Why Don't More People Love Audio?

i use to spend my time describing good equipment to people and they would always ask "what about bose?". and when i told them about bose the never asked "what about kef, b and w, celestion, dahlquist?. what about magneplanar?" and to go from a pioneer reciever to a yamaha was a real leap. people love music but they hate to look like they don,t know what they are talking about so they stick with name brands they recognize. by the way,, just where does a person find a high end storefront in most of america? presently you could drive all day around st louis and find 5 or 6 of the brands people on audiogon are fans of. and to listen to any combinations is impossible. vexing for a knowledgeable person much less a newcomer. no wonder great audio gear is a very small part of the home electronics industry. and how many salesman are capable of selling it??

I noticed that in less than a month this thread will be 10 years old. Bravo!!!

We audiophiles may be in mystical rapture over a system's properties, but the rest of Them are not. For Them, the song matters more than the sound.

Well, I gotta' admit the song matters to me much more than the sound. I can listen to a good song and a crappy system. Remember AM radio? But to listen to crappy music on ANY system, I'd rather not.

People that love audio love it because the sounds stimulate a specific part of the brain and we find it pleasurable. Non audiophiles just dont get the same amount of stimulation. It is known that some people with bipolar disorder can derive more pleasure from audio. Actress Margo Kidder (Lois Lane from 76 Superman)in an interview on 20/20 talked about her bipolar disorder. She says a regular person hears Beethoven's 5th and likes it. A bipolar could experience rapture. Interesting from her perspective. Not all audiophiles are bipolar. It does point to our brains and how they are hardwired. Each and everyone of us is unique. That was the biological factor. Now for the environmetal factor. Take someone that grew up in a musical family. Maybe the exposure to all that music made them take an interest in music or maybe the childs brain is hardwired like their parents. There's your answers. Again im not saying that all audiophiles are crazy. Maybe the ones that make 50k a year and have aqcuired a 100k system over the years. That would be kinda extreme but to them maybe not. They just love music! Audiophiles just experience more pleasure from sounds than another person would because of the way their (our) brains are made or developed.