[grigore]

Let’s  move to the next level! Life is just an exploration trip of our own being. We travel by exploring  our being with help of what we feel and the feeling comes from the heart.The music addresses the heart. As a form of art, music is an expression of the artist’s heart  in a language accessible only to the heart, which decodes this language by feeling and this feeling are actually the emotions which music arises in us. Arts and especially music is a love declaration towards life. Music ist the expression of artist’s and  player’s love. When we listen to music, our heart  fills with joy and love. MUSIC IS LOVE.
All people who listen to music find themselves on one step or another, on one level or another of their exploration trip of the musical universe and actually of explorating their own emotional universe. We listen to music because music allows us to get deeper into  our own being and to explore more, at a more intimate level ,our own soul by means of emotions. By listening to music we tend to know ourselves better.
In order to listen to music it is common to take part in live-events, but also to listen to music at home by means of audio-equipments.
Because the most of us have at home audio-equipments and these lie between us and our music, these equipments have become more and more important. The audio-equipments at home draw the map of our trip in the music’s world, not from a quantitative or qualitative point of view, but from an aesthetical point of view, that is emotionally.
During time I have discovered that there are several evolutional levels, which the  audiophiles makes , levels revealed by the audio-equipments possessed by the audiophiles, as well as by the sound generated by these audio-equipments.

Levels:

0-level. The level of the not interested man.
This is the level where man does not give much importance to music and that’s why he does not give much importance to audio-equipments, too.  It is the level where man, in his trip, does not feel the need to explore his being by means of music. It is the level where man listens to music by chance, on radio, on TV and on PC.

Level 1. Beginner’s level.
It is the level where man starts to feel the importance of the emotions felt as he listens to music. Human being starts to listen to music regularly and starts to raise the issue of the quality of music’s reproduction and  he starts to realize  that in order to listen to music he has to invest in a dedicated audio-equipment. Level 1 is the level where the human being becomes curious regarding the audio-equipments and starts to discuss about the topic with his mates  and he usually enters also the related forums. It is the level where man builds his first audio system. Because his direct experience is limited, he builds his first system by using the informations and suggestions on the audio forums. In this phase, the becoming audiophile becomes active on forums and he starts to ask questions with the purpose to learn and to clarify his options regarding the first acquisition. During this phase , part of the becoming audio fans also start to visit special show-rooms , looking for information, experience and equipments. Together with the acquisition of the first  audio system, our man receives the ‘’baptize’’ of the audiophiling and he can call himself an audiophile. On this evolution step, the audiophile as a beginner judges still the acquisition of the audio equipments and the music’s reproduction as a rational and logical act. The majority of the audiophiles as beginners are yet not fully convinced of the importance of the cables in a audio system and also of the burning- in phenomenon (the burning- in of the audio equipment takes time as the running-in of a car, and it ows firstly to the formatting phenomenon of the condensers comprised in the audio equipment and not only). A few audiophiles at this level are aware of the importance of the cables and do admit the burning- in phenomenon , yet more as a belief in something that cannot be rationally and logically proved. From the point of view  of the financial investment, the beginning audiophiles split into 2 main classes.In the first class, class A, there are to be found the audiophiles who believe that music can also be listened to a cheap audio equipments like  mass-market type , equipment which can be acquired from supermarkets, but also SH from forums and from the speciality dealers. On this level, named 1A by me, the audio fan buys equipments with good technical specifications produced by big industrial producers like Sony, Marantz, Yamaha, Pioneer, etc, etc. Among the beginner audiophiles with limited budget , these companies  have good reputation , yet their reputation comes more from the past, when these brands are assumed to have also built  audio equipments of ‘’audiophile-like quality “.
Some music listeners finding themselves on this level  1A will understand  quickly that their investment  is not enough and they will rapidly evolve to  THE NEXT LEVEL.

Read the full story on my blog!

[Noseyears]

I would consider myself being between 2 and 3. As im entering more at the hifi world and getting more knowledge at big brands. Im feeling like buying more stuff of a higher class to improve my audio setup. Bugdet sometimes is not enough though. 

[grigore]

The next level part 2.

   Observation. From an audiophile point of view, the above mentioned audio equipments  produce an unsatisfying sound. The reproduced music is with no resolution and detail , the sound has no transparency and is without  sound-stage and most of the time the tonal accuracy is cheap. The sound is also ‘’noisy’’ because the audio-equipment does not succed to ‘’separate’’ well the reproduced instruments and it does ‘’mix’’ them. At the same time, in terms of attack and decay, things are cheap. Most of the time, the power specifications are optimistic. THEY DO OFFER A POOR EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE!!!
Most of the companies which  manufacture audio equipments classified by me in this class are multi-national companies with big expenses and profit –oriented budgets.That’s why the audio equipments from this claas are projected by teams of engineers interested in obtaining good technical specifications , yet at lower costs.   This projecting philosophy leads to achievement of audio equipments purely technical, in fact, some electrical machines for reproducing the sound and not the music. The managers of this type of companies are interested only in the profit obtained on basis of the reduced costs, of the marketing and of good technical specifications of the manufactured electrical machines. They are not interested in the music and the music’s reproduction at all. Taking into consideration the above mentioned facts, the audio equipments from this category have nothing to do  with the music’s reproduction and with the musical emotion. 

The second big class, from financial point of view, of the beginner audiophile ist the class of those with more financial possibilities, claas B. Having bigger financial possibilities, the beginner audiophile from this class is conscious of the importance of the audio equipment’s quality, of the audio reproduction’s quality and he knows that the  audio mass-market equipments will not satisfy him. On this level, 1B, the music listener dedicates a larger part of his free time to visiting the special show-rooms and he is very  attentive to the experienced ones because he wants to learn and by learning he wishes to make an “efficient” acquisition with a good quality/price ratio. On this level, the music listener becomes, among others, a ‘’hunter of audiophiles of cheap stuff”, too. On this level, too, the music listener assumes himself the audiophile slang and he realizes the importance of cables and he starts to becomes conscious of the running-in phenomenon, but also of the  importance of the  quality audio-software (original  CDs and  “audiophiles”, vinyl records, etc). In this phase, the music listener, the audiophile is not yet able to decide by himself what audio equipments he should buy, so that most of the time, at the audition meetings programmed at show-rooms, he goes accompanied by a friend, who is or who is not an audiophile in order to get advised by him . During this phase, the music listener doees not trust entirely the  professionalism of the  show-room’s owner. During this phase, too, as the audiophile decides to aquire his first system, he guides himself to the main-stream brands. A  large number of  music listeners from this category aquires  main-stream brands, which, from the point of view of the price , do find themselves in the “entry-level” category. Another part, smaller, does guide itself directly to main-stream brands, yet at a higher price, the so-called  “mid-level” price.
At a certain time, the audiophile from this category, No. 1, has explored and revealed to himself all the scale of emotions triggered by the sound of the audio equipments which he aquired in this phase  and as he considers  himself to get bored, he wants to evolve and to explore  THE NEXT LEVEL!

Read the full story on my blog.