If you follow me on Twitter you would have seen something that was a bit of a personal tragedy last week – the loss of my Shure SE535 headphones. In the years of my portable music listening experience, I cannot begin to explain how many sets of headphones I have destroyed or run through in some manner. Damaged chords, broken connectors, even snapped headbands have all been a part of my history with headphones.
This time it was one of my in ear monitors getting a car door closed on it to start my Thursday morning. As these are a device that I use for not only listening to music but also as my state required hands free device, as well as ear plugs at live events due to the incredible isolation, I made the decision to overnight the replacement set right away. This might seem like an odd story to share, but it brought up a very interesting conversation about AV professionals and their own personal equipment.
How often are we the shoeless children of cobblers when it comes to the technology that we use every single day? I know there are many out there that come home to their smart homes and relish in the ease of use that the technology can create. I understand that many of us are early adopters of technology because we spend so much time tracking it on a daily basis that we are primed and ready once the vaporware becomes a reality. Yet, there are still many standouts in our industry that don’t necessarily want to, literally, come home to their work.
Personally, I have committed what many would consider to be a sin by having discount flat panels, while I will neither confirm nor deny that there may exist a tube type television somewhere in my home. The surround sound system in my living room is still a part of the analog world – not even possessing an HDMI connection. In fact, the only real high end investment where my career in AV has had an influence on my purchasing power has been my selection of the one thing that I use every single day – my headphones.
I might just be shoeless when it comes to my adoption of technology in my daily life, but my reasoning has always been the fact that I work with the theories and the equipment all day and that last thing I want to do when I get home is have to troubleshoot something that isn’t quite working the way that it should. It’s an overly simplistic way of saying that what I have works for my needs and I haven’t seen a reason to upgrade just yet.
So why is it that my headphones are the exception to this rule? Simply put, they are the thing that I use every day. Having been a musician and an audio engineer, full frequency spectrum reproduction is important to me. Clarity of the sonic image and voice are vital for listening to music and being able to use the same headphones to have a conversation. I don’t often listen to music over speakers except when in my car, so having something that allows me that immersive experience is what matters to me.
Perhaps you want to have the smart home with all the advanced toys. Or perhaps, like me, it’s just one kind of technology that’s of dire importance for you to invest your money in purchasing. My question to you is which is it, and why?
