I was just having an interesting conversation with my girlfriend about audiophile snake oil.

Of course it started with discussion of too-expensive over-engineered connector cables. And then into expensive audiophile gear and also Neil Young's Pono player.

The interesting thing to me is that some kinds of audiophile gear do make a difference. How big of a difference depends on the exact piece of gear. And whether or not a listener can hear the difference depends on the listener. For instance, I can usually hear the difference between a 128k MP3 and a 256k MP3. Many people can't hear that difference, but since I can, it bugs me to listen to badly encoded songs. Video is similar. I can see the difference between a Blu-ray and a DVD, but many people (including my girlfriend) can't tell the difference and don't care.

The Pono player is like that, I'm sure. I'm sure that certain parts of its performance can be measurably proved to be superior to anything else in its class. And I'm sure that there are people out there who could tell the difference in a blind test. And I'm also sure that there will be people among that group who, when they can hear the difference, would be irritated to have to listen to products of inferior quality. And that's who Neil Young is making that player for. I say, more power to 'em. I bought the Empeg because of all the things that made it superior, things that most people wouldn't care about. So I certainly can't throw stones in the audio device glass house.

But here's what I found particularly interesting about our conversation: My girlfriend said that she believed that most of the people out there who are buying audiophile gear (whether it be the Pono player, an expensive amp, or whatever), are making the purchases not because they can hear the difference, but rather, because they want to be snooty and look down upon those who use inferior gear.

I argued that sure those people exist, but there are also actual audiophiles, people who, for products where there is a measurable difference, can hear the difference. Her response really got me thinking: She said that yes, those actual audiophiles exist. But there aren't enough of them to justify mass production of any piece of gear. The majority of the market is probably the clueless snobs. If it weren't for them, we wouldn't have enough of a market for any mass-produced audiophile gear. The snobs are carrying the market for the true audiophiles.

Wow, I wonder if that's true? And if, from a market standpoint, it makes sense to encourage the snobs, just to keep the ball rolling? I'd hate to live in a world where every piece of A/V gear was built and marketed to the lowest common denominator.