Why do musicians have lousy Hi-Fis?

Dig Frank's system!

 

Still, that is a prime example of what most people are like when it comes to the sound of the music they listen to. I am not that kind of person though. I always aspired to something better than the all in one until I reached my goal within my budget.

 

Are you kidding? Most of the time the sound engineers at concerts have NO idea what they're doing.

I've been to tons of concerts where

a) the lead singer overloaded the mic and wouldn't back off it, so it ended up sounding like a squawking bird or

b) the bass was loud, overblown, distorted, and drowned all other instruments out or

c) the vocals were buried beneath the wall of sound from the instruments.

Live music in general (at rock concerts) sounds like $#*t. Which is why when my band gets out on the road, we are going to make sound quality one of the top priorities.

 

And many bar rooms, hockey arenas, etc. just sound awful

 

I would imagine than a lot of these guys have a significant other waiting at home waiting for some companionship. Others have kids.

Also, a lot of musicians would rather play it than listen to it. Most don't even hang around to listen to other musicians after the finish their sets.

 

I agree.

People see with their ears and hear with their eyes.

Ears lie. They are the most deceit-prone organs of sense we have.

As such, musicians hear music as their mind says it ought to be, not as it is, to an extent: they have to to be able to play in tune and in time under the varied circumstances they do. Not only that, the sound of a band, an orchestra, any group, any instrument is so different from the player's perspective than that of the audience that they don't think fidelity, over and above a certain level, is important, necessary or possible.

High end audio places started hosting chamber music, classical guitar, etc. events in store and quit when everyone who turned out had "$300 worth of ratty Sansui gear" and of the equipment the dealers had, which they weren't buying anyway, they liked small cheap two way speakers and low end integrateds the best.

That said, yes, there are big exceptions. But most musicians are not audiophiles and never will be. Wealthy ones with big houses will buy stuff that is expensive but that's because they can, they don't care that it actually does something sonically. I bought a set of La Scalas with both crossovers so dead the tweeters were out of circuit and the late original owner-a violist with the St. Louis Symphony for a long time, very respected teacher-never noticed. Wife said he listened to them all the time, and they had to be that way for years.

 

Just like society...some do and some don't. The average musician doesn't make much money to spend on HiFi. Disposable cash is spent on new gear, fixing old gear, studio time, travel, and another thousand things that come before HiFi gear.

I can almost guarantee these guys below have decent systems:

1. Someone in U2, Stones, Metallica, Green Day, Foo Fighters, RHCP, to name a few.
2. Jack White, John Frusciante, Vincent Gallo, Perry Farrell, Neil Young, Jimmy Page, Quentin Tarantino, PT Anderson.

But to most of these guys---they're like IPods to 95% of the people who post on this board. They are not bought for statement.

 

Wonderful pics guys!

 

I'm rushed and can't read the article, but I'v e heard the idea before. The argument was basically that musicians have such a good ear and a musical imagination, that they fill in the gaps and compensate for the deficiencies in poor sounding equipment.

IMO the premise might be wrong: should be 'SOME musicians have lousy hifis'

 

I am not saying that every rock live concert is perfect but if you talk about professional musicians with established reputation what you describe is the exception not the rule. If you talk about kids at an open mike, that's a different story.

 

Hey:

I would say this is true in a nutshell. I would also add as in my previous comments that many are generally insecure and competitive even though
this is often masked through an appearance of comaraderie.

Some of this is the nature of the Biz these days. Except for Hobbyists
or weekend warriors anybody trying to have a pro career on the bottom rungs(meaning not Black Keys, Adele,, U2, Wilco, Pat Metheny) is generally
when not rehearsing,practicing,gigging, ect.probably spending all extra time in
hustling and self promotion. This doesn't leave much time for chilling in front
of the Hifi.



[Also, a lot of musicians would rather play it than listen to it. Most don't even hang around to listen to other musicians after the finish their sets.[/QUOTE]

 

Just about every concert I attended sounded like crap. Harsh, brittle, bright, and very little bass.

Best sounding "live" music I've heard is when someone is playing their trumpet, or sax, or acoustic guitar unplugged.

 

That makes perfect sense to me and I hope it stops the wild speculation going on in this thread.

 

I know a few jazz musicians and they all listen to music and go to see other musicians avidly. Most of them have very good rigs.

 

Extreme Narcissism. i know it when i hear of it.

my father was/is that way. he was a nowhere'sville Bassist
for three or four different nowhere'sville bands throughout most of the 70's.

from what i understand of the many stories my mother has told me-

-she ran the lights for most of those bands, all this in the early years of their marriage-

- my father was not talented, nor did he have much of a true artist's passion.
he loved "performing" however, because it fed his extreme ego, made him feel much better about himself,
despite the fact that the majority of those whom were "enjoying" his "performance"
were often so drunk that they'd be just as likely to applaud a cat walking across a piano's keys.

my father had given up performing by the 80's, as my mother had mandated on him the ultimatum
of life as a "wannabe" musician, or life as a normal family man. he chose his family over his music, such as it was.
she had him trade his equipment off, in exchange for the formative components of the Hi-Fi that he eventually handed down to me around 1999/2000.

around 2005-ish, he had a veritable mid-life-crisis and decided he wanted
the amateur musician's life back, throwing away his ten-year career with C.R. ENGLAND trucking,
and getting in debt for a new bass guitar/stereo amp/quad bass driver cabinet (x2) rig
many magnitudes more lavish and expensive than anything he had had 25 years before.

that spelled disaster for my parent's 35 year marriage,
and, as far as i know to this day, spelled the end for my father
as anything but a worthless wannabe bass guitarist, living alone
with his ancient, but modestly wealthy mother.

in sum, he now has his self-glorification, and that seems to be all he really wants or needs...


in the end, all i can really say is that from my POV, excessive egotism seems to be a most common defining characteristic
amongst many, if not most musicians, at least those involved in Pop and Rock...

 

I love that Chinese table, hate those sofa chairs.

 

I know a few rock musicians, and they all have pretty good rigs too.

Not sure if I agree with the initial premise of this thread. A claim is made that musicians don't have good hi-fi gear - but there's no actual evidence to support this. It's just someone's opinion.

Yes, I'm sure some musicians don't have good gear because they don't have the money, or the interest, or the time, but to suggest that all musicians have bad systems just seems to be a wild assumption.

Donald Fagen and Walter Becker both have excellent systems and neither of them are classical musicians or (strictly speaking) jazz musicians.

 

Gallo was a writer for the now defunct "Sound Practices" magazine. He collected and dealt in vintage audio gear and especially Marantz.

His opinion of the 9 was the same as mine IIRC.

 

Yes.

The only rock bands I have ever seen live that had "good" sound were the Grateful Dead and the Pretenders. The latter good sporadically, the former all the time, or at least in their last 15-20 years.

Lou Reed had halfway decent sound on the "New York" tour.

Other than that, rock sound reinforcement sucks from a fidelity standpoint.

 

On McIntosh's facebook page they claim that a number of rock stars own their equipment. Bryston has a list of musicians and celebrities that own their equipment on their website.
FM Acoustics has a list on their website as well. However, these lists should be taken with a grain of salt of course, because we don't know if the equipment was actually bought or was given.

 

Bought or given is irrelevant as long as they (the musicians) have it which debunks this thread's premise of poor sound systems among musicians.

 

Not always true. A friend of the wives, a cellist, has assembled a very nice system with my help. Ayre front end, Dynaudio C4 Signature speakers. She's been asking about a turntable lately too.

 

I think you have a good point. Though I wouldn't say this applies to most musicians, it definitely applies to a lot of musicians. Especially with amateur musicians who think and act like they're better musicians than they actually are. For a lot of them, performing music is just an ego-trip and has little to do with actually creating good music or being skilled at their instruments.

 

This is true...

 

Most people in general have crappy little stereos, if anything I'd say the percentage of musicians with decent stereo systems is high than the average consumer.

A very good percentage of my customers over the years have been musicians to some degree, and several play more than one instrument quite proficiently.