Or when they help phone manufacturers enshittifying phones. They're the reason, why the "integrated DACs are too noisy" argument exists, and then they're telling you that unless you're willing to spend $500 on an audiophile DAC, $1000 on an external headphone amplifier, and $8000 on an audiophile-grade headphone, you'll be fine with cheap airpods.

Anyone ever try combining both to make a gold-plated amethyst fiber toslink cable for $25000 that wards off 5G interference?

When I was in high school, late 90s, I dated a chick whose mom worked in a bakery. She started work at like 2AM and for some reason I don't remember, my gf had to go there and she asked me to go with her...sure fuck it (we pretty much ran free back then, different time) and we went down there. About a half dozen middle-aged women making batter and dough and whatever they did and their boss, the bakery's owner.

He was in his early 40s, and was like the love child of David Lee Roth and Otto the bus driver from The Simpsons. Cargo shorts, dirty sneakers, Motley Crue tshirt with a blond curly mullet and an earring in one ear. For being 2 in the morning he was wide eyed and he practically exploded as soon as I walked in the door "HEY MAN HOWS IT GOING?! WELCOME TO MY BAKERY!! YOU LIKE MUSIC?! WHAT KIND OF MUSIC DO YOU LIKE?! WANT TO SEE SOMETHING?!" I was honestly on the edge of fight or flight for a moment but despite the coke or just how fuckin excited he was to have a visitor, he seemed safe, so I was like "Yeah sure, what's up?"

Leads me back to the far corner of the bakery to his office. There are speakers fucking everywhere. In his office he has racks and racks of high end stereo equipment, and he immediately launches into all this technical detail about the setup that I'm just nodding through...."SO THE SIGNAL COMES DOWN HERE THROUGH THIS SPECIAL CABLES...100 BUCKS A FOOT BUT ITS SO WORTH IT...THIS TAKES THE SIGNAL AND MUXES IT WITH THE AMPLIFIER THAN PIPES IT TO THE FLUX CAPACITOR THEN..." and eventually he wraps up and says "CHECK THIS OUT!!!"

Pulls out one of those gold, high bitrate CDs, Peter Gabriel's So, slots it into a CD player that by itself was bigger and more complicated looking than my whole stereo at home with so many knobs and shit, and cranks it to what he called about 30%. Lights blinking, animated EQs, level meters at the ready...

Red Rain kicks in and literally takes my breath away, not just in awe, but I mean the goddamn bass was so heavy and so crystal clear that it disrupted the airflow in the entire bakery. The volume was beyond screaming over, it was like you were standing on fucking stage in an arena next to the amps, but not only was it ear-shatteringly loud, it was crystal clear. Like the level of detail and fidelity in the recording broadcasted all these little human moments in the playing that I never had heard before and my mom pretty much blasted that record all the time for most of the tail end of the 80s. After a minute of Red Rain he skips to track two, Sledgehammer and holy shit, that bass riff on that system...felt like when you're standing waist deep in the ocean and a wave comes up with enough force to rock you on your feet before you recover.

And through all this, these women in the bakery just doing their thing, not a care in the world. Clearly a common occurrence there, 2 oclock in the morning, deep in an industrial area with nobody for miles around, this dude and his like $100,000+ stereo and him just running around like a madman making whatever the hell they were making.

Anyways, definitely nothing I would ever spend that kind of money on, but man, it was hard as hell to go back home to my shitty $20 headphones and my discman after hearing what $100k worth of high end stereo equipment sounds like lol

I don't think anyone with self awareness or love for sound or music would call themselves an audiophile tbf.

Alan Parsons was the sound engineer on Dark Side of the Moon, AND Abbey Road.

I think we can trust Alan Parsons. The dude put a frickin laser on the moon!