Maiden Voyage
Gold™ Member
I'm not a metalhead but I listen to a lot of punk & rock. There is absolutely audiophile-grade metal though. Tool, for example. Fucked Up is another I've had good listening experience with. TBH, most music coming out today is pretty damn good quality, at least in my experience on Apple Music.
Audiophile to me just means better clarity, for lack of a better word. Each instrument is easily identifiable against the others. You can find their point on the sound stage. I'm not trying to chase "what it was like in the recording studio" by any stretch. Recording, mixing, and mastering have the biggest impact on the quality of the audio. A shit mix is still going to sound shit even on the best set-up. Volume doesn't really enter the equation to me. I tend to listen at nominal or moderate volumes as a means of protecting my hearing as I age. I will, on occasion, crank it up to 11 but it's quite rare these days.
Headphones are easier to learn to critically listen to because they take the room out of the equation. The first revelatory moment for me was being able to hear instrument(s) or sound(s) I was otherwise unable to discern. At a certain point, your ears are trained well enough to pick out each one, so it becomes about how much "distance" or clarity there is among the different sounds. The next big step for me was going to open back headphones. That blew the doors off of sound staging for me. There was suddenly a depth to the music that was previously absent. Then I went toward loudspeakers...
With speakers it becomes more of a full body experience. The sound stage becomes much bigger and no longer is limited to just my inner head and the immediate surrounding area. That gives much more body to the experience. A small portrait painting becomes and 3D landscape hologram in front of me. I imagine a quadrophonic or Atmos set-up would extend the hologram to all-encompassing.
There is absolutely a diminishing return to the audiophile experience. Where that cliff plateaus is up to your preference. I've found the more time spent critically listening (eg giving 100% of my attention to the music), the more I want to dig deeper. 60-80% of my time is spent casually listening. In those cases 320kbps and quality gear is more than enough. But when I want that something extra, I will pull out a chair and get my speakers set-up for an amazing experience.
It's not exactly the most engaging music, but I found the Chesky Records 'Ultimate Demonstration Disc' to be a good learning aid. They specialize in audiophile level music. The Youtube link is below, but for best results, try to get CD quality for it (Apple Music link here, which is available in CD quality; Amazon here, but not entirely sure if they have the lossless version; Tidal here)
A pair of Sennhesier 6XXs from Drop is a great starting point because they are a low cost to entry at $220 and give great results. For some, the diminishing returns are here.
Last edited:
disc rott that I’ve never had happen to my collection of over 33 years…Assuming all of you take good care of your stuff 
.
upfron. If it was just me I might’ve gone $1,500 - $2,000 but that’s not my situation, and that’s okay. CD player hooked up yesterday and sound great through the Klipsch speakers!
. I won't spam anymore but yeah, such a nice table.
