Most of us have experienced the proverbial curveball that comes out of nowhere to smack us right in the head. My most recent such encounter was pitched by Stereophile contributor Steve Guttenberg.
Steve's whammy arrived amid an e-mail exchange among Stereophile writers concerning a rather clueless column in another publication on the dearth of women audiophiles. After asking how many female audiophiles each of us knew, Steve G. defined what he meant by audiophile: "a person who frets over their system, agonizes over choices, loves gear, and sometimes music. You know, the kind of person who reads Stereophile or The Abso!ute Sound. Merely owning a nice stereo doesn't make you an audiophile. Owning a Leica doesn't make you a photographer. You have to be at least a little obsessed."
Huh, thought I. That may be true of some audiophiles, especially gearheads, but it sure isn't true of me. Decades ago, when I made my first foray into the High End by buying used Advent and then Spica speakers, heavy speaker cables, and a CD player (which I hated), it was because I wanted to get closer to the source of musical creation. I wanted to get inside the throats of singers I loved, and feel more of that unquantifiable melding of head and heart, viscera and spirit, that is the essence of transcendent musicianship. For me, better gear = greater chance of liftoff.
Does my obsession with music rather gear make me a pretend audiophile? Might it be possible that my real reason for writing for Stereophile is that it provides perfect cover for a lack of true audiophile credentials?
Then came the reality check. I bought those heavy speaker cables after reading an article in Stereo Review that purported to prove that speaker cables didn't make an audible difference. My intuition told me that the article was wrong and that I should try heavier-gauge cables. Wasn't I already eager to spend hours comparing cables and components?
Decades later, don't I have a large collection of Styrofoam packing squares that I stick between cables to keep them at least an inch apart? Don't I insist on repositioning both them and the 2x4s that support my Nordost speaker cables every time the slightest movement propels them to the floor? Haven't I spent endless hours trying to keep that little Antelope Zodiac Gold DAC on its supports, even as my interconnects pull it off yet again and I scream to myself, "Just rest it on your desktop, you stubborn ass, and pretend you can't hear a difference—even though you can!"
Momentarily shaken to my knees, which is often where I find myself when I'm tweaking things, I acknowledge that I am guilty, as charged, of being obsessed. But is it obsessive behavior that makes me an audiophile? Or does it simply confirm that I've been saddled with a generous helping of neurosis that finds its perfect outlet in audiophilia.
It was time to confer with an audiophile buddy, Jeremiah Horn, who studied bass performance at the Peabody Conservatory of Music. He'd just spent $3000 on a new Sony HAP-Z1ES music server and a Shunyata Research Zitron Alpha Digital power cable. I asked Jeremiah what made him an audiophile.
"A sensitivity to nuance, and a desire to hear everything that artists put into their music." Phew. That's more like it.
I then had another opportunity to test Steve G.'s theory. Jeremiah told me that he was first going to listen to his Sony with its stock power cable, then swap that out for the $995 Shunyata Zitron, to hear if there was enough improvement in the sound to justify the extra expense. I asked what his Sony was plugged into, and what other power cables he had in his system. When he told me that his power source was a PS Audio Power Plant Premiere connected to a Wyred4Sound P-1 Ultra, I suggested that he also try switching that power cord out for the Shunyata, to see where each would make the most difference. Things got even juicier when I learned that, for two other components, Jeremiah was also using Acoustic Zen Tsunami III power cords, which he could also move around to determine optimal positioning.
According to Steve, any bona-fide audiophile would have jumped at the opportunity to add more variables to his listening tests. Instead, Jeremiah moaned. He was far more interested in doing one simple experiment, and listening to music. His ultimate obsession was not listening to multiple permutations and combinations of gear, but to as much music as possible, at the highest quality.
What's an audiophile? I asked engineer David v.R. Bowles, who has served two terms on the Board of Governors of the Audio Engineering Society, is a guest lecturer at NYU Steinhardt, and records the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, and other artists. "An audiophile loves good sound and good music," he declared, "and strives to extract great sound from quality recordings in order to experience music to its fullest."
A devil's advocate might counter that topflight recording engineers such as Bowles invariably obsess over microphone placements, choices of equipment, formats, edits, and all that. But I'm sticking with his and Jeremiah's definitions. For most audiophiles, I believe, music is primary, not gear. Which is not to deny that, when it comes to obsessing, many of us get so lost in fussing over details that we lose sight of the forest for the trees. But that just makes us ecologists as well as music-loving audiophiles.—Jason Victor Serinus
