ceejay;240302 Wrote: 
> Well, I'd be very sad indeed if we couldn't use a bit of humour and that
> can include a bit of teasing, as you put it.  But every now and again
> this does spin off threads - like part of this one, up to the point of
> my previous post - which get just nasty, which I don't think is a good
> thing.
Indeed. My point was that this is inevitable if you have significant
numbers of both audiophiles and the rational. The former would appear
to be growing in this forum and those that run it may be wise to think
about how they wish to handle it. Forums with lots of audiophiles and
few of the rational seem to run fairly smoothly (e.g. AudioAsylum) and
those with lots of the rational and few audiophiles (e.g.
HydrogenAudio) also seem to run fairly smoothly but those with
significant proportions of both do not seem to work (e.g. most of
rec.audio.*) where everyone that is not primarily there to argue
leaves. 

Both AudioAsylum and HyrogenAudio have rules to discourage postings
from either the rational or audiophiles. This forum doesn't appear to
at present? (but I am a newbie). 

ceejay;240302 Wrote: 
> BTW - I'd also prefer not to abandon the term "audiophile" to mean only
> the flat-earth variety.  Maybe that means I count as "young" in your
> understanding, which would be delightful (its a long time since anyone
> called me that!).
I am slightly confused about which meaning you would like. Those that
use audiophile as a pejorative term do so because of what it meant when
it entered the mainstream 30 years ago. I was actually unaware of any
other use of the word until I started to reobserve the audiophile
phenomenon a year or two ago.

As a reaction to the conditions after the hi-fi boom of the 60s and
early 70s the expensive end of the home audio industry started to
develop a marketing based rather than technical performance based
industry. The word used to distinguish the products and adherents to
this new approach was usually audiophile with the old fuddy-duddys that
thought technical performance mattered left to keep the old fashioned
term high-fidelity. The new audiophile approach grew rapdily at the
expensive end of the home audio market until it pretty much wiped out
an approach based on technical performance.

This did not happen in other sectors like proaudio and the audiophile
sector became very distinct, isolated and inward looking as it would
have to in order to keep normal scientific knowledge about sound and
audio at arms length. It also did not happen initially in new areas
like computer audio but, interestingly, it is now starting to grow.
Even more interestingly, it seems to be entering department stores and
the consumer audio sector.


-- 
honestguv
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