Through February 2025, and with today's third post of the month, I've been exploring the current audiophile culture with videos from contemporary YouTube channels. While never exactly the same among participants, we can see "archetypal" characteristics shared among personalities in this hobby.
We've talked about the technical channel that presented facts but also blurs boundaries into unusual beliefs to make sales and justify products, the subjective-only hobbyist channel willing to do listening tests (great!), and today let's talk about the audiophile who appears to insist on purely subjective-based evaluation, rejects objective measurements, and is a salesman in the Industry.
I'm talking about OCD Hi-Fi Guy who's quite an entertaining fellow. He calls it like he sees it - "no BS" - I can respect that to a point. His name is Mike "Mikey" Powell and he runs a company called 11 Stereo. His followers are known as the "HiFi Tribe" and in the videos, we see promotions of the companies and products that he represents including Playback Designs DACs and Fischer & Fischer speakers, prominently mentioned among others.
Every once awhile you'll see on my blog a reference to something on his channel that I found entertaining - like this post addressing the interview with Machina Dynamica guy. His use of diction suggests an intelligent fellow but I suspect he comes across a bit "spicy" in his language for many audiophile gentlemen and gentleladies. At other times, some of his viewpoints around politics and towards other cultures might be unpalatable.
If you watch his videos, I think it becomes quite clear that his moniker is inaccurate because he is neither "OCD" (his answers are far from perfectionistic), nor is his philosophy towards audio particularly "Hi-Fi" (high fidelity). Let's have a deeper look at this with a recent video that's entertaining, yet highlights the frustration that I think some salesmen might experience online these days as they try to assert unsubstantiated beliefs.
