Mistakes I made this year in the hobby?
I rejoined…
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I jumped back into this hobby this year after taking a 5 year hiatus. Things I’ve learned this year (sorry if I repeated someone else’s)
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Endgame can occur at any price point
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Just because you don’t like something doens’t mean it’s not good
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More people need to try gear for themselves and not follow blindly regardless of whether the reviewer is trustworthy
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Just cause something new comes out doesn’t mean your old gear is instantly terrible.
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It takes time to train your ear to hear differences.
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The bigger the component, the bigger the sound.
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There’s a lot more drama in this hobby than I remember.
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So many great points on that list !
I especially agree with the last one. Some people take offense when you say you don’t like their favorite headphones / IEMs, and it’s a bit childish in my opinion. It’s OK if we don’t all have the same opinions, and honestly that’s what makes the hobby so interesting !
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pretty spot on list for things I’ve learned too. I think my only addition would be:
- Synergy really matters with equipment.
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Not so much “in the hobby”, but an important 2020 life lesson I learned today:
You have less chance of being poisoned by Russians if you go commando.
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I was surprised to find that many were in a similar situation to me, as I began my interest in head-fi this year. But maybe I shouldn’t have been, since we were all stuck at home all day every day.
Anyway, here are my thoughts on 2020. There are some great posts above, and I’m sure I’ll have overlapping points.
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It’s better to be part of a community than be alone. I’m not sure about you, but I’ve never had anyone to discuss audio equipment with, other than my Dad (who isn’t with us any more). I have friends that are obsessed with music, but none of them have ever been remotely interested in audio.
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It’s much more fulfilling to interact than to “lurk”. I’ve passively read other people’s posts in various forums over the years, but never took that step to post something myself. Maybe I wouldn’t have enjoyed actively participating in those other forums, but I have to say that I’m so happy to have had conversations with so many of you, despite having no idea what you look like. Thank you everyone.
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It can be fun to take the gentle cruise to your destination instead of flying. This is something I learned the hard way, thinking that I should just jump straight into the best possible option within my budget, thereby saving the most money. In hindsight, I wish I’d taken things a little more slowly, experiencing a couple of cheaper tubes before I got the Treasure Globe, a couple of cheap amps with different sound signatures, a cheap planar so I’d know the basic difference between a planar and dynamic headphone. I think I would have ended up in the same place, but would have enjoyed getting there a little more.
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Audition before you buy. If that’s not possible, make sure it’s cost effective to return the item to the manufacturer if you don’t like it. I’ve never mailed boxes of expensive stuff before, so it never occurred to me how much it would be to pay not only for shipping but also insurance, in addition to the manufacturer’s restocking fee. It’s not like returning something to Best Buy! Because of this, I now try to buy from vendors in the same country, or at least the same continent.
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Don’t spend more than you’ve saved. Enjoy what you have because it’s not a competition. It’s very easy to look at the next model up and try to justify to yourself that it’s just a little more money. I feel fortunate that I could afford some pricey gear, but I also had to be at peace with the fact that I cannot afford some of the very sexy equipment that others have bought. If I want that equipment, I need to save up for it, not go into debt.
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Buying from small boutique companies adds another dimension of fun to the hobby. Interacting with the person who designed the equipment or made the cables is so much more fun than clicking a button on Amazon, even if it does mean that you have to wait a few more weeks.
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Yes, I’m in the same boat with my friends not sharing an interest in audio equipment, and my dad - who’s also no longer with us - loved his two-channel setup. I wish he’d been around to hear my decent headphones (and my HD 800 SDR, in particular). I wonder what he would have made of them. In any case, it is a pleasure to have this forum for sharing our interests. I’ll add my thanks to everyone, too.
Re. taking a gentle cruise and not spending more than you can afford: while saving up separately for upgrades, I’m also thinking of sacrificing my LCD2-Classic to create a ca. $500 slush fund so as to be able to experiment a bit more. The idea is to cycle through a bunch of used “benchmark” audio gear (as per this thread) while avoiding incurring too much of a loss when re-selling items, and ultimately gaining a wider frame of reference and more experience in the hobby. So far I’m contemplating using such funds for test-driving early pre-fazor LCD 2 headphones, a pair of HD 600, the Lyr 3, Asgard 3, among others. (Suggestions would be most welcome!)
This could allow to try out stuff until such time as we can start organizing meets again…
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I’ll chime in here with a couple:
- A popular owner of a blog website listens to headphones far too loud
- Manufacturing chains are fragile and something like a global pandemic can screw up the best laid plans
- The RAD-0 is my favourite headphone and that won’t change until the RAD-0.1
- There are too many secret subset discords that I don’t participate in and should probably leave for peace of mind
- My time outside of work should be my time. It’s not something that I practiced for the first 3 years of the company but I do now. It’s made a huge difference for stress levels as well as wife happiness.
- DMs/PMs don’t require immediate response
- Chi-Fi IEMs can be very good. I’m not a KZ fan but the IEMs that Moondrop, Dunu and Thieaudio are putting out can’t be ignored anymore.
- @MRHifiReviews’s instagram should not be looked at with the wife around
- @TylersEclectic has developed into a completely kick-ass photographer. I still remember when he joined the forum and was snapping shots with his phone.
- @Resolve Does not like all Hifiman headphones
- I still hate “audiophile” music and will not use it to test headphones regardless if I should.
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Buy gear/headphones/equipment/speakers, etc that fit your taste of music - no other reason. Avoid buying something just because it is a good deal or because it has great reviews/poor reviews. You have to listen for yourself and sometimes that means taking a hit to test something out because the payoff of finding something you love is worth. For example, I purchased the Focal Stellia - rave reviews and I personally love the Utopia and the Elear. Did not love the Stellia - I appreciate what they can do but they just didn’t do it for me. I also purchased a pair of speakers - the B&W 805 D2 because a local guy was just trying to get rid of them and I got them for a deal. Hated them. Too polite. I like intensity with my music and it’s taken a lot of mistakes for me to figure this out and to find gear that I really like or even love. Experience is truly the greatest teacher. Nothing else can replace it. I’ve never regretted a single audio purchase because I’ve learned something about my own tastes with each one.
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A couple of other ones come to mind …
- Don’t spend time trying to help people that have already made up their mind and/or clearly don’t care to learn (this is less something learned, and more just a mistake I seem to repeat from time to time).
- Dunning-Kruger is a real thing - apparently especially in the world of audiophillia.
- Anyone asking you to work for exposure instead of proper payment won’t have enough exposure potential to be worth a fraction of your time.
- People that have to refer to themselves as “influencers” are probably just misspelling “narcissist”.
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I have learned so many things, but the most vital for me is, that I have learned is there are so many nuances in this hobby I DON’T know. But being in this forum is where I learn and maintain my love for good sound, together with a few but super good YT reviewers.
I work in sales and communication is a vital part and one thing I like to use to keep a message understandable with a high retention rate, is to create a list of 3 items together with an image, so here goes:
- I have learned that my first love of IEM’s is still true and that I want to peek into the $1000+ arena
- DAC’s may be the little sister to the AMP, but boy what a difference she can make. Especially if her name starts with R2R
- You can’t say a sentence with the name “ZMF” without also using the word “Tube”
And today is my 1 year cake-day here 
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I don’t have the time or energy for a whole list, but I literally just yesterday figured out exactly how important it is to understand your ears’ anatomy if you want to use and enjoy IEMs. It occurred to me to look at some custom molds I had made years ago, from which I discerned that my ear canals have oval instead of round profiles, and my right ear canal has only a very short section before the first, severely angled, bend.
So, I switched from large silicone tips inserted shallow to small/medium foam tips inserted deeper, cut a couple of mm off the right tip to avoid bottoming out in the bend, and I’m now in a whole different world of sound and comfort. All of a sudden something like the Moondrop Starfield which had left me luke warm actually sounds pretty darned good now!
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Very true, and I know this better than anybody…
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Happy 1 year cake day!
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I’ve got 3 posts on my personal Instagram in the last two years so I believe I am now an influencer. If you send me a Utopia I guarantee the same 3 people that have liked my posts will also like my photo of it.
A couple of others to add to mine as well:
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Don’t fall into hype trains. More often than not you’ll end up whelmed instead of anything else.
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The majority of audiophiles are actually pleasant folk and just want to enjoy the hobby. It just so happens that the minority that are not tend to be the most vocal across the most represented places.
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Couriers are actually a lot more reliable than people make them out to be. It just happens to be the 5% of time that something goes wrong, it goes real wrong which makes it stand out. Same with QC issues.
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People take audio way too seriously. It’s a hobby enjoy it. You (general you, not aimed at Torq since this is a reply post. Figured it was obvious but wanted to make it clear!) making a point that somebody’s experience with various gear can’t be valid because you can’t replicate that or you read somewhere that it can’t be the case shouldn’t be the hill you choose to die on. I don’t care that you like THX amps and you shouldn’t care that I enjoy the AudioQuest NightOwls. What we should really both care about is that we’re enjoying the time we’re spending with the gear.
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I’ve learned/reinforced that:
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I can still spend more time listening to music than stressing over my hardware
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AmazonMusic and YouTube videos (and the like) are dang effective ways of finding new music
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I am probably not a real discriminating technical listener, and I’m very okay with that
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(Edit/Add) I assume without question that other people can hear things I cannot. Some would be bad, and some would be good, if I heard them. Subjective perception is the most intuitive form of reality. (Your reported personal perceived reality is but a hypothetical potential reality for me, one of many-many. Some of the alternative perceived realities may align closely with my own perceived reality, and some may not. Ronald Reagan said: “Trust but verify.” Trust your own ears, at their particular point on the learning path, but verify/validate against the experiences of others. )
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older used Stax gear can still sound great, and is affordable, but there are also many other affordable and high SQ choices
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it’s still a fun hobby
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forums such as this are really helpful in learning more about everything
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you can still dive down arcane and twisty rabbit holes if you want to.
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Going to focus more on the listening in the coming year.
Too much time researching, not enough time listening to the music.
I know absolutely nothing, and fine with that.
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I hear that. Lately I’ve been building my flac library up and getting back to the music.
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On the subject of money, some lessons I’ve learnt:
- My ears don’t know how much the headphones cost.
- Whether I enjoy the good points of headphones or worry about their bad points depends less on their price, reputation, or even quality, than on my state of mind.
- Bald people need more headband padding than hairy people.
- Once I get over a certain fairly low quality threshold, I tend to just enjoy the music.
- Don’t buy true wireless earbuds on eBay or you’ll get scammed with fakes that fall below this threshold.
- My early view of a new set of headphones can change dramatically given a few weeks, and it may never settle.
- My high frequency hearing isn’t what it used to be.
- ANC Bluetooth headphones do sound worse than wired, but I don’t really care that much when I’m doing the hoovering or trying to work around the noisy family.
- I can get used to almost anything.
- If I listen too long I stop enjoying the music.
- If all headphones sound bad I probably just don’t want to listen to music. No need to go shopping!
- My ears and my heart don’t care whether music has a reputation for being highbrow or lowbrow. I can stop feeling guilty for listening to Mura Masa, The Jam and Janelle Monae more than Schubert and Poulenc, and it won’t upset Schubert or Poulenc (both of whom I still love). There is no authority on music.
- Sometimes it’s the music that’s fatiguing, not the headphones. Try changing genres.
- Buying a cheap headphone and enjoying it exactly as much as you expected is much less stressful than buying an expensive headphone and being unsure on the matter.
- The perfect headphone either doesn’t exist or costs more than my annual income, so I’ll go after what piques my curiosity rather seeking some endgame audio nirvana.
- There really is no substitute for making or listening to music in a room with other people, and I miss it.
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