It often surprises me to see people with time, money, and knowledge settling for subpar experiences that have night and day differences to me. Even at my brokest (pretty darn broke), speakers, headphones, and glasses were always worth researching and some saving up, and the difference between what I’d end up with and the average always feels like it paid off tenfold.
I’ve got a surprising number of friends/acquaintances who just don’t seem to care, though, and I am trying to understand if they just don’t experience the difference similarly or if they don’t mind. I know musicians who just continue using generation 1 airpods or the headphones included with their phone, birdwatchers who don’t care about their binoculars, people who don’t care if they could easily make their food taste better, and more examples of people who, in my opinion, could get 50% better results/experiences by putting in 1% more thought/effort.
When I’ve asked some friends about it, it sounds as much like they just don’t care as they don’t experience the difference as starkly as I do, but I have a hard time understanding that, as it’s most often an objective sensory difference. Like I experience the difference between different pairs of binoculars and speakers dramatically, and graphical analysis backs up the differences, so how could they sound/look negligibly different to others? Is it just a matter of my priorities not being others’ priorities, or do they actually experience the difference between various levels of quality as smaller than I seem to? What’s your take on both major and, at the high end, diminishing returns on higher quality sensory experiences?
Depends. It’s a mix of all the reasons you’ve mentioned, and I’m sure this will vary from person to person. For me, high fidelity audio matters only with headphones, and if I’m listening to music. I can absolutely tell there is a difference with speakers but I don’t enjoy them as much so I don’t care as much.
Similarly I’m not much of a HD4k+ person when it comes to video. I do see the difference but for the most part my brain will filter most visual noise, issues and distortion away while I’m engaged in narrative. I don’t need large TVs nor too much high resolution. PC monitors/laptops/phone screens? I want every pixel you can give me, the higher the resolution the better. Completely different experience than TV. I’m annoyed when I can see the pixels on a screen I’m working on.
I’m with you on the binoculars and microscopes. Yeah, quality does make a huge difference and I would absolutely get the best if I can afford it.
Food- I’m a lazy cook and very picky about condiments. I really enjoy most foods plainly. I don’t mind if my stir fry got a bit soggy or if I forgot to salt the roast. I’ll eat it all the same and be content with it like it had been perfect. For me to really appreciate the difference in food quality you need to add significantly more than 1% effort, so I leave that to professional chefs.