Are You Audiophile or Are You Luddite
Everybody likes music. And Everybody likes the best quality of reproduction they can afford (with respect to their other priorities in life, like food, heat, kids, and stuff].
So everybody SHOULD be an audiophile.
But a surprising number of people are Luddites – or more correctly, I think, completely ignorant of science and the scientific method [and this includes many PhD’s who pontificate on all sorts of things they do not understand well – drowning us all in the sea of ignorance that has become the internet].
The Scientific Method: People are experiencing phenomena for which there is no explanation. Develop theories and develop experiments to test the theories [high-end audio has no funding, no governmental or corporate grants to do this].
The Let’s Stay Ignorant Method: People are experiencing repeatable phenomena for which there is no explanation. Let’s just declare that the phenomena doesn’t really exist and pontificate endlessly about how it doesn’t exist. It’s not like we are doing anything useful, so we got lots and lots of free time.
These people, when approached with a light bulb – probably mutter to themselves:
“Light bulbs are so obviously a scam. People are so stupid they’ll buy anything.
Scientists don’t even know if light is a particle or a wave!
Yeah, I think I see light sometimes, shadows, colors, all that mumbo-jumbo, but until they figure out what light is, and can explain it to me and my friends, I am not going to spend my hard earned money on light bulb rip-offs. Plain sunlight is AOK with me and my friends.”
[Did I get it right Steve? Seemed like it was funnier at 1am :-)]
And so on, for other things like Art, Music, Wine, Cars … all lovers of quality are derided by people who seem to be afraid they are missing out on something … but aren’t sure exactly what.
It is fine if one’s priorities do not allow one to dedicate money or time to the pursuit of the ultimate in quality vis-a-vis this or that hobby – but to deny that such qualities even exist – that is Ludditism.
Please don’t compare the wave–particle duality of light to something as simple as electrons being pushed through a conductor…
Hi Adam,
Sorry you don’t seem to understand the point of the post.
Apparently your educational background has simplified the model of electrons in a conductor to such a level where it confused you into thinking that we, as a scientific culture, understand it.
The behavior of a photon (the wave-particle) passing through various mediums is certainly a complicated subject, and just like an electron in a conductor one has to worry about the effects of heterogeneous materials, skin effects, parasitic effects, etc.
Things are more complicated than the drastically [and catastrophically for people’s hi-fi systems who believe this is reality] over-simplified RLC circuit analysis model.
Science is not a religion – T.V.s will not stop working, planes will continue to fly even if one understands that we don’t really understand all that much about anything when one starts to look at things more closely.
On the frontiers of high-end audio reproduction, that is just what we have to do – look at [and listen to] things more closely.
Thanks for posting,
Mike