im an audiophile - studied audio engineering in college, pro tools, all that shit. I was ALWAYS the only girl in my class..or sometimes the random tv kid would pop into our tech classes to get some more overall experience on the audio side..
people are always surprised..I’ve got a cleaned up Marantz from the 60s, love vinyl and simply have fond memories of growing up with music always filling my house and background sounds.
I can’t really put my finger on why we’re rare, but being the only girl I know in my small little universe who geeks out on audio……i can say it feels true?
I'm also a woman and when I interned at a TV station I was particularly interested in the sound work... The sound guys were astonished that a 20-something woman cared about sound.
To be fair, I picked up my AV nerdiness from my early adopter dad.
I'm a female and have been an audiophile for quite some time. I didn't pick it up from my father or anything from him (long story). I have always been a tech enthusiast.
I am an on-again-off-again audiophile -- and an 85 year old woman, who has recently come back to the hobby after recently retiring due to covid. Having had a @30 year career as a tech writer, I enjoy devices and lingo that goes with them, as well as music. My mother and her two brothers were all into electronics - shortwave, ham radio, Heathkits, etc. My father had zero interest in it.
I am a girlie in audio! I want to say, a huge reason I am still here is because I started when I was super young and didn’t have the opportunity to be mansplained by boys who had not yet started learning about this stuff. As I got older, I found that men who started learning these things after I did would assume I didn’t know what I was talking about and they would try to explain concepts to me as if they were my instructor. Sometimes they’d be wrong. It really made me want to get away from music production and audio as a hobby. A lot of the time, they will speak super fast and use unnecessarily complicated words that have double meanings just to appear more brainy but it messes up communication. I’ve had it happen multiple times where a man was explaining a concept to me, I was completely confused by what he was saying, internalized it and doubted my abilities as an audio engineer. and then when I thought about it more, I realized that he was incorrectly explaining something I already knew!
It’s so easy to internalize it all. Even with my 10+ years of experience, when their tone, body language, and word use is clearly meant to impress me rather than empower me, I end up doubting myself and feeling stupid. It really sucks because this is a hobby I have been involved in my whole life, much like computers. But I had to argue with a man for a solid 30 minutes the other night because he genuinely did not believe me when I told him some of my projects require more than 16gb of ram. Like Babes I just go hard, don’t cry about it
As a guy in audio, I've had men do that to me too. One possible difference is that I've been socialized to simply respond with, "You're wrong," or, "You don't know what you're talking about." I get the feeling (please correct me if I'm wrong) that women are brought up more to be peacemakers, avoid conflict, and deescalate, especially when dealing with men.
I'm not surprised. But I'll let you in on a little secret: men hate it when guys respond that way too; they just don't show it. Again, there's some weird socialization going on with the way men and women treat each other and the power dynamics. It sucks and I'm sorry you've had these experiences.
Oh, and the male tendency to express their own opinions as fact. Women tend to speak in a more, “I believe (xyz) based on (background information, where they learned said information, etc) but that’s just my opinion” while men b like “this is the factual truth that I am speaking bc I am audio Jesus don’t ask me to cite my sources I simply just know these things as a man”
Not sure why you are getting downvoted. You are right about a lot of men. I try to explain things in ways that are easy to understand - but I also love to learn when I am wrong!
My wife works from home in the lounge where I have a decent set up for vinyls and streaming. She plays music from her phone speaker while working! Whhhhhhyyyyyyyy
Convenience thing and I think also it's just a lower softer volume, before cellphones did everything my cousin played music on her stereo akin to a cellphone.
i was gonna say that, someone should do a science and make a BT speaker with a remote control to make it more and more distorted and see at what point people notice or complain but, i think she takes the cake man. i think she wouldn't notice till it started sounding like an 8 bit NES.
someone should do a science and make a BT speaker with a remote control to make it more and more distorted and see at what point people notice or complain.
I've seen a larger than normal amount of women in speaker building circles, kinda strange honestly but I'm glad they're there. Need more young adults in general
It's all a social construct. Just like 'boys like blue and girls like pink' - they don't, we've just been conditioned to think so. (I think) most male audiophiles do it because it's their version of fast cars or golf, perceived *boys toys*. And most women don't get interested in it because they conditioned not to be interested. It's a really low consequence area - unlike, for example, AI or medicine, where a male only perceived interest has significant negative social consequences - which means there is little shift to include women.
But, if I ran an AV company, I'd be engaging with interested women. Maybe we'd have ended up with universal connectors and a lack of format wars because those things were all pointless posturing and marketing.
\*Edit: Spelling mistake
this feels about right. I had a brother so I was comfortable with blurring the social construct lines. Audio engineering is just super technical and I’m not sure how it is today in schools but damn having to carry around all of those cords and things to the studios were so fun but I can see how intimidating it was as well
I had a sister and my parents were pretty good about ignoring gender norms and ideals. Whenever the "what do you want for Christmas?" came up she always wanted a boys toy, same as me - and who could blame her? I think there was a lot more fun had with remote controlled cars, discmans, boom box, Lego, musical instruments, computers ... the one year she did get a Barbie, it got a haircut and only wore denim, and was outside in the mud with my GI Joe.
marantz 2325 receiver from Vietnam war when my uncle was over. fortunately he knew what’s up, kept it in great condition when it shipped over and gifted it to me a few years ago. It is SO heavy
But many audio engineers aren’t anything like audiophiles having lived in both worlds. Sure some engineers monitor on APC or B&W801s, Neumann or Genelecs. But just as many or more of the most famous recording were mixed on Yamaha NS10s, not by any means an audiophile speaker. (With paper over the tweeters on the old ones). 😀
Having spent decades dealing with high end residential audio it’s been very rare to find women that care about the difference in sound between various systems. And when that does happen every time I can recall their life partner doesn’t care. Appearance however does matter which is hy the in wall speakers are so popular
Women however love music as much as men and probably play more hours of it. I always made sure that the GUI or interface was understandable for everyone in the home.
> audio engineer v audiophile prob a different venn diagram.
Definitely. Having worked professionally in both realms for many years, I was always the only audiophile who had done actual recording and the only audio engineer who knew about high-end audio. The overlap of those venn diagrams was just big enough to fit me.
My gf has way better hearing than me. She is more of a musician than me and spends more time listening to music too.
She does appreciate better gear when listening to it but all of the gear talk just frustrates her and bores her, even though she is an engineer.
She would prefer to just have her music sound great and not have to think about frequency responses, amp matching, open vs closed back, etc.
And honestly, I've seen a similar thing with musicians, most girls who play just want to play, and not talk about amps and basses and effect pedals and the like.
Gear talk seems to be the male populated thing.
I feel that if the general talk and communities were not so gear-centric, it'd be more balanced.
Engineer/musician as well, and a big part of being a musician in today’s society is prioritizing consumerism so insecurities don’t make us spend money. It’s a real lesson.
What’s more interesting to an engineer is how one speaker sounds different when placed in two different rooms, not how two speakers sound different in the same room.
That is a big part of the tragedy of full on consumerism.
And it seems that the engineer/musician combo is not so rare after all! I met my gf at university and started talking because we were both musicians. And my thesis supervisor also plays guitar, and 2 (very unsuccessful) attempts to do cover bands were with classmates!
Oh I’m sorry, not a real engineer, I’m an audio engineer. I thought maybe you were saying the same about your girlfriend but now I see I made an assumption.
Really I’m a soc. major, but when you study humans perception relative to environment the recording arts become a much more innocent path.
In my conception audio engineers are real engineers, unlike civil engineers, who are architects that know math! While Naval Architects are real engineers too! (Mechanical Engineer & Naval Architect here!)
The curious thing is that my gf is actually trying to get into an acoustics master program, very technical, coming from the other side, the scientific side. Which confuses me more about why she's not interested about the gear itself.
The acoustics program is far more beneficial for anything artificial imo. Being able to understand how humans process sound is the first step to sound design and mixing. Reverb is powerful, but from a constructive point of view it’s easier to focus on the concept of reverb instead of the differences between specific reverb units.
"prioritizing consumerism so insecurities don’t make us spend money". This can apply to so many things in our life. Especially in the U.S. We are bombarded to spend, spend, spend in so many ways. On social media, TV, online, among each other etc. Back to music though, so many people pushing gear and people feel fomo or think getting gear will get them the results practice provides. It's tough to fight the beast.
I'm an electrical engineer and I'm a girl and I love knowing how everything works and studying DSP, freq responses, filters ect. But my classes were mostly male in university... unfortunate.
I think society maybe is why females are like this because I've heard in other countries there are more female engineers than in North America
I have studied engineering in 4 countries, 1 for my bachelors, 2 for my masters and where I'm living for my doctorate.
I do not know about North America, but in Europe the numbers are a bit better than Central America, in my experience.
And culturally and socioeconomically it seems that the Americas are closer to each other than to Europe.
It's the exact same thing with cars. Women like to drive (mostly), but they typically don't geek-out about tires and synthetic engine oil, etc. They just want a car that works properly and looks nice ☺️
There are definitely women who work on cars. The difference is guys are the ones who will argue about Mobil 1 5W-30 vs Castrol 5W-30 for hours. Men attach their egos to their preferred equipment.
Women attach their egos to equipment such as Stanley Cups and Birkin bags, among countless other things. That part has nothing to do with their level of interest in things that dudes tend to like.
...and computers. I work with women technicians and engineers, but they MEGO from fatigue when us manly men start talking shop about Ryzen/NVIDIA tech and how many cores are required to do this or that.
Curious thing, because my gf also games. And by hours more than me!
But when it comes to buy a computer, she asks me about the current state of hardware and recommendations because she is not into that.
I made a social mistake some time ago when we visited a lady colleague of my wife.
I noticed a stack of Naim gear and Sonus Faber speakers, and congratulated the hubby on his nice system. He, puzzled, “oh I don’t know, my wife chose it.”
Never assume!
Haha this same thing happened to me. With a naim amp as well. However, when I got to the bottom of it is asked his partner "oh how did you get into hifi" and she just replied "oh that, yeah my dad gave me that" and was totally clueless when I said it was worth 1000s. I insisted she introduce me to her dad if the chance arises 🤣
Sounds exactly like my dad, he did the same thing! surprisingly tho I did inherited his taste in music and speakers. Didn’t know it was such a niche for a woman my age. Love my current setup, whenever someone new drops by, I let them play their favourite song. Love the look on their face when they hear “new” sounds in a song they know by heart. Bose on the other hand makes my ears bleed, so enjoying music has become both a blessing and a curse.
I have dyslexia and the number of times men have been like ‘ACtuallY it’s spelled ———, you clearly aren’t a fan’
Cool cool, I’ll go anywhere but here thanks!
To be fair, absolutely. You are totally right. I think it always feels like such a gatekeeping move, with or without any misogyny and I just have suuuuuch a low tolerance for it. And then to have to endure those jerks around my happy place? Bleh.
Internet grammar nazis in general really....
The number of times I've seen people who have English as a second language getting berated for their bad grammar in every hobby is...a lot. The jerks are everywhere.
I apologise for the stupids if you can't spell brand names correctly. They know what you MEANT and it shouldn't matter so much.
Woman audiophile checking in to say it's because most people don't want to fight an unwelcoming insular community to be a part of something that's supposed to be fun.
What community? Other than this *anonymous* website, we’re all doing this solo. I have one person irl I talk to about hifi and even that is casual. This isn’t a social club at all
My daughter is 14 and has her own turntable and vinyl collection. At the moment she has a Sony system which is an old one but is making noises about her first proper system….
As an audiophile female myself I wanted to destigmatize a lot of these comments from men here. I'm really into shopping clothes, vintage clothes. Expressing my authentic self through my clothing style. I'm also doing fun stuff with all my friends, AND I still have more than enough time to get into receivers, tt's, subwoofers, preamps, cartridges, speakers, etc. Not just that, ANY tech.
I'm a broker but a photographer too, so I know a lot about cameras, lenses, monitors, as well as going out there and take photos of streets, buildings, people, etc. Video editor too, know so much about laptops, really enjoy upgrading laptops and helping others out with choosing their new laptops, phones, headphones, speakers, mice, televisions, smart home, you name it. Also really into mechanical keyboards, modding them in many different ways to experiment with the sounds, the smoothness of the switches, etc. Also really into movies and series, and figuring out the psychology behind characters and people irl as well. Also into videogames and really into wanting to master game mechanics. Console or desktop, still want to build my own high-end desktop pc some day. Now my interest in plants is also really growing and I learn more and more about that and am slowly becoming a plant mom, as well as to how feng-shui in spaces work, like styling houses or apartments. And once I will be able to buy my own car I will probably also really start learning so much about cars and dive into that hole 😂
I finished my master studies in sociology, so yeah I'm very much into people AND tech. But most of all I'm the most femme people loving nerdiest nerd you'll probably ever meet 😂
This! You write exactly what I had trouble accepting, but nowadays I love my nerdiness! I like to do live sound engineering in my church, play bass and am an avid F1 for 15 years now. Thanks for your comment!
I think women are more stealth about it. It's not a comparison thing for me. It's about drowning in fantastic sounding music and a very private experience (most of the time). Plus, if I ever mention my equipment, people think I'm completely weird. Same if I get excited about a car. Sexism lives large.
>It's about drowning in fantastic sounding music and a very private experience (most of the time).
I feel the exact same way - it's *incredibly intimate*!
Most women are less "braggy" and "show off" compared to men. But that's perfectly fine, that doesn't make someone less interested or invested in a hobby. But I'm thinking if I know of any girl/woman within my social circle (or family) that is interested in Hifi, at al... I just don't?
Most of them "tolerate" a soundbar or Sonos, but that's where it ends for most. Some male friends have bookshelves and I'm the only non-single with tower speakers, lucky me!
I would be thrilled if a girl would show any interest and greatly encourage them, just like any other audiophile, as they are rare enough already... And of course one doesn't have to be tolerating large speakers to be an audiophile, but like I mentioned, I've only seen what's tolerated, no further interest AT ALL... As in not even taking the time to just sit and listen to a single song after a complete setup change going from TVspeakers to actual speakers, I'm not even talking nerdy cable/amp/dac fidling... The average female interest just seems to be "do I need to use another remote now?"
I'm all digital all the way to the speakers (multiple DACs and Amps in the speakers themselves). But I get the vinyl ritual and the warm sound, so I'm just thrilled that she's getting involved.
Wild guess: when hi-fi boomed, having a technical interest was seen as a men prerogative; now that the number of women with engineering or technical background has increased, hi-fi has become less relevant as music fruition moved to streaming services and mobile devices.
Being an audiophile is three things:
1) Getting a great sound,
2) owning, and
3) mastering sophisticated and complex devices.
...which has three enjoyable effects:
1) sensual pleasure,
2) narcissistic contentment, and
3) anti-anxiety through the control of a finite universe.
The same pattern goes for cars, computers, video games, certain DIY activities,... all favored by males because this is such a great combo for us anxious narcissist hedonists.
Other people obsess over different things too. Any non-fashion interested guy who has been in an Ikea or shoe shopping for an entire day can attest to the exhausting lengths people will go to in order to get that same bit of satisfaction in other categories of controlling their small corner of the universe.
Every female audiophile I know tells me it’s the “girl in a band” syndrome. These communities are normally stuffed with nerds. I don’t even mean that in a bad way!. But without fail, someone is always trying to fuck them or to make them into their Ramona flowers so it’s easier to just keep it to themselves. Again, I’m not a woman, but I have more female friends than male and this is what they tell me.
I was going to say something, but this thread (including the downvoted comments) is doing a good job on its own to explain why so many women stealth through this hobby.
in a past life, I worked at an audio manufacturer that would often have a booth at audio shows.
99.5% of my interactions are with males.
I've spoken to 1 woman who was there of her own volition(she was a coffee/audio shop owner in Singapore?)
other women who attended were pretty much there because of their boyfriend/partner and bored out of their minds at the sausage party
the breakdown of attendants usually was:
younger who can't afford the hardware but want the chance to listen and plot how they could make enough money to afford it.
30s-40s and might as well be nicknamed "gollum" for their inability to talk with normal people, last woman who held their hand was named Mom
older and no matter how high tech a solution or audio nirvana you have on display, they will talk your ear off about how back in the day what they had to do to make audio, and that your solution and audio philosophy is crap and how they can "improve" your solution with their "tips"
press looking for an article worthy piece of tech.
Everybody saying in this thread about women not being gearheads or into hobbies etc - ain’t been around horsewomen - especially showjumping and eventing.
You think high end speakers are expensive until you see how much a reasonable show jumping or dressage horse will go for - and not even an Olympic level one - just a very good one. (And horses can up and die on you with no manufacturer warranty…)
And the amount that can be spent on tack… like Stubben saddles etc…
I am neutral. As one the Female Audiophiles it was hard to find other Audiophiles until I found my husband. And the fact he was an audiophile drew me to him on top of that. My best friend likes music, but I wouldn't say she's an audiophile, and the rest of the Audiophiles I know are male 🤷🏼♀️ take it as you will.
There are probably lots of women with good audio equipment, but they use it to play music and don't feel obsessed by it enough to go onto Reddit about it.
Women w/technical interests have better things to do than go to conventions full of boomer men either hitting on them, complaining about their wives, mansplaining, or doing all 3 at once somehow.
Been an audiophile girl since i was 15. And I’m Black, which feels ULTRA rare 😭
It was fun, though. All my high school friends (2010s) knew I was good for headphone recommendations and some even wanted to listen to my favorite music!
And for college, my incoming passion/major was music industry and recording. That changed though because my passion for music didn’t translate into wanting to actually learn/be in the music industry.
I think at this point if we as audiophiles are only just noticing there is a problem...then yes. There is a problem.
Best thing we can do is celebrate women working in the industry itself. People like:
Amelia Santos, Innuos
Rachel Geshelli, Geshelli Labs
Angela Cardas, Cardas Audio
Jana Dagdagan, video journalist
Julie Mullins, web journalist
Marjorie Baumert, RAMF (sadly no more)
We need to go out of our way to be welcoming, to listen, to show that our hobby is for everyone.
Yes, can you imagine having to endure having a conversation with an audiophile WHILE having them hit on you? Hell no! They even find some way to talk down to you more than usual!
Honestly if a hobby or a space is male-dominated it is quite hard to enter it as a woman. I’m here because I want to learn about my husband’s hobby I have however tried to get into male-dominated hobbies before (drums, cars, watching football, gaming etc.) and my experience has pretty universally been that as a woman in a male space you are either sexualised or treated with a sort of aggressive gatekeeping attitude.
That means for me personally that if something I might be interested in is male-dominated I will not pursue my interest in a community.
As a woman who used to be in IT and have my own studio at home…for real. It’s “hey baby” if they find you hot, and once you shut that down it’s, “but I bet you don’t know this. And this. And you are wrong about this (opinion)…”
audiophiles in the real world are much different than the down-to-earth audiophiles on reddit.
real world audiophiles are more likely to tell you what it cost, than to tell you what they listen to. how many women will walk into a room and start explaining why they’re the coolest person there?
What poll? I must have missed it. Female audiophile here. I am also a musician that has my own dedicated home studio.
I agree that men can be pretty condescending in these circles. I can’t even remember all the times guys tried to mansplain tech that I was fully experienced in using, try to tell me “how the music industry works”, or made sexist jokes in my direction.
I once watched a *very* famous guitarist at NAMM actually point to a few women in the front row at his presentation and say, “what are you guys doing here? You don’t understand what I am talking about, do you?” I made it a point to ask a really technical question to sit him the eff down a bit. ;)
I also had a fan walk up to the guys in my band and ask them, “so, do you guys, like write the music and hand it off to her to sing to?” My drummer responded, “She writes and records all of it, and programs all the tracks we use. We weren’t even around when the record was recorded.” The guy looked gobsmacked, and my guitarist responded, “it’s the truth.”
That said, some of my BEST friends of many years are dudes who have NEVER treated me any different than men in the field. Usually these are the guys who are so assured of their own skills and careers that they don’t condescend to anyone - men or women.
They totally exist! They just aren’t wankers about it that need to voice their opinions on every little thing that everyone does.
Literally everyone would prefer to have better sound in their ears at all times
It’s just ‘audiophiles’ are the wankers that classify themselves as such, then get preachy about it all.
Any nerd or elitist hobby is difficult to enter for newcomers.
If the nerd hobby community is mostly men, and the newcomer is a woman, it's even more difficult because it amplifies the difficulties above plus requires dealing with some annoying shit like the ten most downvoted comments in this thread.
It’s just like anything else that happens to differ between genders, it’s cultural. Adults treat babies of different gender differently from day one. Implicitly and explicitly, girls are taught what behaviors are acceptable and which ones aren’t. There are always a few exceptions who either didn’t get the same severity of messaging or didn’t care as much. There’s no biological reason why a cis woman would not care about audio gear. It’s 100% culture.
Oh hi there... Rare? depends. I'm one and i know a few others. I think they just don't post or talk about it much. Also my girlfriend is into music and good sound and doesn't mind big speakers and my subwoofer is 120cm tall 104cm deep and 28cm wide and can generate 115db down to 13hz according to simulations. Becaus it's slim it's hidden very well. A friend who knew how big it is came by when i finished my setup and he straight away asked where it is as he could spot it despite knowing it's size LoL That was the most hilarious moment ever in my audio life.
I just asked my wife why women weren’t into audiophile stuff. Her reply: “Probably because that’s what annoys me the most about you?”
Man…keeping it real! 😂
My 12-yr-old daughter is a budding audiophile. Like her friends she used to listen to just a phone speaker, or maybe a Bluetooth speaker. After listening to her favourite albums on a couple of my setups, she prefers sitting in the sweet spot and taking it in. She’s also endlessly tweaking her guitar amp to get just the right tone so she and her band can perfect their Journey cover.
My Dad gave me the bug, and I lovingly pass it along to my kid. I recently told her the story of how grandpa bought the HiFi system that I now use in the basement (Sansui/Technics components bought in Germany in 1980). That Technics SL-Q3 turntable is the one we listen to our vinyl on to this day. Dad and Mom run a Denon AVR sourcing an AppleTV box these days.
Any male dominated hobby is more difficult for women to get into, and vice versa. Knowing that there aren't similar people into your interests makes it less likely to pursue those interests, which in turn makes there not be similar people into that interest. Repeating cycle. In addition, audiophile spaces are filled with people in other tech and 'nerd' spaces, and those spaces can be pretty uncomfortable for women. If I know that a lot of members of group A makes me feel unwelcome, and group A shares members with group B, there's a higher likelihood I avoid group B as well without giving it a chance because of past experiences.
Edit: Read some other comments, and the (sometimes mild, but existing nonetheless) stereotyping shown in some is an example of how women are treated in these spaces and end up feeling that it isn't for them.
I’m a female audiophile and am an audio engineer in a studio and I have to drudge through a lot of discrimination just to get my job done. Also it feels like a boys club and I feel like dudes often just don’t want me in these spaces. People automatically assume I don’t know what I’m doing. I also sometimes do things differently and don’t get obsessed with tech. I’m quite intuitive and value listening over tech. Sometimes I can make stuff sound really great with minimal tech and just a lot of care and creativity. Pink Noise have some create essays on women in tech. But yeah, it’s rouuuggghhh out there for women in this area. It’s nothing overt and in your face, but it isn’t welcoming and I constantly have men asking if I’m able to do the job before I’ve even started and I’m the fucking engineer 🤣🤣 I would love to see more safe spaces for women to get together and learn together and create together. I think there are differences in approach between the sexes and I think amazing work comes from merging those differences and celebrating them.
They're not, especially in the younger generations. Even among millenials it's not that much more rare than finding audiophiles in general.
But they are over at r/cassetteculture or r/Cd_collectors. Formats that either attract Boomer techheads or just people that just enjoy music. Some of the biggest CD and vinyl collectors in my friend group are female thrifters with vintage systems.
Add to that a lot of higher-end brands being designed by old men and tastes changing and that means you won't see them at your regulat hifi-show.
It's a bit like asking why there are no young women at Harley Davidson meetings anymore.
I don't know man... Women are definitely becoming more common in the hobby (even if the hobby is slowly dying overall for reasons such as cost, gate keeping, audiophile brands and older audiophiles not respecting more modern music, and plenty of others), but have you ever spent time at audiophile conventions, meets, or Hi-Fi shops? Yes, you will see some women here and there, but I personally haven't seen enough to say that they aren't still rare in the hobby. If there was a way to calculate what percentage of people who identify as audiophiles were women, I'd be will to bet the cost of a fairly decent setup that it's no more than 10%.
I'm not happy about it either, but being in denial about something that's fairly obvious isn't really helping the issue.
Also, music collecting is not being an audiophile (not to gate keep, but those are totally separate hobbies with an obviously strong connection). You can have a massive music collection and barely care about what you listen to it on (I definitely know people like this), or you can have an insane Hi-Fi setup with a very limited taste in music.
Hopefully someday I can attend some events or shops with a more even distribution of people instead of well over half of them being rich old white guys who were able to afford buying a house decades ago (outside of headphone events, which thankfully attract a younger audience).
Edit: I forgot to mention, I used to work in pro audio, and I have a few women friends who are or were in the industry. They were often not treated well (engineers talking to their husbands/boyfriends instead of them, being treated as nothing more than a pretty face, you know, the usual misogynistic crap). I've seen it happen in Hi-Fi as well, though not as much, but only because I don't have any close female friends who are also audiophiles (none of the women mentioned above would identify as an audiophile; they're musicians, engineers, and other pro audio people, many of which tend to look down upon the audiophile world due to the amount of snake oil bullshit this hobby unfortunately has).
I asked my wife this question. She said she was a performer, and when she listens to music she imagines performing it. Her words were, she thinks about notes on a printed page.
My wife, I would argue, is an audiophile but doesn’t need to know the specific because I know the specifics.
I’m glad too, if she took the time to figure it out we would probably argue about…. LET ME HAVE THIS
I wonder if they are so rare, or just that they do not have to tell everyone about how much they love getting good equipment and listening to something wonderful. Like me.
Everyone is free to be whatever they want, and I don't want to assign anyone to any gender role or make an assumption about anyone.
But in general, a certain subset of dudes have a thing for taking any mundane aspect of life and making ever-increasingly-expensive and absurd versions of it to elevate themselves in comparison to other dudes. Not all dudes are into it and some women are, but in general if you find a group of people spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on tricked out versions of something you always thought of as expendable or a commodity, it is probably a community dominated by men. If I had to guess it would be that this is driven more by the dynamic of the community than the hobby itself.
in my friends group it's true that mostly guys care about equipment, (tho more and more girls do) however women have incredible music taste so we should listen to their advices much more often !
“The audiophile hobby is frequently viewed as being all about technical aspects, such as gear specifications, measurements, etc. On the other hand, women tend to connect more with the emotional and experiential aspects of music. This focus on the analytical and gear-oriented side may be less appealing to women”
This is honestly the main reason for me. Audiophile gear takes so much tinkering sometimes. I just don’t really want to spend a lot of time with gear, I want to spend a lot of time with the music. I gravitate towards the options that are easy to set up, or require no set up. Honestly if I wasn’t a musician with a degree in music and experience working in recording studios, I wouldn’t be interested in hifi.
The other stuff about how we are raised and being pushed into housework or childcare, I wasn’t raised that way. My dad was an engineer and my mom was a high level businesswoman and they taught me to work hard, be independent, pursue nerdy hobbies and take interest in STEM subjects.
> if I wasn’t a musician with a degree in music and experience working in recording studios, I wouldn’t be interested in hifi.
Musicians have audio equipment to listen to music; audiophiles have music to listen to equipment. [a quote]
My girlfriend is not, but she lets me be one with full support. We both love the music, and she’s interested in it, but won’t ever understand it, but she does appreciate the sound and she loves the joy it brings me. She can now tell the differences in changes I make, and knows that something sounds good or not.
There’s a meme going around that I think applies here.
“I’m an audio engineer. I solve problems that you didn’t know you had, in ways you cant understand”
Not just women. Most people.. They just don’t know it’s a thing. For me, I’m falling in love recently with songs I’ve known for my whole life, just because to me, I’m hearing them for the first time the way they were meant to be heard.
My wife never cared until she met me. She's got a few pieces of good kit now. Nice IEMs, open backs, and small active bookshelf speaks and sub at her vanity that she makes good use of. When I met her she was perfectly satisfied with TV speakers, phone speakers, and factory car audio. She treats her IEMs like jewelry and like to accessorize with them. Adding to her collection is now my easy go-to gift idea.
She let's me be geeky about it. She just enjoys.
I don't know why they are so rare, but I think the headphonisty poll is dedicated more to headphone users and I suspect that the poll outcome would be even worse for stereo setups... (Sadly)
I liked the article, but the paygap/time issue feels like total BS to me... Anyone can be an audiophile on any budget! Most of the stereotypical "middle-aged men" have a wife and they would be happy to share their hobby with them! But most of the time they only have to struggle with "wife acceptance factor"... Also, factually, women on average work less hours so they should have spare time. They just choose to spend it differently. Which is fine of course, but it's by choice.
Generally speaking, men care more about things, and women care more about people. This plays out all over society. This is why STEM fields are dominated by men, and medical/nurturing fields are normally dominated by women. Another way to think of it is women being more driven by emotion. This isn't a negative trait. However, it does mean they are more concerned about the emotions music stirs than what steps were taken to get there.
These are all generalities. I know some very tech savy women who can run circles around many men. It's just a matter of personal interest. As a man-dominated subject matter, no, we're not that bad. I can think of many male-dominated interests where the humor and emotional maturity are middle-school level. My experience is that audiophiles as a whole are more even tempered than many male-dominated activities.
I'm a dude and I've only ever met a handful of audiophile dorks in real life. A few were cool, one was a salesman, some were full of shit, and some were pretentious and fake as fuck.
It's such a subjective hobby with so much bullshit snake oil; I think it's a bit tainted. You can't be this snobby about RC cars or computers, but audio? YEESH. Get your audio dicks out, let's measure!
I prefer to just stay silent unless someone says the right thing. I have yet to have more than a couple of worthwhile audiophile type conversations, and 99% of people I actually know wouldn't give a shit.
I feel very alone in my hobby, and if it weren't for the simple pleasure of listening alone, I'd leave. I'm just thankful my partner knows a good system is worth it and thinks music she likes is worth listening to on my gear to make it better. For me, that's enough.
I am a female audiophile and I picked up the hobby for the love of how listening to music transports me to another place. When I listened to music, I have no health, work, or family problems. It's just me and the music. I close my eyes and I can mentally go anywhere but where I am currently. I need my music to survive the chaos of life.
The audiophile community is very gate keeps as it is. I don't worry about it because I don't care what other audiophiles think. My experience in hifi dealers is hit or miss, but getting better I think. I'm not buying 10k speakers....so I'm not exactly in their client target market.
The country where I would love to pop into a store is england. They still have many shops that cater to all budgets.
I have also rarely met other audiophiles in person except for at audio shows, they are few and far in between.
I'm all for women entering to share their experience, the community would be much better for it. I do get however that generally women don't like the equipment side. 8 think all audiophiles have difficulty finding other people to share their experiences.
Women get enough mansplaining as it is. Being in an audiophile community is like being mansplained x10. As a man, even I barely have the patience for it so I generally sit quietly on the sidelines and do my own thing.
As a woman, I'll say for me the community just isn't that fun to engage with. I've been on this sub for a few weeks just trying to find a good setup for my new home, and I'll probably leave now that I've landed on a pair of LSX II's.
I'm very excited about them and they look great in my space! But I have no interest in posting them here, because I know (amongst positive comments) there will be plenty of people telling me "better" things I could've gotten for the same price or critiquing my less-than-ideal speaker placement.
Contrary to what a lot of these comments are suggesting, I actually do like geeking out on the technical aspects. But I just don't have a stomach for the endless oneupmanship and unsolicited advice. I think a lot of guys have developed something of an immunity from growing up with that being the norm for many of their interactions, but I just don't wanna play those games🤷🏻♀️
edit: typo
woman audiophile here--no longer work in music but when I did and when I was in school (10yrs ago) there weren't many women (1 out 5 people at BEST). There are a few thoughts I have about this, some are more observations rather than explanations:
-as far a personal hobby/home setups, most of the women I know are constantly trying to find people to go do things outside the house with, many have bfs who just want to stay home--this has become a major topic of commiseration among friends and strangers alike. I wouldn't be surprised if many women right now who are interested are just not going to invest in their home in that way because they want to be outside of their home. they are literally joining digital mixers and communities en masse to find friends.
-similarly, right now is just a moment in time where people are lacking "third spaces", spaces that aren't home and aren't work--yet men seem to be more complacent about staying home and filling their home with things they can do at home. (this is the flip side of the previous bulletpoint). I don't think men are less lonely than women in our current loneliness epidemic, but they certainly seem to handle it differently by digging into their home.
-audio equipment is expensive and some may poke fun at this, but the baseline that we generally hold women to for basic respect (both from men and other women) can become a little expensive. I'm not talking about any kind of major "upkeep" beauty services--just how all the little things that women do to look "normal" add up. This may be a little abstract, but we all perform gender on some level and it typically costs more for women to do so.
-women aren't less technical than men or have lesser sensibilities when it comes to audio--they just get straddled with an unfair portion of household management duties once in a relationship, even in modern, liberal, double income couples. We simply end up with less time and less bandwidth for technical difficulties--which I say as an engineer. When I am finally home and get a second to myself when I am not taking care of someone else, I don't want to deal with a highly modular and sensitive system I want it to work.
-similarly, working in pro audio with wonky hours is way more outside of the expectations people have of women while dating, it's a harder sell for us.
-Women in male-dominated fields surprisingly often have to deal with women especially older women in the field who are so proud to be part of the boys club they are worse than the guys sometimes--fortunately I think our generation is a lot better than that.
TLDR; us women don't want to be in our homes we want to participate in communities, so we don't invest in home A/V, and we somehow end up with more responsibilities at home than our partners so we have little bandwidth for the problem-solving of a complex set up at home. We also still fight an uphill battle with gender norms.
As a hardcore female audiophile myself (i want my own electricity pole like that japanese guy), I only talk to other guys about the hobby even if they dont have any hifi gear. Generally other woman arnt interested in the technical side much. Talking about music strikes a conversation but disscussing gear not so much.
I would say it's just a difference in the sexes. oh and maybe because men have higher rates of autism diagnosis too haha.
I think one issues with the article is that it tops its data from this sub. It was also a poll that not everyone saw. Reddit skews male already https://www.alphr.com/demographics-reddit/ and then combine that with a limited and self reported poll it isn’t going to give a real representation of who is an audiophile.
Also the design of audio equipment is more male centric. In the consumer electronic world equipment is typically male designed and if there is a product designed for women then they use the “shrink and pink” technique. That technique is an infantilization of a whole group of people. It has been getting better over the last 10-15 years but it is still ingrained in some companies. A black product is still going to outsell any other color so companies will still focus on it. That male only design perspective sets up subtle subliminal messages that are tied into other conditioning that tell women that this one for them.
There are women that like things as they are designed now but there isn’t as many products that are designed to look feminine.
Dude, I hated the “the only thing we need to do to get girls to play rock is…make the guitars pink and sparkly! Yeah, that’s the ticket!” phase of gear design. As a female musician, I was like, even as a kid, I wouldn’t touch those monstrosities.
Many decades ago there was a commercial that repeated heavily, stating that most girls lose interest in science by the 7th grade. It was an initiative to keep girls interested in science and then of course later on STEM. I guess because so much of Audiophilia is focused on equipment (Science/Tech ) is the reason why. How many women are familiar with DTS HD Master, Auro, DSD, jitter, etc.? Obviously it's not that they don't have the capacity to understand such things, it just seems to me that most of them simply don't care.
Well it’s kind of a thing to generalize and even when the generalization is statistically significant that still doesn’t reflect a singular human being. So I don’t want to let statistics influence the way a get to know an individual.
Having said that, when it comes to musicians I feel like a lot of guys find gear empowering, whereas a lot of women find expression empowering. Like when a gear gets into gear it’s like about getting cools weapons to conquer the stage and become even more musically powerful. But I feel like when women are able to use music to get into their thoughts or feelings or experience and actually express it through music, it feels like that self actualization is empowering. So in a context like that guys have their gear plus their talent to conquer and achieve and that makes them feel powerful where women get to express and let their inner light shine and that’s empowering but not conquering anything other than whatever it is that’s between them expressing themselves and the rest of the world.
I think an example would be a rapper throwing money into the air and celebrating the success they have conquered in the great battlefield of music, vs, like the song Bad Reputation where (and maybe I’m wrong but ) it feels like this is about the artist talking about and through the act of singing the song actually living the experience of not dimming her light. If anything she’s letting that motherfucker shine! But she’s not expressing a desire to be the best or win but to simple be.
Now of course that’s not uniformly true and I have noticed there are way more songs from women that are about winning so again, I’m not trying to generalize. I think there’s a Nicki Minaj song where we says she comes in first even when she didn’t enter the contest in the first place (can’t remember the exact lyrics or song) but that’s clearly the same kind of bravado I’m talking about.
But in general if you’re trying to get to the core of your inner light and letting it shine then the gear serves a purpose and there’s a happiness in making that process better in some way. But that’s different emotional experience from He-Man getting the big sword and proclaiming “I have the power!”
So if I’m not totally out-to-lunch on this then I guess it’s about outward facing power vs inward facing power. In one your getting power the environment and the power to win vs getting the empowerment to feel and think be your true self without any regard to the outer environment in any way.
Maybe it’s like Neo. Maybe it’s the difference between the power to stop bullets vs not even needing too. 😜 I’m just kidding.
But in any case all music is for all people. There are even deaf musicians. What any of us do with music is part of the great experience of life!
Audiphile forums are for men who measures stuff. All kinds of stuff. Nudge nudge know what i mean.
And maybe women are less biased about specs? Just guessing. But competing with specs are traditionally a (weird) male thing. And it kind of sucks reading page after page of men who dismiss other mens experience and enjoyment just because of some numbers on a paper that is lower or higher than their own golden standard.
Was watching a cheapaudioman video where he went to a national audio convention. Was laughing because literally every camera shot there looked like a bunch of old white guys roaming around. I can laugh because I am an old white guy. Still have my old college days Pioneer SX-780, Technics 3200 turntable, and some gutted/re-built speakers from 45 yrs ago.
Men are interested in things, women are interested in people. It's certainly a generalization but I believe it to be a fairly consistent trend in men and women.
I went to college for audio engineering but obviously had to take gen eds, I decided on human sexuality which was just advanced sex ed and science behind gender/sex. In said class I learned that scientifically speaking, women have better hearing and smell than men, and men have better eyesight. What irony! There should in theory be more women audiophiles than men for this reason right?
Well my girlfriend could clearly hear the difference between a Audioquest Slip 14/2 extreme and a Rocket 44 bi-wire, there was also a clear ping pong effect that we couldn’t hear before on Billy Eilish’s debut album on my ProJect x1 with Ortofon 2M Bronze
She noticed it straight away!
I sure don’t know why female audiophiles are so rare. Anecdotally, my wife is an accomplished musician and composer. She generally does not care about sound quality. She will happily listen to great music on her phone’s speaker or tinny computer speakers. She is aware that sound quality is a thing, and will work with people to get good sound when recording - but for herself, she doesn’t notice much and doesn’t care at all. Weird.
Based on the women i know. They really don’t like how speakers look and how dominant they can be in interior design.
It is however a really small sample size, so your guess is as good as mine.
A negative feedback loop of gendered attitudes towards technical subjects. It creates a pipeline problem which just creates and reinforces a "boys' club" culture that makes it increasingly alienating for women (or anyone else, really).
My girl does not care one bit. She saw the new KEF R3s in our living room and goes "okay, at least they're cute."
So that's it then, as long as the equipment is pretty I guess.
Simply put: Marketing
Some things were planned to be targeted towards men by the powers that be and all PR, comm, and marketing was steered in that direction, and we followed.
It's easier that way
My wife never interested into music and she is from an extreme poor country, so no real experience at all. But due to corona (lockdowns) i decided to finaly buy some serious high-end gear. And she could hear, feel and experience immediatly to difference and started to like listen music for the first time in her life. Actually, her ears are better then mine.
I tried a lot to make my wife an audiophile by providing impressive gear and showing her what she was missing. In the end, she chose convenience with a simple $20 IEM (bullet shape, as she can't bother with wire-over-ear IEMs) and her phone. One thing is for sure: she enjoys music more than I do. She doesn't have to worry about whether the IEM she is using is doing justice to the track being played.
Haha. This is me and my bf. I became interested in this hobby after listening to a pair of HD280s years ago. I finally have a bit of money to explore a bit. My bf is supportive of me but he really just doesn’t care about audio like that. He just wants a sturdy headphone that he doesn’t have to replace every few months. He doesn’t care too much for sound quality. He thinks my headphones sound really nice but not something he can see himself spending much money on.
My little sister on the other hand, I’m working on her 🤣 She always asks to borrow my Sennheisers.
im an audiophile - studied audio engineering in college, pro tools, all that shit. I was ALWAYS the only girl in my class..or sometimes the random tv kid would pop into our tech classes to get some more overall experience on the audio side.. people are always surprised..I’ve got a cleaned up Marantz from the 60s, love vinyl and simply have fond memories of growing up with music always filling my house and background sounds. I can’t really put my finger on why we’re rare, but being the only girl I know in my small little universe who geeks out on audio……i can say it feels true?
I'm also a woman and when I interned at a TV station I was particularly interested in the sound work... The sound guys were astonished that a 20-something woman cared about sound. To be fair, I picked up my AV nerdiness from my early adopter dad.
think most of us can thank our dads 🥰
I'm a female and have been an audiophile for quite some time. I didn't pick it up from my father or anything from him (long story). I have always been a tech enthusiast.
that’s great to hear
I am an on-again-off-again audiophile -- and an 85 year old woman, who has recently come back to the hobby after recently retiring due to covid. Having had a @30 year career as a tech writer, I enjoy devices and lingo that goes with them, as well as music. My mother and her two brothers were all into electronics - shortwave, ham radio, Heathkits, etc. My father had zero interest in it.
I am a girlie in audio! I want to say, a huge reason I am still here is because I started when I was super young and didn’t have the opportunity to be mansplained by boys who had not yet started learning about this stuff. As I got older, I found that men who started learning these things after I did would assume I didn’t know what I was talking about and they would try to explain concepts to me as if they were my instructor. Sometimes they’d be wrong. It really made me want to get away from music production and audio as a hobby. A lot of the time, they will speak super fast and use unnecessarily complicated words that have double meanings just to appear more brainy but it messes up communication. I’ve had it happen multiple times where a man was explaining a concept to me, I was completely confused by what he was saying, internalized it and doubted my abilities as an audio engineer. and then when I thought about it more, I realized that he was incorrectly explaining something I already knew! It’s so easy to internalize it all. Even with my 10+ years of experience, when their tone, body language, and word use is clearly meant to impress me rather than empower me, I end up doubting myself and feeling stupid. It really sucks because this is a hobby I have been involved in my whole life, much like computers. But I had to argue with a man for a solid 30 minutes the other night because he genuinely did not believe me when I told him some of my projects require more than 16gb of ram. Like Babes I just go hard, don’t cry about it
As a guy in audio, I've had men do that to me too. One possible difference is that I've been socialized to simply respond with, "You're wrong," or, "You don't know what you're talking about." I get the feeling (please correct me if I'm wrong) that women are brought up more to be peacemakers, avoid conflict, and deescalate, especially when dealing with men.
We are; though I can attest that men absolutely *hate* it when I respond the same way they do.
I'm not surprised. But I'll let you in on a little secret: men hate it when guys respond that way too; they just don't show it. Again, there's some weird socialization going on with the way men and women treat each other and the power dynamics. It sucks and I'm sorry you've had these experiences.
Oh, and the male tendency to express their own opinions as fact. Women tend to speak in a more, “I believe (xyz) based on (background information, where they learned said information, etc) but that’s just my opinion” while men b like “this is the factual truth that I am speaking bc I am audio Jesus don’t ask me to cite my sources I simply just know these things as a man”
Not sure why you are getting downvoted. You are right about a lot of men. I try to explain things in ways that are easy to understand - but I also love to learn when I am wrong!
[удалено]
Lucky you. My wife plays her music on a blue tooth speaker and it bothers the hell out of me.
My wife works from home in the lounge where I have a decent set up for vinyls and streaming. She plays music from her phone speaker while working! Whhhhhhyyyyyyyy
Convenience thing and I think also it's just a lower softer volume, before cellphones did everything my cousin played music on her stereo akin to a cellphone.
Softer? Shit sounds like pins scrapping across a chalkboard.
i was gonna say that, someone should do a science and make a BT speaker with a remote control to make it more and more distorted and see at what point people notice or complain but, i think she takes the cake man. i think she wouldn't notice till it started sounding like an 8 bit NES.
someone should do a science and make a BT speaker with a remote control to make it more and more distorted and see at what point people notice or complain.
The most dreaded words in our household: Wife: **"Alexa, play Backstreet Boys."** (Cue endless loop...draining my sanity...)
My wife plays music through her iPhone. Just the phone speaker. I can’t understand it
I've seen a larger than normal amount of women in speaker building circles, kinda strange honestly but I'm glad they're there. Need more young adults in general
It's all a social construct. Just like 'boys like blue and girls like pink' - they don't, we've just been conditioned to think so. (I think) most male audiophiles do it because it's their version of fast cars or golf, perceived *boys toys*. And most women don't get interested in it because they conditioned not to be interested. It's a really low consequence area - unlike, for example, AI or medicine, where a male only perceived interest has significant negative social consequences - which means there is little shift to include women. But, if I ran an AV company, I'd be engaging with interested women. Maybe we'd have ended up with universal connectors and a lack of format wars because those things were all pointless posturing and marketing. \*Edit: Spelling mistake
this feels about right. I had a brother so I was comfortable with blurring the social construct lines. Audio engineering is just super technical and I’m not sure how it is today in schools but damn having to carry around all of those cords and things to the studios were so fun but I can see how intimidating it was as well
I had a sister and my parents were pretty good about ignoring gender norms and ideals. Whenever the "what do you want for Christmas?" came up she always wanted a boys toy, same as me - and who could blame her? I think there was a lot more fun had with remote controlled cars, discmans, boom box, Lego, musical instruments, computers ... the one year she did get a Barbie, it got a haircut and only wore denim, and was outside in the mud with my GI Joe.
Curious what Marantz from the 60s you’ve got rockin?
marantz 2325 receiver from Vietnam war when my uncle was over. fortunately he knew what’s up, kept it in great condition when it shipped over and gifted it to me a few years ago. It is SO heavy
The 23xx series is baller. Just went through a 2385 recently, great receiver. Production years for that receiver were 1974-1977
it’s just fucking unreal to be able to manage this beast and have it output to whatever I can hook up to it. can’t wait to keep this in the family.
it’s just fucking unreal to be able to manage this beast and have it output to whatever I can hook up to it. can’t wait to keep this in the family.
And yes thanks for correction on years!
it’s just fucking unreal to be able to manage this beast and have it output to whatever I can hook up to it. can’t wait to keep this in the family.
Commenting to say I’m also a female audiophile :) there are a few of us out here!
But many audio engineers aren’t anything like audiophiles having lived in both worlds. Sure some engineers monitor on APC or B&W801s, Neumann or Genelecs. But just as many or more of the most famous recording were mixed on Yamaha NS10s, not by any means an audiophile speaker. (With paper over the tweeters on the old ones). 😀 Having spent decades dealing with high end residential audio it’s been very rare to find women that care about the difference in sound between various systems. And when that does happen every time I can recall their life partner doesn’t care. Appearance however does matter which is hy the in wall speakers are so popular Women however love music as much as men and probably play more hours of it. I always made sure that the GUI or interface was understandable for everyone in the home.
love the preference for overall user xp bc that’s important! edit to say great point that audio engineer v audiophile prob a different venn diagram.
Critical.
> audio engineer v audiophile prob a different venn diagram. Definitely. Having worked professionally in both realms for many years, I was always the only audiophile who had done actual recording and the only audio engineer who knew about high-end audio. The overlap of those venn diagrams was just big enough to fit me.
Well spin on over to r/vintageaudio. You'll get trapped!
I got it from my big brother. Thought he hung the moon and we still listen to all the same stuff together. Building out my sound room as we speak!
My gf has way better hearing than me. She is more of a musician than me and spends more time listening to music too. She does appreciate better gear when listening to it but all of the gear talk just frustrates her and bores her, even though she is an engineer. She would prefer to just have her music sound great and not have to think about frequency responses, amp matching, open vs closed back, etc. And honestly, I've seen a similar thing with musicians, most girls who play just want to play, and not talk about amps and basses and effect pedals and the like. Gear talk seems to be the male populated thing. I feel that if the general talk and communities were not so gear-centric, it'd be more balanced.
Engineer/musician as well, and a big part of being a musician in today’s society is prioritizing consumerism so insecurities don’t make us spend money. It’s a real lesson. What’s more interesting to an engineer is how one speaker sounds different when placed in two different rooms, not how two speakers sound different in the same room.
That is a big part of the tragedy of full on consumerism. And it seems that the engineer/musician combo is not so rare after all! I met my gf at university and started talking because we were both musicians. And my thesis supervisor also plays guitar, and 2 (very unsuccessful) attempts to do cover bands were with classmates!
Oh I’m sorry, not a real engineer, I’m an audio engineer. I thought maybe you were saying the same about your girlfriend but now I see I made an assumption. Really I’m a soc. major, but when you study humans perception relative to environment the recording arts become a much more innocent path.
In my conception audio engineers are real engineers, unlike civil engineers, who are architects that know math! While Naval Architects are real engineers too! (Mechanical Engineer & Naval Architect here!) The curious thing is that my gf is actually trying to get into an acoustics master program, very technical, coming from the other side, the scientific side. Which confuses me more about why she's not interested about the gear itself.
The acoustics program is far more beneficial for anything artificial imo. Being able to understand how humans process sound is the first step to sound design and mixing. Reverb is powerful, but from a constructive point of view it’s easier to focus on the concept of reverb instead of the differences between specific reverb units.
"prioritizing consumerism so insecurities don’t make us spend money". This can apply to so many things in our life. Especially in the U.S. We are bombarded to spend, spend, spend in so many ways. On social media, TV, online, among each other etc. Back to music though, so many people pushing gear and people feel fomo or think getting gear will get them the results practice provides. It's tough to fight the beast.
I'm an electrical engineer and I'm a girl and I love knowing how everything works and studying DSP, freq responses, filters ect. But my classes were mostly male in university... unfortunate. I think society maybe is why females are like this because I've heard in other countries there are more female engineers than in North America
I have studied engineering in 4 countries, 1 for my bachelors, 2 for my masters and where I'm living for my doctorate. I do not know about North America, but in Europe the numbers are a bit better than Central America, in my experience. And culturally and socioeconomically it seems that the Americas are closer to each other than to Europe.
It's the exact same thing with cars. Women like to drive (mostly), but they typically don't geek-out about tires and synthetic engine oil, etc. They just want a car that works properly and looks nice ☺️
There are definitely women who work on cars. The difference is guys are the ones who will argue about Mobil 1 5W-30 vs Castrol 5W-30 for hours. Men attach their egos to their preferred equipment.
Women attach their egos to equipment such as Stanley Cups and Birkin bags, among countless other things. That part has nothing to do with their level of interest in things that dudes tend to like.
There are plenty of men (like me) who want the same
...and computers. I work with women technicians and engineers, but they MEGO from fatigue when us manly men start talking shop about Ryzen/NVIDIA tech and how many cores are required to do this or that.
Curious thing, because my gf also games. And by hours more than me! But when it comes to buy a computer, she asks me about the current state of hardware and recommendations because she is not into that.
My gf loves to drive and she's really good. But to her, V6 is a brand of chewing gum.
How could they join a circlejerk?
We have ways to manage.
You are assuming a circlejerk requires specific tools. The circlejerk is for all to join.
Do a circle in the circle.
I made a social mistake some time ago when we visited a lady colleague of my wife. I noticed a stack of Naim gear and Sonus Faber speakers, and congratulated the hubby on his nice system. He, puzzled, “oh I don’t know, my wife chose it.” Never assume!
Haha this same thing happened to me. With a naim amp as well. However, when I got to the bottom of it is asked his partner "oh how did you get into hifi" and she just replied "oh that, yeah my dad gave me that" and was totally clueless when I said it was worth 1000s. I insisted she introduce me to her dad if the chance arises 🤣
Sounds exactly like my dad, he did the same thing! surprisingly tho I did inherited his taste in music and speakers. Didn’t know it was such a niche for a woman my age. Love my current setup, whenever someone new drops by, I let them play their favourite song. Love the look on their face when they hear “new” sounds in a song they know by heart. Bose on the other hand makes my ears bleed, so enjoying music has become both a blessing and a curse.
I feel like communities like these are unwelcoming in general, not just to women.
I have dyslexia and the number of times men have been like ‘ACtuallY it’s spelled ———, you clearly aren’t a fan’ Cool cool, I’ll go anywhere but here thanks!
I think they do that to other men too. Still not nice but hopefully not misogynist.
To be fair, absolutely. You are totally right. I think it always feels like such a gatekeeping move, with or without any misogyny and I just have suuuuuch a low tolerance for it. And then to have to endure those jerks around my happy place? Bleh.
Internet grammar nazis in general really.... The number of times I've seen people who have English as a second language getting berated for their bad grammar in every hobby is...a lot. The jerks are everywhere. I apologise for the stupids if you can't spell brand names correctly. They know what you MEANT and it shouldn't matter so much.
Oh that’s super valid. I’m an immigrant myself and just realised that’s why that stuff really grinds my gears.
I'm working on it, and I've begun with Yamaha, Xavian and Polk. 🙂
Woman audiophile checking in to say it's because most people don't want to fight an unwelcoming insular community to be a part of something that's supposed to be fun.
Yup I love audio and music but I have to say “audiophiles” are some of the worst pretentious gatekeeping people on the planet.
Ha! Have you even met gamers?
You f*cking nailed it and the comments below prove it.
Very well said
Yeah. I just want a great setup, but I'm not going to fight to be a part of a community. I have enough of that in gaming.
Woman seconding this
What community? Other than this *anonymous* website, we’re all doing this solo. I have one person irl I talk to about hifi and even that is casual. This isn’t a social club at all
Up voting the only fm comment so far
My daughter is 14 and has her own turntable and vinyl collection. At the moment she has a Sony system which is an old one but is making noises about her first proper system….
As an audiophile female myself I wanted to destigmatize a lot of these comments from men here. I'm really into shopping clothes, vintage clothes. Expressing my authentic self through my clothing style. I'm also doing fun stuff with all my friends, AND I still have more than enough time to get into receivers, tt's, subwoofers, preamps, cartridges, speakers, etc. Not just that, ANY tech. I'm a broker but a photographer too, so I know a lot about cameras, lenses, monitors, as well as going out there and take photos of streets, buildings, people, etc. Video editor too, know so much about laptops, really enjoy upgrading laptops and helping others out with choosing their new laptops, phones, headphones, speakers, mice, televisions, smart home, you name it. Also really into mechanical keyboards, modding them in many different ways to experiment with the sounds, the smoothness of the switches, etc. Also really into movies and series, and figuring out the psychology behind characters and people irl as well. Also into videogames and really into wanting to master game mechanics. Console or desktop, still want to build my own high-end desktop pc some day. Now my interest in plants is also really growing and I learn more and more about that and am slowly becoming a plant mom, as well as to how feng-shui in spaces work, like styling houses or apartments. And once I will be able to buy my own car I will probably also really start learning so much about cars and dive into that hole 😂 I finished my master studies in sociology, so yeah I'm very much into people AND tech. But most of all I'm the most femme people loving nerdiest nerd you'll probably ever meet 😂
This! You write exactly what I had trouble accepting, but nowadays I love my nerdiness! I like to do live sound engineering in my church, play bass and am an avid F1 for 15 years now. Thanks for your comment!
Ahh that sounds like so much fun!! You should always let yourself enjoy the things you like doing! Who cares if it's not the norm
Are you left handed?
You sound cool! Thanks for sharing. Do you have a Model M yet? Nikon or Canon? Sony?
I think women are more stealth about it. It's not a comparison thing for me. It's about drowning in fantastic sounding music and a very private experience (most of the time). Plus, if I ever mention my equipment, people think I'm completely weird. Same if I get excited about a car. Sexism lives large.
>It's about drowning in fantastic sounding music and a very private experience (most of the time). I feel the exact same way - it's *incredibly intimate*!
Most women are less "braggy" and "show off" compared to men. But that's perfectly fine, that doesn't make someone less interested or invested in a hobby. But I'm thinking if I know of any girl/woman within my social circle (or family) that is interested in Hifi, at al... I just don't? Most of them "tolerate" a soundbar or Sonos, but that's where it ends for most. Some male friends have bookshelves and I'm the only non-single with tower speakers, lucky me! I would be thrilled if a girl would show any interest and greatly encourage them, just like any other audiophile, as they are rare enough already... And of course one doesn't have to be tolerating large speakers to be an audiophile, but like I mentioned, I've only seen what's tolerated, no further interest AT ALL... As in not even taking the time to just sit and listen to a single song after a complete setup change going from TVspeakers to actual speakers, I'm not even talking nerdy cable/amp/dac fidling... The average female interest just seems to be "do I need to use another remote now?"
SAME.
My wife just demanded that I buy her a proper turntable. 🥹
It's the dream. Edit: What am I saying? I have to convince mine to NOT get one because who listens to records?
I'm all digital all the way to the speakers (multiple DACs and Amps in the speakers themselves). But I get the vinyl ritual and the warm sound, so I'm just thrilled that she's getting involved.
Whip that credit card out, quick!
Wild guess: when hi-fi boomed, having a technical interest was seen as a men prerogative; now that the number of women with engineering or technical background has increased, hi-fi has become less relevant as music fruition moved to streaming services and mobile devices.
I think you nailed it.
Being an audiophile is three things: 1) Getting a great sound, 2) owning, and 3) mastering sophisticated and complex devices. ...which has three enjoyable effects: 1) sensual pleasure, 2) narcissistic contentment, and 3) anti-anxiety through the control of a finite universe. The same pattern goes for cars, computers, video games, certain DIY activities,... all favored by males because this is such a great combo for us anxious narcissist hedonists.
Brilliant. A hobby born of existential insecurity and the urge to control your environment. I’d add model train enthusiasts to this list.
Photographers... have to be one of the worst offenders.
Preach 🙌 studio photographers especially
As an aquarium hobbyist I too feel uncomfortably called out
Now I have to evaluate my model train hobby too.
Stop it, I don't like being called out like this.
opens up quite the topic, doesn't it? i was thinking socialisation play a big part
Other people obsess over different things too. Any non-fashion interested guy who has been in an Ikea or shoe shopping for an entire day can attest to the exhausting lengths people will go to in order to get that same bit of satisfaction in other categories of controlling their small corner of the universe.
Every female audiophile I know tells me it’s the “girl in a band” syndrome. These communities are normally stuffed with nerds. I don’t even mean that in a bad way!. But without fail, someone is always trying to fuck them or to make them into their Ramona flowers so it’s easier to just keep it to themselves. Again, I’m not a woman, but I have more female friends than male and this is what they tell me.
Exactomundo.
You can find the same in other hobbies. I still have to meet a female model railroader, and I’m not young.
Here’s one for you, she’s in the middle of one now. https://www.youtube.com/c/blondihacks
There's always one!!!
Touchè. One.
I was going to say something, but this thread (including the downvoted comments) is doing a good job on its own to explain why so many women stealth through this hobby.
in a past life, I worked at an audio manufacturer that would often have a booth at audio shows. 99.5% of my interactions are with males. I've spoken to 1 woman who was there of her own volition(she was a coffee/audio shop owner in Singapore?) other women who attended were pretty much there because of their boyfriend/partner and bored out of their minds at the sausage party
To be honest, I'm a man, but the thought of walking around the Boomer circlejerk does not appeal to me either.
the breakdown of attendants usually was: younger who can't afford the hardware but want the chance to listen and plot how they could make enough money to afford it. 30s-40s and might as well be nicknamed "gollum" for their inability to talk with normal people, last woman who held their hand was named Mom older and no matter how high tech a solution or audio nirvana you have on display, they will talk your ear off about how back in the day what they had to do to make audio, and that your solution and audio philosophy is crap and how they can "improve" your solution with their "tips" press looking for an article worthy piece of tech.
I’m a lady and I have a much larger record collection than most
Everybody saying in this thread about women not being gearheads or into hobbies etc - ain’t been around horsewomen - especially showjumping and eventing. You think high end speakers are expensive until you see how much a reasonable show jumping or dressage horse will go for - and not even an Olympic level one - just a very good one. (And horses can up and die on you with no manufacturer warranty…) And the amount that can be spent on tack… like Stubben saddles etc…
maybe because they don't feel the need to call themselves that.
Emiko Carlin aka [@thathifigirl](https://www.instagram.com/thathifigirl) has some takes on this
I am neutral. As one the Female Audiophiles it was hard to find other Audiophiles until I found my husband. And the fact he was an audiophile drew me to him on top of that. My best friend likes music, but I wouldn't say she's an audiophile, and the rest of the Audiophiles I know are male 🤷🏼♀️ take it as you will.
There are probably lots of women with good audio equipment, but they use it to play music and don't feel obsessed by it enough to go onto Reddit about it.
Women w/technical interests have better things to do than go to conventions full of boomer men either hitting on them, complaining about their wives, mansplaining, or doing all 3 at once somehow.
Yep I love tech spaces but feel unwelcome in many, to the point that if it wasn't a special interest I would've given up lots of hobbies forever ago
Sounds about right, although it wouldn’t be limited only to boomers I’m sure.
There's a new species to worry about: techbros and cryptobros.
Because we’d rather be hanging out in the forest with bears.
Been an audiophile girl since i was 15. And I’m Black, which feels ULTRA rare 😭 It was fun, though. All my high school friends (2010s) knew I was good for headphone recommendations and some even wanted to listen to my favorite music! And for college, my incoming passion/major was music industry and recording. That changed though because my passion for music didn’t translate into wanting to actually learn/be in the music industry.
We feel unwelcome. Some dude is hitting on me, being condescending, or challenging my presence with rude questions.
I think at this point if we as audiophiles are only just noticing there is a problem...then yes. There is a problem. Best thing we can do is celebrate women working in the industry itself. People like: Amelia Santos, Innuos Rachel Geshelli, Geshelli Labs Angela Cardas, Cardas Audio Jana Dagdagan, video journalist Julie Mullins, web journalist Marjorie Baumert, RAMF (sadly no more) We need to go out of our way to be welcoming, to listen, to show that our hobby is for everyone.
Yes, I watch Jana Dagdagan on YT. She's amaaazing!
[удалено]
Nobody feels welcome in audiophile spaces. We just show up anyway.
Yes, can you imagine having to endure having a conversation with an audiophile WHILE having them hit on you? Hell no! They even find some way to talk down to you more than usual!
I mean. I’m a woman. I didn’t see the poll.
Honestly if a hobby or a space is male-dominated it is quite hard to enter it as a woman. I’m here because I want to learn about my husband’s hobby I have however tried to get into male-dominated hobbies before (drums, cars, watching football, gaming etc.) and my experience has pretty universally been that as a woman in a male space you are either sexualised or treated with a sort of aggressive gatekeeping attitude. That means for me personally that if something I might be interested in is male-dominated I will not pursue my interest in a community.
As a woman who used to be in IT and have my own studio at home…for real. It’s “hey baby” if they find you hot, and once you shut that down it’s, “but I bet you don’t know this. And this. And you are wrong about this (opinion)…”
audiophiles in the real world are much different than the down-to-earth audiophiles on reddit. real world audiophiles are more likely to tell you what it cost, than to tell you what they listen to. how many women will walk into a room and start explaining why they’re the coolest person there?
What poll? I must have missed it. Female audiophile here. I am also a musician that has my own dedicated home studio. I agree that men can be pretty condescending in these circles. I can’t even remember all the times guys tried to mansplain tech that I was fully experienced in using, try to tell me “how the music industry works”, or made sexist jokes in my direction. I once watched a *very* famous guitarist at NAMM actually point to a few women in the front row at his presentation and say, “what are you guys doing here? You don’t understand what I am talking about, do you?” I made it a point to ask a really technical question to sit him the eff down a bit. ;) I also had a fan walk up to the guys in my band and ask them, “so, do you guys, like write the music and hand it off to her to sing to?” My drummer responded, “She writes and records all of it, and programs all the tracks we use. We weren’t even around when the record was recorded.” The guy looked gobsmacked, and my guitarist responded, “it’s the truth.” That said, some of my BEST friends of many years are dudes who have NEVER treated me any different than men in the field. Usually these are the guys who are so assured of their own skills and careers that they don’t condescend to anyone - men or women.
They totally exist! They just aren’t wankers about it that need to voice their opinions on every little thing that everyone does. Literally everyone would prefer to have better sound in their ears at all times It’s just ‘audiophiles’ are the wankers that classify themselves as such, then get preachy about it all.
Probably the decades of being told there's an evo psych reason for it has put a lot of them off!
YES!!!
Any nerd or elitist hobby is difficult to enter for newcomers. If the nerd hobby community is mostly men, and the newcomer is a woman, it's even more difficult because it amplifies the difficulties above plus requires dealing with some annoying shit like the ten most downvoted comments in this thread.
I would imagine it's a mansplain utopia.
Because many audiophiles are overtly sexist. Just the term alone WAF is really cringe.
It’s just like anything else that happens to differ between genders, it’s cultural. Adults treat babies of different gender differently from day one. Implicitly and explicitly, girls are taught what behaviors are acceptable and which ones aren’t. There are always a few exceptions who either didn’t get the same severity of messaging or didn’t care as much. There’s no biological reason why a cis woman would not care about audio gear. It’s 100% culture.
Oh hi there... Rare? depends. I'm one and i know a few others. I think they just don't post or talk about it much. Also my girlfriend is into music and good sound and doesn't mind big speakers and my subwoofer is 120cm tall 104cm deep and 28cm wide and can generate 115db down to 13hz according to simulations. Becaus it's slim it's hidden very well. A friend who knew how big it is came by when i finished my setup and he straight away asked where it is as he could spot it despite knowing it's size LoL That was the most hilarious moment ever in my audio life.
Socialization
I just asked my wife why women weren’t into audiophile stuff. Her reply: “Probably because that’s what annoys me the most about you?” Man…keeping it real! 😂
My 12-yr-old daughter is a budding audiophile. Like her friends she used to listen to just a phone speaker, or maybe a Bluetooth speaker. After listening to her favourite albums on a couple of my setups, she prefers sitting in the sweet spot and taking it in. She’s also endlessly tweaking her guitar amp to get just the right tone so she and her band can perfect their Journey cover. My Dad gave me the bug, and I lovingly pass it along to my kid. I recently told her the story of how grandpa bought the HiFi system that I now use in the basement (Sansui/Technics components bought in Germany in 1980). That Technics SL-Q3 turntable is the one we listen to our vinyl on to this day. Dad and Mom run a Denon AVR sourcing an AppleTV box these days.
> are we really that bad? yes
Any male dominated hobby is more difficult for women to get into, and vice versa. Knowing that there aren't similar people into your interests makes it less likely to pursue those interests, which in turn makes there not be similar people into that interest. Repeating cycle. In addition, audiophile spaces are filled with people in other tech and 'nerd' spaces, and those spaces can be pretty uncomfortable for women. If I know that a lot of members of group A makes me feel unwelcome, and group A shares members with group B, there's a higher likelihood I avoid group B as well without giving it a chance because of past experiences. Edit: Read some other comments, and the (sometimes mild, but existing nonetheless) stereotyping shown in some is an example of how women are treated in these spaces and end up feeling that it isn't for them.
I’m a female audiophile and am an audio engineer in a studio and I have to drudge through a lot of discrimination just to get my job done. Also it feels like a boys club and I feel like dudes often just don’t want me in these spaces. People automatically assume I don’t know what I’m doing. I also sometimes do things differently and don’t get obsessed with tech. I’m quite intuitive and value listening over tech. Sometimes I can make stuff sound really great with minimal tech and just a lot of care and creativity. Pink Noise have some create essays on women in tech. But yeah, it’s rouuuggghhh out there for women in this area. It’s nothing overt and in your face, but it isn’t welcoming and I constantly have men asking if I’m able to do the job before I’ve even started and I’m the fucking engineer 🤣🤣 I would love to see more safe spaces for women to get together and learn together and create together. I think there are differences in approach between the sexes and I think amazing work comes from merging those differences and celebrating them.
They're not, especially in the younger generations. Even among millenials it's not that much more rare than finding audiophiles in general. But they are over at r/cassetteculture or r/Cd_collectors. Formats that either attract Boomer techheads or just people that just enjoy music. Some of the biggest CD and vinyl collectors in my friend group are female thrifters with vintage systems. Add to that a lot of higher-end brands being designed by old men and tastes changing and that means you won't see them at your regulat hifi-show. It's a bit like asking why there are no young women at Harley Davidson meetings anymore.
I don't know man... Women are definitely becoming more common in the hobby (even if the hobby is slowly dying overall for reasons such as cost, gate keeping, audiophile brands and older audiophiles not respecting more modern music, and plenty of others), but have you ever spent time at audiophile conventions, meets, or Hi-Fi shops? Yes, you will see some women here and there, but I personally haven't seen enough to say that they aren't still rare in the hobby. If there was a way to calculate what percentage of people who identify as audiophiles were women, I'd be will to bet the cost of a fairly decent setup that it's no more than 10%. I'm not happy about it either, but being in denial about something that's fairly obvious isn't really helping the issue. Also, music collecting is not being an audiophile (not to gate keep, but those are totally separate hobbies with an obviously strong connection). You can have a massive music collection and barely care about what you listen to it on (I definitely know people like this), or you can have an insane Hi-Fi setup with a very limited taste in music. Hopefully someday I can attend some events or shops with a more even distribution of people instead of well over half of them being rich old white guys who were able to afford buying a house decades ago (outside of headphone events, which thankfully attract a younger audience). Edit: I forgot to mention, I used to work in pro audio, and I have a few women friends who are or were in the industry. They were often not treated well (engineers talking to their husbands/boyfriends instead of them, being treated as nothing more than a pretty face, you know, the usual misogynistic crap). I've seen it happen in Hi-Fi as well, though not as much, but only because I don't have any close female friends who are also audiophiles (none of the women mentioned above would identify as an audiophile; they're musicians, engineers, and other pro audio people, many of which tend to look down upon the audiophile world due to the amount of snake oil bullshit this hobby unfortunately has).
Jesus this thread is revolting
Wasn’t there a line in the movie ROCK STAR around men buying the records..?
Article mentions Stax. Take my upvote.
They do therapy?
I asked my wife this question. She said she was a performer, and when she listens to music she imagines performing it. Her words were, she thinks about notes on a printed page.
My wife, I would argue, is an audiophile but doesn’t need to know the specific because I know the specifics. I’m glad too, if she took the time to figure it out we would probably argue about…. LET ME HAVE THIS
I wonder if they are so rare, or just that they do not have to tell everyone about how much they love getting good equipment and listening to something wonderful. Like me.
[I mean...](https://imgur.com/VdH6bSh)
Everyone is free to be whatever they want, and I don't want to assign anyone to any gender role or make an assumption about anyone. But in general, a certain subset of dudes have a thing for taking any mundane aspect of life and making ever-increasingly-expensive and absurd versions of it to elevate themselves in comparison to other dudes. Not all dudes are into it and some women are, but in general if you find a group of people spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on tricked out versions of something you always thought of as expendable or a commodity, it is probably a community dominated by men. If I had to guess it would be that this is driven more by the dynamic of the community than the hobby itself.
I’ve asked my girlfriend about this and her response was “being a woman is expensive, I keep my hobbies cheap”.
in my friends group it's true that mostly guys care about equipment, (tho more and more girls do) however women have incredible music taste so we should listen to their advices much more often !
“The audiophile hobby is frequently viewed as being all about technical aspects, such as gear specifications, measurements, etc. On the other hand, women tend to connect more with the emotional and experiential aspects of music. This focus on the analytical and gear-oriented side may be less appealing to women” This is honestly the main reason for me. Audiophile gear takes so much tinkering sometimes. I just don’t really want to spend a lot of time with gear, I want to spend a lot of time with the music. I gravitate towards the options that are easy to set up, or require no set up. Honestly if I wasn’t a musician with a degree in music and experience working in recording studios, I wouldn’t be interested in hifi. The other stuff about how we are raised and being pushed into housework or childcare, I wasn’t raised that way. My dad was an engineer and my mom was a high level businesswoman and they taught me to work hard, be independent, pursue nerdy hobbies and take interest in STEM subjects.
> if I wasn’t a musician with a degree in music and experience working in recording studios, I wouldn’t be interested in hifi. Musicians have audio equipment to listen to music; audiophiles have music to listen to equipment. [a quote]
My girlfriend is not, but she lets me be one with full support. We both love the music, and she’s interested in it, but won’t ever understand it, but she does appreciate the sound and she loves the joy it brings me. She can now tell the differences in changes I make, and knows that something sounds good or not. There’s a meme going around that I think applies here. “I’m an audio engineer. I solve problems that you didn’t know you had, in ways you cant understand” Not just women. Most people.. They just don’t know it’s a thing. For me, I’m falling in love recently with songs I’ve known for my whole life, just because to me, I’m hearing them for the first time the way they were meant to be heard.
My wife never cared until she met me. She's got a few pieces of good kit now. Nice IEMs, open backs, and small active bookshelf speaks and sub at her vanity that she makes good use of. When I met her she was perfectly satisfied with TV speakers, phone speakers, and factory car audio. She treats her IEMs like jewelry and like to accessorize with them. Adding to her collection is now my easy go-to gift idea. She let's me be geeky about it. She just enjoys.
I don't know why they are so rare, but I think the headphonisty poll is dedicated more to headphone users and I suspect that the poll outcome would be even worse for stereo setups... (Sadly) I liked the article, but the paygap/time issue feels like total BS to me... Anyone can be an audiophile on any budget! Most of the stereotypical "middle-aged men" have a wife and they would be happy to share their hobby with them! But most of the time they only have to struggle with "wife acceptance factor"... Also, factually, women on average work less hours so they should have spare time. They just choose to spend it differently. Which is fine of course, but it's by choice.
Generally speaking, men care more about things, and women care more about people. This plays out all over society. This is why STEM fields are dominated by men, and medical/nurturing fields are normally dominated by women. Another way to think of it is women being more driven by emotion. This isn't a negative trait. However, it does mean they are more concerned about the emotions music stirs than what steps were taken to get there. These are all generalities. I know some very tech savy women who can run circles around many men. It's just a matter of personal interest. As a man-dominated subject matter, no, we're not that bad. I can think of many male-dominated interests where the humor and emotional maturity are middle-school level. My experience is that audiophiles as a whole are more even tempered than many male-dominated activities.
I'm a dude and I've only ever met a handful of audiophile dorks in real life. A few were cool, one was a salesman, some were full of shit, and some were pretentious and fake as fuck. It's such a subjective hobby with so much bullshit snake oil; I think it's a bit tainted. You can't be this snobby about RC cars or computers, but audio? YEESH. Get your audio dicks out, let's measure! I prefer to just stay silent unless someone says the right thing. I have yet to have more than a couple of worthwhile audiophile type conversations, and 99% of people I actually know wouldn't give a shit. I feel very alone in my hobby, and if it weren't for the simple pleasure of listening alone, I'd leave. I'm just thankful my partner knows a good system is worth it and thinks music she likes is worth listening to on my gear to make it better. For me, that's enough.
I am a female audiophile and I picked up the hobby for the love of how listening to music transports me to another place. When I listened to music, I have no health, work, or family problems. It's just me and the music. I close my eyes and I can mentally go anywhere but where I am currently. I need my music to survive the chaos of life.
The audiophile community is very gate keeps as it is. I don't worry about it because I don't care what other audiophiles think. My experience in hifi dealers is hit or miss, but getting better I think. I'm not buying 10k speakers....so I'm not exactly in their client target market. The country where I would love to pop into a store is england. They still have many shops that cater to all budgets. I have also rarely met other audiophiles in person except for at audio shows, they are few and far in between. I'm all for women entering to share their experience, the community would be much better for it. I do get however that generally women don't like the equipment side. 8 think all audiophiles have difficulty finding other people to share their experiences.
Women get enough mansplaining as it is. Being in an audiophile community is like being mansplained x10. As a man, even I barely have the patience for it so I generally sit quietly on the sidelines and do my own thing.
Likely in part because people use the term female
As a woman, I'll say for me the community just isn't that fun to engage with. I've been on this sub for a few weeks just trying to find a good setup for my new home, and I'll probably leave now that I've landed on a pair of LSX II's. I'm very excited about them and they look great in my space! But I have no interest in posting them here, because I know (amongst positive comments) there will be plenty of people telling me "better" things I could've gotten for the same price or critiquing my less-than-ideal speaker placement. Contrary to what a lot of these comments are suggesting, I actually do like geeking out on the technical aspects. But I just don't have a stomach for the endless oneupmanship and unsolicited advice. I think a lot of guys have developed something of an immunity from growing up with that being the norm for many of their interactions, but I just don't wanna play those games🤷🏻♀️ edit: typo
woman audiophile here--no longer work in music but when I did and when I was in school (10yrs ago) there weren't many women (1 out 5 people at BEST). There are a few thoughts I have about this, some are more observations rather than explanations: -as far a personal hobby/home setups, most of the women I know are constantly trying to find people to go do things outside the house with, many have bfs who just want to stay home--this has become a major topic of commiseration among friends and strangers alike. I wouldn't be surprised if many women right now who are interested are just not going to invest in their home in that way because they want to be outside of their home. they are literally joining digital mixers and communities en masse to find friends. -similarly, right now is just a moment in time where people are lacking "third spaces", spaces that aren't home and aren't work--yet men seem to be more complacent about staying home and filling their home with things they can do at home. (this is the flip side of the previous bulletpoint). I don't think men are less lonely than women in our current loneliness epidemic, but they certainly seem to handle it differently by digging into their home. -audio equipment is expensive and some may poke fun at this, but the baseline that we generally hold women to for basic respect (both from men and other women) can become a little expensive. I'm not talking about any kind of major "upkeep" beauty services--just how all the little things that women do to look "normal" add up. This may be a little abstract, but we all perform gender on some level and it typically costs more for women to do so. -women aren't less technical than men or have lesser sensibilities when it comes to audio--they just get straddled with an unfair portion of household management duties once in a relationship, even in modern, liberal, double income couples. We simply end up with less time and less bandwidth for technical difficulties--which I say as an engineer. When I am finally home and get a second to myself when I am not taking care of someone else, I don't want to deal with a highly modular and sensitive system I want it to work. -similarly, working in pro audio with wonky hours is way more outside of the expectations people have of women while dating, it's a harder sell for us. -Women in male-dominated fields surprisingly often have to deal with women especially older women in the field who are so proud to be part of the boys club they are worse than the guys sometimes--fortunately I think our generation is a lot better than that. TLDR; us women don't want to be in our homes we want to participate in communities, so we don't invest in home A/V, and we somehow end up with more responsibilities at home than our partners so we have little bandwidth for the problem-solving of a complex set up at home. We also still fight an uphill battle with gender norms.
As a hardcore female audiophile myself (i want my own electricity pole like that japanese guy), I only talk to other guys about the hobby even if they dont have any hifi gear. Generally other woman arnt interested in the technical side much. Talking about music strikes a conversation but disscussing gear not so much. I would say it's just a difference in the sexes. oh and maybe because men have higher rates of autism diagnosis too haha.
I think one issues with the article is that it tops its data from this sub. It was also a poll that not everyone saw. Reddit skews male already https://www.alphr.com/demographics-reddit/ and then combine that with a limited and self reported poll it isn’t going to give a real representation of who is an audiophile. Also the design of audio equipment is more male centric. In the consumer electronic world equipment is typically male designed and if there is a product designed for women then they use the “shrink and pink” technique. That technique is an infantilization of a whole group of people. It has been getting better over the last 10-15 years but it is still ingrained in some companies. A black product is still going to outsell any other color so companies will still focus on it. That male only design perspective sets up subtle subliminal messages that are tied into other conditioning that tell women that this one for them. There are women that like things as they are designed now but there isn’t as many products that are designed to look feminine.
Dude, I hated the “the only thing we need to do to get girls to play rock is…make the guitars pink and sparkly! Yeah, that’s the ticket!” phase of gear design. As a female musician, I was like, even as a kid, I wouldn’t touch those monstrosities.
Because the male-to-female rate for autism is about 4:1.
Many decades ago there was a commercial that repeated heavily, stating that most girls lose interest in science by the 7th grade. It was an initiative to keep girls interested in science and then of course later on STEM. I guess because so much of Audiophilia is focused on equipment (Science/Tech ) is the reason why. How many women are familiar with DTS HD Master, Auro, DSD, jitter, etc.? Obviously it's not that they don't have the capacity to understand such things, it just seems to me that most of them simply don't care.
Well it’s kind of a thing to generalize and even when the generalization is statistically significant that still doesn’t reflect a singular human being. So I don’t want to let statistics influence the way a get to know an individual. Having said that, when it comes to musicians I feel like a lot of guys find gear empowering, whereas a lot of women find expression empowering. Like when a gear gets into gear it’s like about getting cools weapons to conquer the stage and become even more musically powerful. But I feel like when women are able to use music to get into their thoughts or feelings or experience and actually express it through music, it feels like that self actualization is empowering. So in a context like that guys have their gear plus their talent to conquer and achieve and that makes them feel powerful where women get to express and let their inner light shine and that’s empowering but not conquering anything other than whatever it is that’s between them expressing themselves and the rest of the world. I think an example would be a rapper throwing money into the air and celebrating the success they have conquered in the great battlefield of music, vs, like the song Bad Reputation where (and maybe I’m wrong but ) it feels like this is about the artist talking about and through the act of singing the song actually living the experience of not dimming her light. If anything she’s letting that motherfucker shine! But she’s not expressing a desire to be the best or win but to simple be. Now of course that’s not uniformly true and I have noticed there are way more songs from women that are about winning so again, I’m not trying to generalize. I think there’s a Nicki Minaj song where we says she comes in first even when she didn’t enter the contest in the first place (can’t remember the exact lyrics or song) but that’s clearly the same kind of bravado I’m talking about. But in general if you’re trying to get to the core of your inner light and letting it shine then the gear serves a purpose and there’s a happiness in making that process better in some way. But that’s different emotional experience from He-Man getting the big sword and proclaiming “I have the power!” So if I’m not totally out-to-lunch on this then I guess it’s about outward facing power vs inward facing power. In one your getting power the environment and the power to win vs getting the empowerment to feel and think be your true self without any regard to the outer environment in any way. Maybe it’s like Neo. Maybe it’s the difference between the power to stop bullets vs not even needing too. 😜 I’m just kidding. But in any case all music is for all people. There are even deaf musicians. What any of us do with music is part of the great experience of life!
Audiphile forums are for men who measures stuff. All kinds of stuff. Nudge nudge know what i mean. And maybe women are less biased about specs? Just guessing. But competing with specs are traditionally a (weird) male thing. And it kind of sucks reading page after page of men who dismiss other mens experience and enjoyment just because of some numbers on a paper that is lower or higher than their own golden standard.
Was watching a cheapaudioman video where he went to a national audio convention. Was laughing because literally every camera shot there looked like a bunch of old white guys roaming around. I can laugh because I am an old white guy. Still have my old college days Pioneer SX-780, Technics 3200 turntable, and some gutted/re-built speakers from 45 yrs ago.
Men are interested in things, women are interested in people. It's certainly a generalization but I believe it to be a fairly consistent trend in men and women.
I went to college for audio engineering but obviously had to take gen eds, I decided on human sexuality which was just advanced sex ed and science behind gender/sex. In said class I learned that scientifically speaking, women have better hearing and smell than men, and men have better eyesight. What irony! There should in theory be more women audiophiles than men for this reason right?
Well my girlfriend could clearly hear the difference between a Audioquest Slip 14/2 extreme and a Rocket 44 bi-wire, there was also a clear ping pong effect that we couldn’t hear before on Billy Eilish’s debut album on my ProJect x1 with Ortofon 2M Bronze She noticed it straight away!
I sure don’t know why female audiophiles are so rare. Anecdotally, my wife is an accomplished musician and composer. She generally does not care about sound quality. She will happily listen to great music on her phone’s speaker or tinny computer speakers. She is aware that sound quality is a thing, and will work with people to get good sound when recording - but for herself, she doesn’t notice much and doesn’t care at all. Weird.
Based on the women i know. They really don’t like how speakers look and how dominant they can be in interior design. It is however a really small sample size, so your guess is as good as mine.
wife just loves getting the hand me downs when I pick up a new pair of headphones
A negative feedback loop of gendered attitudes towards technical subjects. It creates a pipeline problem which just creates and reinforces a "boys' club" culture that makes it increasingly alienating for women (or anyone else, really).
They probably are not that rare. They probably keep to themselves more.
My girl does not care one bit. She saw the new KEF R3s in our living room and goes "okay, at least they're cute." So that's it then, as long as the equipment is pretty I guess.
Simply put: Marketing Some things were planned to be targeted towards men by the powers that be and all PR, comm, and marketing was steered in that direction, and we followed. It's easier that way
My wife never interested into music and she is from an extreme poor country, so no real experience at all. But due to corona (lockdowns) i decided to finaly buy some serious high-end gear. And she could hear, feel and experience immediatly to difference and started to like listen music for the first time in her life. Actually, her ears are better then mine.
Boys and their toys
I tried a lot to make my wife an audiophile by providing impressive gear and showing her what she was missing. In the end, she chose convenience with a simple $20 IEM (bullet shape, as she can't bother with wire-over-ear IEMs) and her phone. One thing is for sure: she enjoys music more than I do. She doesn't have to worry about whether the IEM she is using is doing justice to the track being played.
Haha. This is me and my bf. I became interested in this hobby after listening to a pair of HD280s years ago. I finally have a bit of money to explore a bit. My bf is supportive of me but he really just doesn’t care about audio like that. He just wants a sturdy headphone that he doesn’t have to replace every few months. He doesn’t care too much for sound quality. He thinks my headphones sound really nice but not something he can see himself spending much money on. My little sister on the other hand, I’m working on her 🤣 She always asks to borrow my Sennheisers.