It often surprises me to see people with time, money, and knowledge settling for subpar experiences that have night and day differences to me. Even at my brokest (pretty darn broke), speakers, headphones, and glasses were always worth researching and some saving up, and the difference between what I’d end up with and the average always feels like it paid off tenfold.
I’ve got a surprising number of friends/acquaintances who just don’t seem to care, though, and I am trying to understand if they just don’t experience the difference similarly or if they don’t mind. I know musicians who just continue using generation 1 airpods or the headphones included with their phone, birdwatchers who don’t care about their binoculars, people who don’t care if they could easily make their food taste better, and more examples of people who, in my opinion, could get 50% better results/experiences by putting in 1% more thought/effort.
When I’ve asked some friends about it, it sounds as much like they just don’t care as they don’t experience the difference as starkly as I do, but I have a hard time understanding that, as it’s most often an objective sensory difference. Like I experience the difference between different pairs of binoculars and speakers dramatically, and graphical analysis backs up the differences, so how could they sound/look negligibly different to others? Is it just a matter of my priorities not being others’ priorities, or do they actually experience the difference between various levels of quality as smaller than I seem to? What’s your take on both major and, at the high end, diminishing returns on higher quality sensory experiences?
Here’s a factor that seems to be underappreciated. Those differences are a lot less important when you aren’t comparing side by side. Just because you can hear or taste the difference between a thing and a more expensive version doesn’t mean you will really appreciate that difference later. Diminishing returns does play into this, and the small differences between two things at a high level is often too small for your memory to even capture.
And even when it comes to the bigger differences, how it affects enjoyment has a large psychological component, in how much satisfaction do you get just knowing you are using something excellent, and does it bother you knowing what you are experiencing could be better.
I have nice quality speakers and headphones, but sometimes I’m lazy and will listen to a piece of music through my crappy laptop or phone speakers. I still enjoy that music. And if that was all I had access to, I’d still enjoy the hell out of music. I’m not about to give away or stop using my nice speakers, but I’m not convinced they make me happier in any significant way.
I disagree personally. I don’t think they need to be side by side to appreciate the difference, so long as you’ve ever experienced both. I miss the things that I know I’d get with better speakers when I listen on a different setup, and I still enjoy the experience, but it doesn’t move me as deeply when I feel something missing. And I don’t think it’s (all/entirely) placebo. A subwoofer that reaches 10hz lower, moves more air, and fires faster gives you a lot more to hear/feel/appreciate, and to me really changes my physical and emotional reaction to music.
I didn’t mean that you can’t tell the difference between any two things if they aren’t side by side. Yes I do recognize, when I play music through my laptop speakers, the sound is not nearly as nice as through my nice floor speakers. But when I use $30 earbuds, I’m not particularly aware of what I’m missing by not using my $100 pair. If I compared them side by side, yes. It’s the same for a lot of things, like wine or whiskey.
Perspective: My SO didn’t really care at first why I didn’t want to use the built-in TV speakers, but rather install some higher-end speakers and a DAC to drive them. After a while, she went to visit a friend and came back to celebrate our setup.
Value: Do you need a super-big, expensive TV or a smaller, higher PPI TV that you can sit closer to? What you really want is clarity, brightness, color, and smooth video. If people could never afford such a display and only had crappy TVs with bad video sources and only some smartphones as an alternative, the smartphone beats everything they know, of course. But if they could never afford high quality video sources and displays, how could they appreciate those things?
IMHO better than average is enough for everyday life. There’s more to life than spending money and not experiencing life to the fullest. That means I focused on a nicer Bluetooth headset, some better than average speakers for both TV and PC, … so I simply approach the point of diminishing returns on the quality scale, knowing full well I could do much better. But it’s not worth the effort to me if it slowly turns into either a game of high spending or a full-blown refurbishing hobby. Same with my car: I buy them used at about 4~6 years old and sell them at 8~10 years old, spending the least amount of money while driving mostly luxury cars with lots and lots of extras.
Audiophile equipment is full of placebos and scams. But there’s also a lot of very real improvements. I would also say the majority of people are well before the point of diminishing returns but hey.
One big problem is that the source of your music often is the limiting factor. A lot of music sounds not so great on my nice headphones. .Likewise, the songs I really appreciate on my headphones, tend to sound like mush on shitty speakers. That doesn’t make either music bad, they know their audience but If I didn’t like much of the hifi music then I probably wouldn’t care much about my sound setup.
I think like most things there’s a balance to be had. Obsessing about the little stuff can often get in the way of enjoying it, and be a massive waste of money. But I also wear headphones for 10+hrs a day, it’s worth investing in them.
It’s the biggest downside of having a transparent audio setup: the music that wasn’t well recorded/mastered is going to stick out like a sore thumb.
Shit in, shit out. But at least I know when to blame the producers this way!
I never cared a lot. While I do notice the difference immediately, it never makes the experience differ in the long run. I have watched full length movies on the cover screen of my Samsung Zflip5 without feeling that I missed out on anything.
I have a nintendo switch which I have used a lot. Even though I have a nice 55" TV and a decent soundbar, I very rarely connect the switch to the TV. I much rather use it in handheld mode so I can sit in any angle in the sofa. I guess I value comfort a lot higher than high fidelity.
I’m into this, especially sound quality. I have a top-of-the-bottom/bottom-of-the-middle 5.2.4 setup for movies and listen to music on that same space as well. I have made solid progress on acoustically treating my space, and it sounds pretty good.
My wife, who has done all the A-B testing with me and understands what high quality equipment and a well-treated space brings to the table would be perfectly happy watching Netflix on her phone speaker.
I know for sure she does not hear things like I hear them. I have a couple of demo tracks I use to evaluate changes in my system, and I have described to her what I’m listening for (soundstage depth, for example), and she cannot distinguish whether or not this quality exists. So, I think one part of this is that there is something cognitive going on that she and I perceive things so differently. Another thing that I think is different between us is the way music affects us. For me, music is an emotional experience and ties deeply with my memories of events/time periods/feelings. When I hear a song, I know the artist, facts about the band and its members, the name of the song, the album, and I can describe the album art. My wife, on the other hand, usually can’t remember the names of her favorite songs or who the artist is. And, like, no shade on my wife for this at all; I’m just saying we experience these things much differently, and I think that may be illustrative of the differences your seeing with other people too.
Additionally, as far as diminishing returns go, I think a lot of people do not understand the importance of acoustic treatment. You’re listening to your room, not your speakers. You can’t out-speaker a bad sounding room at any cost. If you think you want new speakers to upgrade your sound quality and have given zero thought to room acoustics, you should do a little investigation before upgrading your equipment. I think that money is better spent elsewhere first.
Once you have a good sounding space to listen, I really don’t think most people need to spend any more than 10k (at the extreme upper limit) for a pair of speakers for 2 channel listening. That said, I have been in a fantastic room with a $15k pair of Sonus Faber speakers, and I have been chasing that feeling for a couple of years now.
This mirrors my experiences exactly. It’s just hard for me to understand sometimes that people aren’t experiencing a difference that is objectively present and significant. But I guess I may miss plenty of details in other things that are significant to others. My mind goes to frame rate for certain games, where resolution feels super noticeable to me, but the difference between 40 and 60fps just doesn’t seem as massive as I see other describing it.
It’s also possible people just don’t care about those details, so they’re not primed to notice them. For example, another difference between my wife and I: she’s into sunsets, clouds, the moon, and celestial happenings. She’s constantly in awe about these things, points them out to me, and talks about them all the time. It’s cute; I love that about her. However, I really couldn’t care much less about any of it. For me, that kind of stuff happens all the time (every day, in the case of sunsets). It’s not novel or interesting to me in the same way as it is to her. We all have things we nerd out about, and I think the world would be kind of boring if we all only cared about the same stuff.
Really, my only regret about this situation is that I want to give my wife the gift of feeling like I do when I hear music and when I notice the details, and I know she wants to give me that gift of the way she feels when there’s a really cool cloud or sunset. It’s very fulfilling to share feelings like that with someone you care about, and it’s sad to me that we sometimes can’t.
Yeah that’s my biggest bummer, too, both in wanting to share the experience and wanting support in dropping some cash on a pair of headphones or something lol.
I sent this to her a long time ago, and now we call my hobbies (home improvement/woodworking/audio) “my Legos” as an inside joke. I don’t spend frivolously, and my wife doesn’t mind when I make purchases relating to my hobbies. We’re financially secure and we’re very much aligned in our financial goals and philosophies, so when I buy anything (which isn’t very often), she trusts that the purchase won’t have a negative effect on our finances. She even gets a little excited for me when something arrives at the house. It’s very nice to be supported in this way
Same exact situation here (incredibly luckily), so I guess I mean “support” not in the sense that my wife isn’t excited for me when I find something worth getting, but more that I wish her excitement came from a similar place as mine, a selfish excitement to use whatever is on the way herself, rather than a much sweeter excitement about me being excited lol. And excellent meme, wil certainlyl be sending it along.
I feel the same way. It’s a bummer, but there’s always conversations like these!
Fortunately, my 21 year old is super into music and cinema, so I can share with her. She wasn’t much of a believer in quality components or acoustic treatment until we bought a new house and I could go wild(ish). Now, I have ruined her life because she’s broke and wants what I have. I did square her away with a pair of decent IEMs though, so at least she can have a little of what she wants
I had a 13" black and white television in my bedroom when I was a teen. The big, color Trinitron TV that we got later was amazing. Beyond that, I don’t recall the improvement in quality making sitcoms funnier, or the stories better.
In fact, to me, the old, fuzzy NTSC video is better in some ways. It helps with the suspension of disbelief, the feeling of watching a story on the screen. Even 1080p is sometimes too good, to the point that the actors fall into the Uncanny Valley, like I’m watching a live play, but not quite. Instead of a story, I see the makeup on skin, the wardrobe choices, the blocking, and the bad CGI backgrounds.
I can certainly hear the quality differences in audio, but I feel like past a certain minimum, I’m listening to the music, not the equipment. Like, my Shokz had a noticeable lack of bass when I got them, but I’ve adapted, and don’t hear them that way any longer. The convenience of open-ear headphones far exceeds any gain in quality.
There’s a term for that. It’s called “The Soap Opera Effect”. You can look up settings for each brand of TV to minimize it.
Never heard of it, but I’ll check it out. Thanks!
I keep YouTube videos turned down to 360 for this reason.
I get a strange feeling of vertigo if I see hd content above 30fps. The first time I met friends in a bar that was plastered with big screens playing a football game at 60fps was very uncomfortable.
I mean, to a point.
In the end it’s all a matter of priority. Do I want a sound system for 10k+? Sure. But that money would probably be better spent elsewhere
For me, I wanted a 65inch OLED tv and splurged a bit on that, but on discount. And I got a surround sound Sonos setup. That’s good enough
To some extent. For audio, I don’t really have to much experience with expensive headphones/earbuds but I do notice a difference. I still usually go with cheaper headphones though because the difference in audio quality and durability aren’t really enough to justify the price difference.
For visuals in games, I do prefer to have the best experience but what settings I use depends on the game. There are some settings that are universal to me, like for example, if anti-aliasing is available, I always have it set to 2x (or 1.5x if the game has it) because every option for anti-aliasing in every game I’ve tried looks exactly the same to me, so going higher is just a waste of system resources. For similar reasons, while both of my monitors support higher resolutions, I still prefer to use 720/768p.
I think the only time I really don’t care about visual quality, is just when I’m watching videos online.
I like a certain level of quality when it comes to audio.
When I’m making music, I use in ear monitors from shure with a flat response because it would throw off my mixes otherwise. Same with my presonus speakers. Flat response.
But for causally watching content, its fine for me to use some bookshelf speakers or even a bluetooth speaker. Its not super important for watching content for me as long as its not total trash.
I just want to say how happy I am that good sounding audio equipment and large screen TVs are relatively cheap. With a bit of research and tinkering, one can have a nice A/V setup for not much $$$. Of note, I am very impressed with the audio quality of Class D amplifiers nowadays. I was conditioned to believe that Class D would always be inferior until I tried it myself.
I do value high fidelity media, but frankly I can’t say that I notice a difference between say, 320 kbps mp3 audio and FLAC audio-- and yes I have a nice DAC + headphones so there’s no bottlenecks. I used to have all my music as FLAC files but these days I don’t have the $$$ to buy more storage so I find myself converting everything to 320 kbps MP3 files and I’m okay with that.
For movies, I’ve only got 1080p monitors + a 720p projector so for the most part I just download 1080p movies. I burn movies and TV shows to Blu-Ray discs so for some S-tier stuff I’ll download the 4K release and burn it to a BD-R in hopes that someday I can afford 4K and all the damn PC hardware upgrades that’s going to require. But I’m in no rush, 1080p is fine by me and 720p on the projector is great.
I’m into photography, and I’m like you when it comes to lenses. Quality > quantity, any day of the week. I’d much rather choose a nice 40mm prime lens over a 17-70mm lens with mediocre glass.
My friends are kind of like yours but they know that when they want something of high quality, they can ask me and I’ll gladly do the research then give them several options. I really enjoy well-made products and I despise poorly-made products so much. As a result, I’m finally at that point in my life where quality purchases I made 15+ years ago are still working great and it feels good.
That said, I do try to keep my purchases to a minimum because it’s way too easy to fall for marketing + consumerism.
Buy once, cry once. Ironically it’s saved me a ton of money in the past.
To me the recording and mastering makes more difference than the fidelity or absolute quality. I consider myself lucky that my ears aren’t that discerning.
This is equally true with visual media. It seems like each time a Bluray remaster is released there’s the inevitable complaint that it looks horrible.
Um, that’s film grain and it’s how the source was produced.
This is equally true with visual media
Yes, the style of graphics to me is more important than things like motion blur and god rays.
I’m a musician. I can’t afford top tier sound!
Tbh I can live with what I’ve got at home. A garden variety setup today still sounds better than something high-end did when I was growing up. Just give me some decent channel separation and I can zone out.
Where there is still significant room for improvement is in stage sound. Why do monitors always have to sound like sh*t? It’s like bands spend all their budget on amps and PAs and whatever dregs are left over go to the monitors. And house sound. Don’t even get me started. Maybe their gear was good once (probably not) but it’s invariably seen one beer spill too many.
A garden variety setup today still sounds better than something high-end did when I was growing up
Man, if this ain’t the truth! Speaker technology has really improved in the last 40 years, and is substantially cheaper than it ever was. And Class D amps?!? HiFi is crazy affordable ( relatively speaking) these days!
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Yes and no. It depends on the circumstance and what I’m listening/watching. Audio fidelity is important to me when I listen to my vinyls, when I’m driving down the road and listening to podcasts or music, I don’t really care because the road noise is strong enough that the fidelity doesn’t really matter much. When watching TV or a movie, I do care about it being 4K and HDR, unless it’s something I’ve seen before.
