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?
There’s a degree to which this is a supply that creates demand, I feel. Maybe there’s a better way to put it.
When I had a 720p laptop, it was perfectly fine. I played games and watched movies and never felt like I was viewing things in low quality. Once I got 1080p, I could tell things were better, but they weren’t like shockingly, orgasmicly better. 720p, though, became significantly worse once I got used to 1080p.
The same thing happened prior to this with old box tvs/monitors, and with older video games. I played the shit out of FNV and the graphics and gameplay seemed fine. Having played modern games, though, FNV feels janky and LQ (despite having better than average writing).
I’m consciously avoiding 4K for this reason.
I’m coming around on audio to some degree, but still prefer to hit the “80% of perfect” before diminished returns start curving up, wrt earphones and such