Audiophile or Mastering Engineer?

Q: What's the difference between an audiophile and a mastering engineer? A: How you earned your bragging rights.

Photo by Jacky Watt on Unsplash

In the often eccentric world of audio there's a common denominator among those who appreciate top quality sound. With deep pockets, those who demand it will spend enormous amounts of money to acquire every last component required to command respect from peers and to buy peace of mind (or Piece Of Mind, if you're an Iron Maiden fan), will always quarrel with the question if there's still some elusive sonic detail left behind due to even the slightest 'inferior' hardware or cabling. From speakers, amplifier(s), and turntables to esoteric cables, room acoustics, and clean electrical power, there's no limit to the imagination or market––especially when you can pay $70,000 for a simple set of speaker cables. At the end of it all, what are we truly gaining? Ironically, these components are often still labeled, "consumer".

Mastering engineers demand top-notch audio quality as well, but what sets us apart is also a bit ironic. Mastering rooms may not necessarily invest in the 'n'th degree of any of these finite, often subjective components, and most definitely they don't all invest in the most outlandishly priced cabling. However, their components are dubbed, "professional". Isn't that odd?

Case in point: Wilson Audio WAMM Master Chronosonic speakers. These grand behemoths will set you back nearly $700,000US. Amplifiers to power them might run you $50,000/each--IF you wish to do them justice! What about the cables used to connect the two types of components together? Can you fathom $70,000? There's a market for it!

Well, mastering houses do invest large sums of money in their rooms and listening environments, but do they whip out credit cards or write checks for the couple of million you'd likely see spent in a sultan's penthouse at the top of the Burj Khalifa? Seriously, no. It's not for the same purpose!

Most mastering engineers aren't purchasing over-the-top high-end equipment to blow the minds of elites in the most lofty, opulent abodes we're only allowed to drool over in magazines on long-haul flights to Dubai. The mastering engineer buys tools to help them do a specific job for music producers. Here, the tools serve a purpose and are not meant to "wow" a customer.

When listening to music in a mastering room, it might surprise you to know that if a mix sounds lacking, harsh, or fatiguing, the mastering room will expose that, and instantly. Audiophile "consumer" systems aren't like that. Often those systems will make nearly any source sound better than lower-end systems--well, so long as the room is properly treated. Even the world's most expensive speakers might sound bad in a bad room.

But here's a fun quandary.

Why would an audiophile consumer spend half a commoner's mortgage to acquire the best hand-built speaker or interconnect cables on the planet, if the music they listen to was mastered in a studio built in 1980 using decent wiring and speakers of the time? Why spend more on a set of speaker cables alone than the artist or major label spent for the album to have been mastered to begin with? Why not finance an artist who could benefit from directly, and get a return on your investment? Wouldn't that prove to be more favorable bragging rights? Why not fly the artist to your penthouse to perform right in your living room?

And what is a consumer audiophile trying to hear?

Ahh!! We get to the serious side of audio, right? Ghost farts. That's what they're hunting! Paranormal activity or proof of life beyond the grave inside Beethoven's 5th! Yes, it would seem one could go so deep into this rabbit hole that bankruptcy, divorce, and subsequent child support will be worth every penny, shilling, ruble, or yen not sell their most celebrated and prized possession.

How did the audiophile community let this happen? It's really a disease. Honestly, it is. Even some of the most well-known manufacturers of esoteric and expensive cabling will exclaim, "You can't measure improvements in audio at this price point with anything but your ears!" Even the most decorated scientists and audiologists can't convince these super-expensive audio cable builders that you can measure improvements if they exist. Or rather, convince them to admit it.

Personally, I live in the world of reality. While complex musical sounds and sonic ability of certain materials can make a difference in the best of systems (often expressed as being more dramatic the better the other system components), our ears have a limit to their ability to detect changes in sound.

Even so, I can't fully qualify that a 0.0001% improvement can't be found in cables costing $70,000 vs. a set which costs $5,000. Worse, I can't say that the argument serves the buyer any more than to show off the hand-carved wooden logo on the cables so other audiophiles find themselves pining to plug the hole of doubt that their own system is (only now) far from perfect.

Back to being a mastering engineer. Nope! I won't spend so much on my equipment, because it doesn't matter! The equipment I use and the cabling connecting it all together have been carefully chosen and tested to be the best I've heard yet, and I didn't spend an insane amount of cash on any one component. Even the amazing Egglestonworks speakers I use are nearly 25 years old, and perform flawlessly for me. I bought them used for a quarter of their "new" price from 2002. Sure, you can buy some amazingly expensive Ivy's from Egglestonworks, but these are fine for my room and my budget. (My lesson: never knock a lower end speaker's abilities!) The Pass Labs X-350 amplifier I use is nearly 25 years old as well. I bought it used at 1/3 the price it was new. The speaker cables I use are World's Best Cables brand 7AWG Bi-wires and they sound notably better than more expensive Goertz cables I no longer use. Nothing against Goertz, but they were a smaller gauge, consisting of higher resistance and incidentally, by their interesting design, higher capacitance. My XLR short Star-Quad cabling between mastering components are from Benchmark Media.

I master music, and the results are great. Listeners never question the ability or connectivity of my equipment, and therefore, I don't believe I need to be a consumer audiophile. That's my bragging right.