It's perhaps humbling to remember that for most of the world we audiophiles are not only amateurs but thought to be teetering on the edge of lunacy.
We work hard to make magic from the recordings we want to listen to.
Most pros—folks who make (or hope to make) a living at recording and reproducing music—consider all the hoops and "out there" technology we obsess over to be little more than Tom Foolery.
In their world, speakers and electronics are chosen more on what's accepted in the industry as the gold standards. Basically, they hope to copy the technical elements of those who have risen to the top of the heap. YouTube is filled with the pros sharing their secrets of favorite equipment. Vintage this. Modern that.
One small glimmer of this making sense is the fact that unlike we lowly amateurs saddled with merely listening to the fruits of their work, they can manipulate sound to make up for deficiencies in equipment.
If their choice of speaker is so bright and harsh as to drive a poor audiophile out the window, they need only EQ the recording to where it sounds alright.
And perhaps that's the core of it.
We are stuck doing our best to build systems that bring musical pleasure into our homes without benefit of manipulation. Like eating without the advantage of seasoning.
Which is one reason why at Octave Records we build music to sound perfect on the very equipment it will eventually be played back with.
Now, to me, that makes a lot more sense.
