It often surprises me to see people with time, money, and knowledge settling for subpar experiences that have night and day differences to me. Even at my brokest (pretty darn broke), speakers, headphones, and glasses were always worth researching and some saving up, and the difference between what I’d end up with and the average always feels like it paid off tenfold.
I’ve got a surprising number of friends/acquaintances who just don’t seem to care, though, and I am trying to understand if they just don’t experience the difference similarly or if they don’t mind. I know musicians who just continue using generation 1 airpods or the headphones included with their phone, birdwatchers who don’t care about their binoculars, people who don’t care if they could easily make their food taste better, and more examples of people who, in my opinion, could get 50% better results/experiences by putting in 1% more thought/effort.
When I’ve asked some friends about it, it sounds as much like they just don’t care as they don’t experience the difference as starkly as I do, but I have a hard time understanding that, as it’s most often an objective sensory difference. Like I experience the difference between different pairs of binoculars and speakers dramatically, and graphical analysis backs up the differences, so how could they sound/look negligibly different to others? Is it just a matter of my priorities not being others’ priorities, or do they actually experience the difference between various levels of quality as smaller than I seem to? What’s your take on both major and, at the high end, diminishing returns on higher quality sensory experiences?
What are your tips on glasses? I choose standard uncoated lenses nowdays after finding that anti-reflective/anti-scratch coatings often scratched easily or had an optically-rippled surface, but maybe things have improved?
Going to a legit optometrist that either cuts their own lenses or tells you where to get good ones rather than trying to find the cheapest option online is probably the biggest thing. They tend to recommend or automatically go for the other top tips, like avoiding any coating that will ripple/peel/fade over time, using high-index materials for high prescriptions (expensive, but drastically reduced the necessary thickness and curvature + distortion of the crystal), and spacing the lens centers to your personal measurements.
It’s all transparent to me unless I bought a potato
Depends. I’m aware of the difference, but how much I care about it depends entirely on how much I like the hobby or tech. If it’s food, PCs, and clothes (as in, no cheap materials that won’t last a year) I care and will go beyond reasonable expectations to ensure that whatever I buy or cook is the best within reason. Anything else, as long as it works.
I don’t have the energy for more than that.
I just want to say how happy I am that good sounding audio equipment and large screen TVs are relatively cheap. With a bit of research and tinkering, one can have a nice A/V setup for not much $$$. Of note, I am very impressed with the audio quality of Class D amplifiers nowadays. I was conditioned to believe that Class D would always be inferior until I tried it myself.
Never let perfect be the enemy of good enough. Do you want to do the thing or do you want to stress about the thing for days, delay it for months while you save up then suffer regret anxiety about whether it was the correct choice? For a lot of people the latter is the part they enjoy about the hobby. For others it isn’t worth the time and resources requires, they’d rather do the thing now with what they have and enjoy it as it is. Where does the inflection point lies between hassle and enjoyable results is personal and everyone has different criteria for different goals and contexts, and that is OK.
To some extent. For audio, I don’t really have to much experience with expensive headphones/earbuds but I do notice a difference. I still usually go with cheaper headphones though because the difference in audio quality and durability aren’t really enough to justify the price difference.
For visuals in games, I do prefer to have the best experience but what settings I use depends on the game. There are some settings that are universal to me, like for example, if anti-aliasing is available, I always have it set to 2x (or 1.5x if the game has it) because every option for anti-aliasing in every game I’ve tried looks exactly the same to me, so going higher is just a waste of system resources. For similar reasons, while both of my monitors support higher resolutions, I still prefer to use 720/768p.
I think the only time I really don’t care about visual quality, is just when I’m watching videos online.
I spend about 300 euros on a really high end usb DAC for my desktop. I honestly don’t hear the difference between the desktop output and the expensive DAC. But I do totally hear the difference between a decent and cheap pair of headphones. I do still like my DAC because it’s able to power basically all large headphones and it also powers my speakers, so I don’t see it as money wasted.
Perspective: My SO didn’t really care at first why I didn’t want to use the built-in TV speakers, but rather install some higher-end speakers and a DAC to drive them. After a while, she went to visit a friend and came back to celebrate our setup.
Value: Do you need a super-big, expensive TV or a smaller, higher PPI TV that you can sit closer to? What you really want is clarity, brightness, color, and smooth video. If people could never afford such a display and only had crappy TVs with bad video sources and only some smartphones as an alternative, the smartphone beats everything they know, of course. But if they could never afford high quality video sources and displays, how could they appreciate those things?
IMHO better than average is enough for everyday life. There’s more to life than spending money and not experiencing life to the fullest. That means I focused on a nicer Bluetooth headset, some better than average speakers for both TV and PC, … so I simply approach the point of diminishing returns on the quality scale, knowing full well I could do much better. But it’s not worth the effort to me if it slowly turns into either a game of high spending or a full-blown refurbishing hobby. Same with my car: I buy them used at about 4~6 years old and sell them at 8~10 years old, spending the least amount of money while driving mostly luxury cars with lots and lots of extras.
I do value high fidelity media, but frankly I can’t say that I notice a difference between say, 320 kbps mp3 audio and FLAC audio-- and yes I have a nice DAC + headphones so there’s no bottlenecks. I used to have all my music as FLAC files but these days I don’t have the $$$ to buy more storage so I find myself converting everything to 320 kbps MP3 files and I’m okay with that.
For movies, I’ve only got 1080p monitors + a 720p projector so for the most part I just download 1080p movies. I burn movies and TV shows to Blu-Ray discs so for some S-tier stuff I’ll download the 4K release and burn it to a BD-R in hopes that someday I can afford 4K and all the damn PC hardware upgrades that’s going to require. But I’m in no rush, 1080p is fine by me and 720p on the projector is great.
I’m into photography, and I’m like you when it comes to lenses. Quality > quantity, any day of the week. I’d much rather choose a nice 40mm prime lens over a 17-70mm lens with mediocre glass.
My friends are kind of like yours but they know that when they want something of high quality, they can ask me and I’ll gladly do the research then give them several options. I really enjoy well-made products and I despise poorly-made products so much. As a result, I’m finally at that point in my life where quality purchases I made 15+ years ago are still working great and it feels good.
That said, I do try to keep my purchases to a minimum because it’s way too easy to fall for marketing + consumerism.
Buy once, cry once. Ironically it’s saved me a ton of money in the past.
I can’t tell the difference between the highest, top tier audio and like, decent audio, but shitty tv speakers or headphones and such absolutely kills me.
I never cared a lot. While I do notice the difference immediately, it never makes the experience differ in the long run. I have watched full length movies on the cover screen of my Samsung Zflip5 without feeling that I missed out on anything.
I have a nintendo switch which I have used a lot. Even though I have a nice 55" TV and a decent soundbar, I very rarely connect the switch to the TV. I much rather use it in handheld mode so I can sit in any angle in the sofa. I guess I value comfort a lot higher than high fidelity.
Yes. I spend a good amount of money on my home theater equipment. I want to see and hear the best media available to me. It’s why I went all-in on amassing a large collection of Blu-Rays and ripped them to Plex uncompressed. But I settle for convenience most of the time with streaming for new content.
Big fan of good quality music reproduction. I’m no audiophile, but I have a HiFi I’m happy with. Had the same set of speakers for 20 years, bought an Audiolab 6000a last year after suffering with a poor second hand receiver for a few years and it’s so nice to have dynamics and some punch back. Mostly paired with a Wiim mini or a NAD CDP.
I can tell the difference between 320 mp3 and FLAC (there’s some online comparison test / quiz that I can get right 80% of the time). I don’t have particularly good hearing, bit once you know what to listen out for then its quite apparent when it’s not there. Storage is cheap so all my CDs are ripped to FLAC now, because even if I can’t hear the difference on every track, why not?
My Mrs happily listens to music through her phone speaker or some cheap Bluetooth headphones. I know it shouldn’t, but it really annoys me. She’s also the kind of person who won’t stop to take a stone from their shoe and end up with a big painful blister on their foot
I’m one of those who don’t care and it annoys my friends. I can tell the difference when comparing setups side by side but when normally watching content, a lower quality doesn’t bother me unless you literally can’t read the words on the screen so anything over 720p is usually good enough. Maybe other people have different thresholds.
It’s also about priorities. If you consider portability good, then no sound system will ever beat your laptop speakers just because they are already on your laptop. I assume it’s the same for people watching Netflix on their phone.
I often can’t tell. I will also tweak other settings and my use so I am less bothered. I went from an Alienware m14 (2013) to a system 76 lemur pro 9 (2020) and was finally able to see the gap. I would make the font bigger or do things that took long during other chores, so the age didn’t always bother me. I’m still semi broke so I often compromise on my purchase of things when I am aware.
