The Airpods Audiophile

Not so long ago, I was an audiophile. Or I liked to call myself an audiophile. The Dictionaries & Wikipedia define audiophile like this…

au·​dio·​phile | \ ˈȯ-dē-ō-ˌfī(-ə)l \ : a person who is enthusiastic about high-fidelity sound reproduction

I would say that is a pretty accurate description. One small problem with that description though, which I will explain later.

For a few years, I was a hardcore ‘definition’ audiophile. I spent time joining groups of like minded people (my ‘hi-fi gang’ then, with whom I shared a lot of fond memories), attending hi-fi expos, scrounging online forums looking for deals in the used market, constantly planning upgrades, hunting high quality sources for audio, pestering relatives coming from abroad to carry hi-fi gadgets, wondering if I should go retro ( Vinyl records and players), debating the age old problem of Mp3 vs FLAC ( YES !! It is a real conundrum. Google only if you have lots of hours to kill).

I spent a lot of time and money collecting headphones, speakers, amplifiers, DAC, expensive wires to connect all these (YEP!! Regular wires won’t do. Do not google about it. You have been warned !!). I joined groups where I could collect good quality source files. I was constantly figuring out how to have the gigabytes large library available where and when I need it. A few years went this way. Then something changed.

I realized that the higher you go up in the audiophile journey, it’s a curve that rises slow. Meaning, spending increasing amounts of money brings you marginal benefits (Which, by the way, applies to a lot of things in life). And more better your equipments are, more pronounced were the artefacts with your audio sources (a.k.a “songs” for the common folks), and the hunt for ‘even better’ audio began.

And there was a problem of good quality content. Getting good quality non-pirated music was a task, was expensive and it lacked the variety that’s found in current gen streaming music apps. For the most of my audiophile journey, I spent looping Ilayaraja or A.R.Rahman.

To be honest, the above two are The part and parcel of being an audiophile, and are minor issues for a true audiophile. The main problem I mentioned above was that I was spending more time being enthusiastic about sound reproduction, rather than enjoying the music, and it was beginning to fatigue me.

And, I figured out that my listening happened during my daily commute, or during my work breaks, and for some time before hitting the bed. Carrying my heavy audio gear around with me was not an option and I was fine listening to regular ‘lo-fi’ audio during commute and at work. The sheer effort of bringing my hi-fi audio gear and the audio content next to my bed, and protecting it from my toddler, meant that I ended up listening to lo-fi before sleep.

Around the same time, I was trying to embrace minimalism. I decided that it was time for me to move on from being an audiophile and unclutter my audio gear, and sold of my gear at a discount to one of my hi-fi gang members. I was a recent convert into the apple ecosystem, and I decided to get an Airpods Pro, with the proceeds from the sale.

Airpods Pro, is a curious phenomenon. It is not the ‘first in market’ wireless earbud, it is not the best sounding earbud (but it does get close), it does not have the best noise cancellation, and yet in a short period, it became an indispensable gadget for me.

There is something about an well packaged Apple gadget - Either it changes you, or you change and adapt to it.

I was using Airpods with my phone, iPad and mac - with it seamlessly switching between all three, and when I was out running, I had it connected with my watch and stream music. Soon enough, I had spent more time with Airpods than with any of my audio gears which I owned before. And more importantly, I was listening to more music than ever. In 2020 I had listened to hundreds of new artists in Spotify, and found a quite a few favourite artists and songs.

I was listening to music and enjoying it, without having to worry about source, conversion, equalization, placement, acoustics, and without having to worry about waking up others. And I had managed to minimize my possessions in the process.

I no longer fit the definition of an audiophile.

I became ‘the Airpods Audiophile’ and I am extremely happy about it.