MUSINGS: On imagination, fantasies, transcendence, and balance in audiophile play. And an AI-assisted analysis of audio hardware discussions in September 2026.

Since I started this blog, I've used the tagline "A 'more objective' take for Audiophiles" (later adding the word Rational). This was intentional because back in the early 2010s, the environment was quite different than today. At that time, computer audiophilia was primarily about playback of local music libraries on hard drives (collapse of NAND flash drive prices for SSD in mid-2012 soon allowed 500+GB SSDs), prior to the massive expansion of online streamed audio (Spotify launched in mid 2011 in N. America, lossless Tidal not until late 2014). In those days, we also didn't have anything like the expansive high-fidelity "Chi-Fi" hardware options we have today. These products have tremendously brought down the cost of literally everything in the audio chain. While DACs have been high performance devices for ages already (some history here), others like reasonably priced Class D amps (Hypex UcD launched 2003, nCore 2011, very inexpensive TI TPA32xx "chip" amps by 2016) came out later, and today are ubiquitous (like this, and this, and this). The availability of Raspberry Pi and similar devices have made bit-perfect digital end-points easy and cheap to build. These products have commoditized high fidelity in ways I think should be welcomed by all audiophiles.

Not only has availability of hardware changed (and concomitantly necessary software), but I'm glad to see that in the last decade, the modern audiophile who's getting started in this hobby now has easy access on the web to a lot of information including better objective analyses and subjective opinions/preferences. I think the environment today is a much better mix of technological understanding that can be used to quite easily refute nonsensical mysticism while at the same time rationally discuss human subjective preferences.

Compared to the early 2010's, the media landscape has changed so significantly from what used to be mostly unchallenged narratives driven by the old "magazines of record" like Stereophile and The Absolute Sound; nowadays these sites have sheltered themselves with no discussion forums to leave comments on, and even old comments accumulated over years have been purged (changes as recent as 2025)! As far as I can tell, the magazines these days have little ability to offer deep insights beyond articles acting as proxy advertisements.

With these changes, the "more objective" part of my tagline I think has already become much of mainstream audiophile discourse and culture. And so I was contemplating the other day whether we're already at a comfortable balance now between subjectivity and objectivity among hobbyists.

As humans, it seems like balance is one of the hardest things to achieve. I see audiophilia as a safe microcosm to view other aspects of life like politics. As in politics, it's all too easy to be drawn to extremes. In fact, the modern liberal freedoms we enjoy and the progress we've made have been based on the "dynamic equilibrium" as a central defining pillar. For us audiophiles, balance likewise is a necessary foundation to satisfy questions surrounding what devices we buy and also why we choose the audiophile hobby as our area of interest in the first place.

SUMMER MUSINGS: Who/What is an "Audiophool"? (And old quad album mixes.)

Hey guys and gals. This week, I thought it'd be fun to just talk about something that was brought up over at the Audiophile Style forums in this thread "Who or What Is An Audiophool?". Seeing that there were a number of comments already, I figured why not jump in over the past week and engage?

Doing this brought back memories of the early 2010's when I would spend more time on the forums to chat with fellow audiophiles. As you can imagine, over time with work, family life, having fewer questions to ask as I progressed through the hobby, and turning to writing articles here, my time on the forums have significantly been reduced. I'll still pop in once awhile but not like in the early 2010's to read and participate.

So this past week, as you can see from Page 6 of the thread onwards, it was fun to get back into the weeds a bit and liberally engage. Over many pages, we got into quite a few topics including ideas around blind testing, importance (or not depending on whose opinion) of objective measurements, anecdotes, human behaviors, the role reviewers play in the Industry, examples of bizarre pseudo-science, why we enjoy audio as a hobby, JG Holt's interview from 2007, personal values, anti-vaxxers, agreeing to disagree, ASR, website traffic numbers, quotes from Richard Feynman, what is knowledge, etc.

On Audiophile Forums. Disagreements on MQA. (And Redscape preview...)

I thought for this post it might be good to talk about audiophile forums.

A couple weeks back, some of you expressed frustration with the Audio Science Review Forum, the opinions of the host there, and general MQA disagreement. Over the years, like probably many of you, I've had my share of participating in forums, disagreements with views expressed and the bickering at various venues. All in good fun however and nobody needs to get too perturbed... It's only a hobby, right?

I've read posters say that MQA is "the gift that keeps giving" :-). No doubt it's a topic that has provided for much discussion around here and elsewhere!

However future audiophile historians ultimately judge this time in our hobby, I think MQA will have its place as a controversy that divided the community deeply. I don't think this is a bad thing in that it has provided many opportunities for us to discuss and perhaps be enlightened by what is true vs. false, shown a divide between mainstream press with close industry ties vs. independents, objective vs. subjective testing, faith in (specifically one) authority of digital audio vs. skepticism. And this has played out publicly probably in its most dramatic fashion on audiophile forums these years.