Audio is a bit of a strange hobby. Despite the importance–and indeed, reliance–on the music that it revolves around, the audio hobby is almost singularly focused on the gear and sound reproduction, rather than the music itself. Of course, focusing on the reproduction of music necessitates listening to it, and so the circle of audio enthusiasts is probably just a particularly erudite subset of the greater population of people who enjoy music. It may seem a bit ridiculous to focus so mulishly on audio gear instead of the music it produces, but my personal experience has been that there is a special sort of joy in hearing the music come to life, and the reproduction chain is a small but important part of that. Perhaps less importantly, owning well-engineered products feels great, especially when the craftsmanship and technology is a cut above the chaff.
My own journey in this hobby started many years ago in college, not out of any particular interest in investing into high-end audio gear but rather as a result of my general purchasing philosophy. At the time, I listened to music on the way to and from classes, while studying, and during long nights of ill-advised gaming with friends. Naturally, I concluded that investing in a decent audio setup for my desktop would go a long way, and eventually ended up purchasing the "reddit" combination of the FiiO E10k and MassDrop's AKG K7XX: a hefty $280 package that promised good sound well above its price bracket. In mid-2016, this was the go-to recommendation, and the Sennheiser HD6XX (the current darling of choice) had not been released yet. The FiiO E10k promised high-fidelity audio reproduction* along with clean amplification for hungrier headphones, and the K7XX was hailed as the king of "mid-fi" headphones, with tonality and technicality not found anywhere else in the sub-$500 price range. I was immensely pleased with it–given that my frame of reference until then were the free earbuds I got from some poor recruiting sap at the job fair earlier that year.
That setup lasted me 4 years, and I was very pleased with it. Then something unexpected happened: the 2020 coronavirus hit, and suddenly I was forced to work from home. With little to do and a surprising bit of extra pocket change, I accidentally found myself wandering into the murky world of high-end audio. I was always somewhat interested in high-end audio gear–those magical black boxes just ignite the imagination–but wrote it off as a financially treacherous journey without end (which it absolutely is). My personal path took me through the world of high-end IEMs like the Moondrop Blessing2 and Campfire Audio Andromeda, to the infamous STAX electrostatic headphones, and most recently, the superlative Accuphase speaker amplifiers from Japan. As expensive as it was, I have to say it was a surprisingly enjoyable experience, and given the coronavirus situation, quite enriching.
* The FiiO E10k is ... not very good, and I highly recommend you purchase an Apple dongle for a fraction of the price.
The auditory conundrum
Audio is a weird hobby in that the listening experience is truly as personal as it gets; describing what you're hearing is a bit like trying to explain colors. This, combined with the widespread practice of exaggerating and sometimes just straight-up lying about products, has made the community and its discussions extremely polarizing. It can be extremely difficult to navigate, and with the Internet's anonymity, it's also commonplace to see unproductive diatribe coming from both sides, making it even harder to wade through the chaff. There are two main camps, though most people naturally fall in the middle along some sort of spectrum, generally based on what they themselves have actually heard:
The subjectivist camp is where most of the snake oil is marketed to; it is the idea that many things in audio are either not measured, or not measurable at all. It plays heavily into psychoacoustics and the "synergy" of the reproduction chain. As the name implies, it focuses on the personal and subjective experience. Naturally, even among subjectivists, there's a great spectrum of opinions, and many people of course have their own wildly differing opinions from others. There are quite a few people who cannot seem to form their own opinions of anything though, which makes it tough to figure out who's talking from experience and who's just rehashing what others have said.
The objectivist camp is a pretty steadfast idea that all auditory elements are measurable and the most important factors are all measured, such that the perfect gear and reproduction chain can be made solely by looking at the measurements of each part of the chain. There is not a whole lot of discussion around personal experience in this part, because the idea is that any deviations from the norm are from psychoacoustics and not the gear itself. While it's very much based in science, the arguments made can sometimes be in bad faith, and it does occasionally feel like a cult in its dogged zealotry for perfect measurements.
As for me? I'm probably somewhere in the middle, leaning maybe toward the subjectivist side. I absolutely disagree with the idea that the chain is irrelevant; I've listened to plenty of different "audibly transparent" setups with the same headphones and speakers with noticeably different results, but I also don't think it's quite to the point of needing half a million dollars invested in electrical cables and wiring. It is clear, however, that regardless of which camp you fall in, the most important things are the room treatment (for speakers) and transducers; all else is secondary to the things that directly affect the sound going into your ears. I also think it's worth mentioning that placebo gains are still gains; most of us don't just listen in a sterile space while blindfolded, so I don't think it's entirely fair to discount the power of placebo.
But then again, I haven't exactly spent the time to do a blind test, let alone a controlled double blind test that would definitively tell me whether or not I'm insane. I'm okay with that though; whether it's placebo or real, I'm happy with what I've got now, so I don't feel any particular urge to go out and buy more electronics, or defend myself from the rabid zealots of the Internet. Anyway, I feel the black swan of the hardcore objectivist side has already been found; plenty of studies indicate that there are a handful of participants who could pass an ABX reliably, even if they couldn't pinpoint which was which. That alone is more than good enough for me.
