Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler do people bug you because you're an audiophile

do they?

and do they expect you to comment negatively everytime sound is involved

and if you move to make something sound better they sigh and roll their eyes

and if you ever talk about speakers they say 'oh look, so and so is talking about THAT again' even though you rarely talk about it, or you are because someone asked you your opinion?

don't you hate that?

or how about, when someone says, 'turn it down' when it's not loud.

or when they make background noise that kills the mood of the music/movie?

we should start invading and criticising their hobbies, to give them a taste of what it feels like.



oh my, that was bitter

Thanks for the post Ravi....I dont feel so alone now =)

Yes.

Or when they don't ask you for audio advice because it'll be "too expensive."

"do they expect you to comment negatively everytime sound is involved"
--Yes, especially is Bose is involved.

"if you move to make something sound better they sigh and roll their eyes"
--At first, but now my wife is used to it.

"if you ever talk about speakers they say 'oh look, so and so is talking about THAT again' even though you rarely talk about it, or you are because someone asked you your opinion?"
--Ken and I are really bad about this.

"when someone says, 'turn it down' when it's not loud"
--I used to try to say it wasn't too loud, but that didn't get me anywhere. Pick your battles wisely.

"when they make background noise that kills the mood of the music/movie?"
--I'm not that sensitive, but I suppose if someone said "I've got to take huge dump!" at the precise moment William Wallace yelled "FREEEEEEEDOOOOOOM!" I'd be annoyed.

"when someone says, 'turn it down' when it's not loud"

Grrr...I get this one all the time! Is 75-80db really that loud?

It's not any louder than someone shouting at you. Being shouted at is most definitely unpleasant, though.

Well, let's be real here. I don't say this as a put-down of this thread - I love the originating post. And I don't like the "turn-down-the-volume" crowd (which unfortunately includes my 3-and-a-half-year-old, kinda hard to ignore) any more than the rest of us. But I'm willing to admit that my quasi-secret desire to perform 2 days of non-stop blind A/B tests on 12 different bookshelf and floorstanding speakers, using the same 4-6 passages of music on each speaker and a group of 3-6 listeners .... I can admit this kind of interest is alien to most people (though to me it sounds like a great weekend). Just start to go into variable crossovers with a few close friends of the non-audiophile variety, and what you will learn is not "who's your friend," but rather, how idiosyncratic is our particular interest in sound. Our set's hereditary forbears must have been the "listeners" in the hunter-gatherer societies -- great lookouts who could hear an enemy approach a mile away and discern the whereabouts of valuable prey even when the wind wasn't blowing in our direction (skills that no doubt received more social prestige than the abilty to locate a subwoofer at 82 Hz).

Or are we just people (mainly but not entirely men, I believe) with a) too much time on our hands or b) circumstances, like three-and-a-half-year-olds, that leave us with a lot of energy to dedicate to listening to music and watching movies around the hearth fires?

Birdman

I dont consider myself an audiophile but I do like my music.I always get "there he goes again talking aout THAT STUFF".And thats usually after somone else has asked me a question.I still get can you turn it down quite a bit.After 22 years you would think she(the wife)would have gotten use to it.

In other words, why are we cursed with picky ears? Sometimes I envy -- that's too strong a word -- people who are perfectly satisfied with a a generic boombox for all their music. They have different priorities. I just happen to prioritize things with buttons and dials in my life. If it's not one thing, it's an udder.

He says:

In reply to:

---

After 22 years you would think she(the wife)would have gotten use to it.

---

She says:
"After 22 years you would think he would get the picture."

Marriage.

Different people find joy in different things. That is part of what makes God's world such a wonderful place.

I think it's all in how you frame the discussion. I run into this same kind of thing with Beer all the time. I try to show people, as simply as possible, how much I enjoy a fine beer. If they ask me, THEN I tell them the "why" or the "how". I think that a large part of having productive and pleasant conversations about audio, beer, computers or whatever is being unfailingly positive and knowing what NOT to say - too much information can be a real buzzkill for some people. It's fun to be around happy people.

And we're a bunch of geeks.

Hear hear.
{standing ovation}

well most everyone that knows me knows i will say something like a mass market boombox is a peice of junk. I am actuallt embarassed to walk down the boombox isle at walmart or somewhere.. just incase someone actually thought i WANTED one. but i still do it for kicks. i do get a good chuckle out of most of them these days lol. mainly the things it says on the box or the unit itself, or the design.

Yes, beer! I love the fine taste of fine beer, especially canadian beer!

canuck beer and canuck speakers is all you need

I tend to walk through those areas turning things down (or off!). Drives me batty. Of course, I'm a wimp, so I try to do it when no one is looking. Same deal with the car stereo walls at big box retailers.

And who knows, maybe global warming will someday soon make it the finest climate on the continent.