>I don't like to consider myself an Audiophile (and I really don't think I would classify as one anyways) but I don't understand why people are okay with paying hundreds of dollars (sometimes over $1,000) on HD TVs and yet stick with free headphones or cheap speakers.
I cannot understand this myself. I mean, why pay thousands of dollars for HD TVs, period.
As for the cheap headphones part, who cares. They like the beat and the feeling of the music, not the details and the subtlety of the recording.
That's why they don't listen to jazz or classical that much.
What exactly musical subtlety do you miss on Justin Bieber, Metallica, Hip Hop, Skillrex, 99% of what passes for R&B today etc, by using cheap headphones? You'll miss some low-fi sampled, bit-crushed drum loops? Two-note synth motifs?
> I mean, why pay hundreds of dollars for HD TVs, period.
Can you get a good HD TV for less than "hundreds of dollars" (not sure where the limit is, $199?) that is any good, though?
Sure, there are cheap TVs. The cheapest LED TV in the 40-44 range on Amazon is $349, and it's some cheap no-name brand I have never heard of. It's probably not very good.
Of course, most people probably don't know much about what differentiates TV quality. I frequently see people watch horribly badly calibrated TVs (with things like motion smoothing turned on), and I frequently see people watch non-widescreen broadcasts stretched to 16:9. Whenever I ask, they say they don't see any difference, and some people even get upset when I offer to fix the settings.
> I mean, why pay hundreds of dollars for HD TVs, period.
Because you can't find HD TVs that cost under "hundreds of dollars"? :D
I don't watch TV that much, and bought a cheap 32" LCD for some videogaming + developing interactive applications for which I need a large screen, and had to pay ~$350 for it.
I cannot understand this myself. I mean, why pay thousands of dollars for HD TVs, period.
As for the cheap headphones part, who cares. They like the beat and the feeling of the music, not the details and the subtlety of the recording.
That's why they don't listen to jazz or classical that much.
What exactly musical subtlety do you miss on Justin Bieber, Metallica, Hip Hop, Skillrex, 99% of what passes for R&B today etc, by using cheap headphones? You'll miss some low-fi sampled, bit-crushed drum loops? Two-note synth motifs?