Tír Na HiFi

Interesting question and one that puzzled me about Jazz musicians too.

My simplest and shortest answer, and some people don't like it, probably becouse don't get it or don't want to, is becouse all sound fake!

No bad feellings. 😀

Most musicians I know don't need high end hifi to connect with music. If anything they need it even less than the rest of us.

Also, and more practically, I don't know a single musician who can afford high end gear. Back when I had it I played the big rig for some music student friends once and they loved it, asked why I ever leave the house, etc. But it was clear that pricy hifi was not on their radar.

Finally, and this is the bit we hate to admit, "good" sound can be had for not much money these days. And for most people, "good" is good enough.

I remember being struck by this when Stereophile used to have a regular feature where they would visit a musician, have a chat and look at their system. It was almost always cheap crap bought in a mall. Even for well-known people who could have afforded better. Presumably that's why the feature hasn't apeared in a long time.

A lot of musicians survive on low incomes, but buying good hi-fi is a question of priorities as much as income. I've bought fairly pricy gear at times when my income was low because it was a priority for me. On the other hand, my car is 15 years old and makes funny noises. It's not a priority for me, once it reliably gets me where I need to go.

My brother-in-law is an orchestral musician and has on occasion asked me why I need such a good system. He can easily hear a lot of the details of how a piece was recorded and is acutely sensitive to intonation. For him, what interests him most when he listens to (all sorts of) music is the progression of harmonies, which he can gear on a quite modest system. His own system is decent enough: Rega/Arcam/Mordaunt-Short, bought in Cloney's by his brother 40 years ago and donated when the brother bought a newer system 15 years ago.

For a lot of musicians music is something they experience and enjoy in a live setting. Even the best hifi can't, and in my opinion shouldn't attempt, to replicate that. Hifi, hugely enjoyable as it is, is a very different experience to hearing a band/artist/orchestra live. Musicians know this!

For those of us outside the music business, we choose to spend a good deal of our free time listening to music and we choose to spend a good deal of our disposable income on a hifi system because we derive a great deal of pleasure from it. Working musicians have different priorities. A great deal of their time, I imagine, is spent on practising and rehearsing pieces. Musicians may use a playback system as simply a tool to learn unfamiliar pieces but they certainly would not spend the same amount of free time sitting around listening to music like many of us do. Practice, rehearsal, public performances, self-promotion - that seems to be the never ending cycle for working musicians.

One jazz musician was calculating how much money he lost because of all the canceled gigs and coronavirus lockdown.
He calculated that he saved about 1000€ :)

Kidding, but to be realistic, musicians have the real sound, and our hifi is nowhere near that, no matter how good cables or amps we use there and we pretend its best sound ever. Take real piano or drums, and try to find a system and room where its close to the original sound. Not that easy, and very very expensive.

Maybe if they heard their own music on a good system, it would encourage them to call it a day!

From reading music magazines, it is clear that most well known musicians do not bother with Hi-Fi as we know it. All my music friends have pretty decent systems, which get much use, but my limited contacts hardly represent a general view of musicians. So I posted a series of questions on www.theFretBoard.co.uk and did my honest best to condense the replies into an answer to the question posed by the OP.

As in life, music means different things to different people. The easiest method of analysis is to ask Yes/No questions. But I wanted to get a more general view of how musicians listen to music. My questions were phrased loosely, thus prompting replies that I might not have considered likely. Replies are not tabulated by percentage or anything as definite as that, rather a snapshot of diverse opinions.

1 How do you listen to music? Earbuds, stereo system, in car, etc.

Most replies were split amongst Earbuds/Headphones, Mid priced Hi-Fi systems, Serious quality Hi-Fi systems, In car systems with a few mentions for Studio monitors, Sonos and phone.

2 What medium do you prefer? Vinyl, CD, streaming, MP3, etc.

The majority of replies mentioned CD, Vinyl and On line streaming. A few mentions of FLAC, MP-3, AAC, Mono, SACD and Tapes.

3 Do you hear everything you want to hear from your replay system?

The vast majority indicated a Yes to this question.

4 In round figures, how much did your system cost or how much a similar system would cost today?

A cheeky question but one designed to see how much music actually means to the respondents. I took up to €600 to be Low, from €600 to €2K to be Mid and anything in excess of €2K to be Lots. The majority, about 50% actually, spent Lots on their system with an even split in Low and Mid priced systems.

5 Did you ever listen to music through a good Hi-Fi system and, if so, would you be tempted to try to get a better system than the one you have?

Again split 50/50 on Yes/No. Comments about 'Don't understand why Hi-Fi costs so much', 'Don't understand why you might need an expensive system to listen to music' were appended by a few respondents.

6 Please add any further comments you wish on this subject

The dreaded open ended question! Replies included: 'I enjoy music on a good system', 'I dream of owning a good system', 'why do Hi-Fi guys have good systems and rubbish music collections', 'pseudoscience and expensive cables', 'technology moves everything forward leaving some equipment obsolete', 'I like to hear a musical performance'



To summarise:

Not all musicians get by with poor quality Hi-Fi equipment. Musicians are relatively poorly paid so a lot of them cannot afford top of the range kit. But they love the music. That much they have in common with us Hi-Fi nots. I manage to straddle both camps. I play a little music and I listen to music on a Hi-Fi system. Both activities are important to me but if a choice had to be made, and I hope it never has to be, it is playing music that would come out on top. Nothing beats the feeling of seeing someone 'get' the music you are playing and their reaction to it. It has always been so and probably always will be.

Nice work, Rocker!