this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2024
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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?

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[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Audio, yes, to a certain degree. With video I don't care that much, as long as there aren't any details I'd miss on lower res. The resolution I use on YouTube is usually dictated by the audio quality that comes with.

Back in the 90's when MP3 sharing via modem was common, the "normal" bitrate was 128kbit/s, and people often commented that I refused to download and save them. 160kbit/s was OK. 256kbit/s was preferred.

I wouldn't call myself an audiophile, I just really hate it when instruments and voices sound like rusty chains being dragged across a washboard.

As I mentioned above, I'm not that picky. Possibly environmentally damage from sailing the high seas 20-25 years ago to watch myself favorite TV shows. I don't mind pixels and visual compression artifacts that much.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Agreed that audio improvements are higher priority than video ones imo, but real life visual improvements (e.g., better glasses/prescription, high quality binoculars if you have a use for them) seem at least as significant as audio quality differences.

Pretty much everything about Apple Music is worse than Spotify except for their catalog and their lossless audio, but it was still 100% worth the switch for me. Compression sucks.