seven years ago.

No, that's not what I call a good read.

It's an interesting post but he makes some completely wild assertions such as:

Up through the early 1980s, recorded music and radio were the only forms of electronic home entertainment. Video recorders were only owned by people who also had their own private helicopters and jets.

This is not true. We had TV in the early 80s and, in fact, video recorders were already mainstream consumer goods by 1980. VHS and Beta were already in a zero sum game war, while the earlier Philips V2000 was on the way out.

Since sound and music perception is entirely imaginary (you can't touch or photograph a musical image), what and how we hear is formed only in our brains and is not measurable.

A non sequitur if ever I heard one.

Ken Rockwell has atrocious taste in photography. Everything he shoots is super saturated. He loves that old Velvia slide film, which is kind of like Velveeta cheese. Ken Rockwell is a good argument for shooting in black and white. Very few people are excellent color photographers, Ken is not one of them.

As for his thoughts on audio, I can’t read his drivel.

I’ve met a lot of nice people on the audiophile forums and I don’t recognize them by how they’re portrayed on this thread.

I’m pretty sure we’ve had this conversation before, with the same people saying the same things.

All my audiophile friends are nice people. I'm not saying people who are audiophiles are the scum of the earth or can't make good pictures, etc. What I'm saying is, their audiophile inclinations seem ridiculous to me and for that reason I don't want to even be thought of as an audiophile even if that would cost me to not buy something I want. So bad I feel about them. But again, they are nice people and we can be friends and talk like normal people about anything else. Except for audio. Let alone music. But people are different, maybe I've been exposed to only "bad" audiophiles, who knows

I’m surprised that your audiophile friends haven’t gifted you an amp and a couple of speakers so that you can start on your journey with two channel audio, lol. That’s how it started with me.

I don’t care what other people think of me and my stereo. Music matters more to me than opinion. My wife would rather I replaced it all with a Bluetooth speaker but that’s not happening, lol.

I’ve had music teachers listen to my system and they’ve been amazed at how individual instruments in an orchestral piece can be rendered so cleanly. I just give people an iPad running Roon to my guests and let them play DJ. It’s a lot of fun. We can now stream from vast libraries of recordings so they always introduce me to new albums.

Ohh! I just read that. Indeed it's a very good read, it's exactly I feel about audiophiles and what type of audiophiles I know with only a very few exceptions. So, either we're talking about different types of audiophiles and I don't happen to know the "good" ones, or I don't consider audiophiles people who think they are. (Maybe I have the wrong definition after all). Tell me you purchased a power cable that costs more than $10 and you can hear the difference. Well, sorry but you are an audiophile. It's simple Can give you more examples like that but there's no need to.

My electrical engineer friend cut open thousands of dollars worth of power cables and measured them in order to come up with which cables to use in his system, and, well, yes, there are differences. He runs 4AWG copper in his house and says that there is a difference between that and thinner gauges. You can’t get much in this world for $10, lol. Since my friend has nineteen patents to his name, from what it says on his LinkedIn page, I would say that he’s a pretty careful engineer who doesn’t fall victim to snake oil.

See, that's what I'm talking about Let's stop it right here. I've been there million times and I'm worn already. If you prefer talking about which is your favorite composer and how many interpretations you have of this or that symphony, etc. I'm all about that. But cable BS - I'm done.

We don't need to own physical copies of music anymore, we can stream dozens of interpretations of any particular piece, all because of technology. If I never had to buy a CD, I would have had an extra $50k to spend on better speakers and components.

Just because someone measures what they put into their system does not mean they don't love music.

It's fine, man, you've trapped yourself into thinking that you're right and all of the graphs in the world won't convince you otherwise.

That's true. I admit that I often believe it's only me who is right But the audiophile talk is not about who's right or wrong, it's about what one claims is true, backed by nothing other than what one can hear. I believe you hear what you believe you hear. And I absolutely believe I don't hear what you believe I will hear Been there, done that.

So, as I said, let's talk about music. Not necessarily in this thread. And yes, I own almost no music besides some old cassettes from my kid years. I listen only to streaming music nowadays.

Are audiophiles the same people claiming that ‘vinyl’ sounds better than digital alternatives? And subsequently spend thousands of dollars on ‘albums’ from the olden days that are no longer available through conventional methods because ‘Sinatra never sounds that good on a CD’?

I must say that I did buy a $100 power cable for my computer, and not only does it sound better, but it can now run VSL’s huge D with all 10 mics simultaneously!

I like vinyl.

I'm not a vinyl lover, but I've been told by other vinyl-lovers that these days you can get CDs that are already packaged with a vinyl release.

I also love vinyl. I brought my mom's old classical records and purchased three new records: "Miles Davis - In a Silent Way", "Miles Davis - Kind of Blue" and my favorite Mahler's Sixth with Currentzis which is a brand new recording (digital transfer). I like how we can pour some wine at home, I can take out black plastic records and put them to spin, clean them, then listen to some cr*ppy pops and cracks. It's OK as an experience (or can be very calming which is why I love it) although hardly qualifying solely as a music listening experience. It's an entire ritual. But when I need to listen to good quality, I just listen to the digital versions of all those records and realize vinyl just doesn't sound good But it feels good.

I think vinyl versions of digitally recorded albums are a bit silly. My thinking about vinyl of old albums is that the tapes from which the discs were cut (and digital copies made) didn't usually contain the album as it was intended to sound. They were meant to produce good sounding records after the disc cutting process with various compressors, limiter, and EQs applied, all of which had their own sonic "signature". For example, lots of people loved the sound of the old Fairchild limiters and wanted that sound on the record, so these were often used when cutting the disc. This was all part of the art of making a great sounding record.

I love the ritual too. Decent vinyl playback systems are too expensive for me to afford I'm afraid... My own setup isn't bad, but my friend has a system that's amazing. One thing I hate about vinyl is that it's like a lottery. A lot of the time the pressings were dreadful.