It's a Sunday in suburbia. Sunny, 95°—"sweltering," some would say. The kind of heat where, you grab that cold can of Guinness, and the moment it leaves the cold comforts of the fridge, it's dead on impact.
You invite your good ole non-audiophile pal Stan (footnote 1) over. You use a ruse you know Stan will fall for, like "Let's flip some burgers and listen to the cool commercials on Spotify's free tier," or "I just mastered the piña colada and torrented David Bowie's entire discography" (as if the piña colada alone wouldn't be enough to lure that sucker Stan), or "You left your phone at my place, want to come pick it up?" (In this last scenario, you would have to steal his phone first.)
Fast-forward 30 minutes. Stan arrives. (He lives nearby.) You welcome him inside. Offer him a "cold" Guinness. He gladly accepts your offer.
Quick! As he reaches for the Guinness from your kindly extended sweaty arm, you pull back and whack him on the head with it. Not hard enough to kill, but just hard enough to momentarily maim.
You carry him down the stairs. Enter the complex 20-digit alphanumeric passcode, complete facial recognition, and speak the Elvish word for "audiophile" to enter your secret governmental listening wing. You zip tie groggy Stan up to a chair and wave some smelling salts under his nose.
Time to begin.
You take Stan's favorite song "Hotel California" and play a 128kbps MP3 of it through $5 Chinese-drugstore ear buds and blast them in his ears. How're you liking that, huh, Stan?
"Actually, it's not bad!" Stan yells over the static.
So you slap him in the face.
"Ow! What was that for?"
You slap him again. Harder this time.
A couple minutes go by. "Hotel California" continues to play on repeat. Once more. Slap. Twice more. Slap. Slap. Fifty times more. Slap. Was it fifty? How much time had passed? Slap.
"I don't like this." He moans. Poor Stan.
"Why?" You ask.
"I don't know . . . I'm sick of Hotel California. Why are we listening to it on repeat?"
Slap. Extra hard! Doesn't he know it's cool to listen to "Hotel California" on repeat? Dumb Stan. Do you need to switch to electric shocks? Waterboarding? Nail gun? Heavy metal through a Bluetooth speaker? What will it take?
You're feeling generous. You switch Stan's setup to a DSD256 "Hotel California" file off of an Astell&Kern AK380 playing through Audeze LCD-4 headphones.
His eyes widen. "Okay, okay—Now I understand. I didn't like the previous setup because the quality of the file wasn't great, and those earbuds were crap!"
He's catching on. You knew he would! You hand him a nice cold piña colada and a freshly grilled cheeseburger with a side of onion rings.
"Wow! Thank you!" He smiles. What a simple creature, this Stan.
Wait till we get to cables, Stan. Just you wait.
----
You're probably wondering why I'm recounting this experience of mine with my buddy Stan. Here's why:
Things often need to get worse before they get better. By this logic, if the masses continue to value quantity over quality, and the mainstream market continues to reflect this behavior, quality will continue to decline until it can decline no more. At this point, we can hope that a realization will follow that will compel the masses to regain belief and desire in high-performance audio. In essence, we may choose to view it as a drawn out cycle of conditioning.
We see it happen all the time: in our self-evident habits, in our relationships with others, and in daily local, national, and global crises. Perhaps the realm of high-end audio is not immune to this cycle, and such a realization is inevitable.
We (or, at least, I) continue to pose the question "How can we attract the masses to higher quality audio? How can we continue to grow the body of this industry? What will audiophiles be in 50, 100, 1000, years?"
Unfortunately, it may not be as simple (or unethical) as getting an undercover government agent audiophile to singlehandedly condition the Stans of the world into receiving positive stimuli from high-end audio. Or, more traditionally, it may not even be as simple as showing your non-audiophile, non-caring, non-believing friend your impressive system and gifting them a subscription to Tidal.
As you continue to search for the answer—or, as you continue to foolishly believe that this is not an issue—you may find it worth your while to entertain the idea that it is completely out of everyone's control. Perhaps the only productive thing we can do is watch from the sidelines as the world gradually conditions the Stans—much like the scenario above, but in a significantly more humane way.
Footnote 1: Because you most certainly have a non-audiophile pal named Stan.
Footnote 1: Because you most certainly have a non-audiophile pal named Stan.
