A recent article by Michael Lavorgna on the Stereophile web site caught my eye. Reflections on the Audiophile Image opens by wondering whatever happened to the idea of high-end audio as cool, just the thing for one’s bachelor pad, the stuff that separated the Hefners from the Harveys. Somewhere along the line, audiophiles became nerds when once they were studs par excellence.
I can’t say that I buy into this line of reasoning. I have been around for a solid chunk of audiophile history, after all, and I can declare with some authority that audiophiles have always been nerds. The whole stud thing was just an optical illusion. One must take care not to confuse marketing with reality. There was a time when fancy audio gear was being pitched as an aphrodisiac sure to render any female utterly susceptible to any and all advances from her drooling swain. But that doesn’t mean that it actually was or is an aphrodisiac. I would hazard a guess that it acts pretty much the other way around; most women would respond to those gleaming knobs and meters with the same lack of arousal with which they might view one’s baseball cards or elaborate Norwegian electric train set down in the basement.
Consider the delightful Rock Hudson-Doris Day comedy Pillow Talk. The predatory Hudson is the proud owner of a bachelor über-pad, the whole wired with remote control. Push a button and the cocktails appear; push another and softly seductive music starts playing; push another and out comes the bed, all ready and waiting. But the stereo set itself is a humdrum thing that wouldn’t warrant a second glance from any self-respecting audiophile. Hudson’s character was a parody of the impossibly suave Hugh Hefner-ish type who dwelled in a constant state of arousal and immediate gratification. So you’d think that the movie prop folks might have gone ape with the stereo set and turned it into something out of an audiophile’s wettest dream. But they knew better. If Rock Hudson started waxing eloquent about the transparency of his new all-copper interconnects, bimbo-du-jour would have been out the door before you could say Barry Goldwater. And when Doris Day wreaks her revenge by redecorating said über-pad, she replaces the stereo, not with a cheap-jack record player, but with an obnoxious automatic honky-tonk piano. (Sonically the piano would be superior to the stereo set—since it would be producing the “Absolute Sound” of live music that audiophiles consider the Holy Grail.)
Maybe the occasional schmuck ponied up his shekels for an Acoustic Research or Marantz setup and then waited breathlessly for the chicks to materialize. But when they didn’t, he either traded the gear for an Italian roadster or became obsessive about the sonic impact of Japanese versus American fuses.
Even nowadays you see the occasional bedroom come-on in a high-end audio ad. Germany’s Vincent Audio has tended to plop extraneous females into the midst of their ads—although their web site is a model of audiophile rectitude—and the Audio Advisor catalog invariably features the same leggy woman posing in stiletto heels beside merchandise ranging from preamps to zero-vibration cabinetry. No audio company seems to have caught on to the modern discovery that hot males also make for dandy promotional suckerbait, perhaps even better than women given that you can show a lot more male flesh before the prissies cry foul.
Guys who have no trouble getting laid regularly aren’t going to be taken in by hucksters promising them Sex Galore if they just provide themselves with a Luxman M-800A Pure Class A power amplifier that delivers 60W + 60W (8Ω) or 240W (8Ω) as a bridged monoblock. They don’t need it. They’ve got their bone structure, their skin tone, their musculature, their dental work, and their sheer persistence. Let’s face it: if you can afford truly high-end stereo gear, then you needn’t worry whether it enhances your sex appeal; that $16,000 price tag for the Luxman will buy you a lot of skilled high-class hookers or call boys instead.
Plus ça change, plus la même chose. Nerds will be nerds. And audiophilia is a guy thing, a nerd thing, a pastime best left to those of us who prefer to spend our evenings at home rather than panting after some chippie. After all, tonight’s conquest will be only a memory tomorrow—but that Luxman amp and Wilson Sasha speakers will remain at hand, like very faithful, long-lived, and expensive pets. So perhaps one should view the chronic nerdification that is audiophilia with relief rather than regret: high-end audio as manna for the guys who actually have some brains from the waist up.