Are There Higher Rates of Audiophiles Among Aspies?

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I'm wondering if, due to increased sensitivity to light and sound than what is considered normal, are there higher instances of Audiophiles among Aspies? I feel like there could be. I haven't really seen any research on it.

When I say Audiophile I don't mean an enthusiast, though I'm fairly positive that there are Aspies that have a special interest in music and learn about all kinds of stuff about it and all that. I'm very interested in music and how to be able to reproduce it best and learning what makes it awesome. Back to the question though, I mean is there a higher rate of people who can hear the differences between say MP3 files and Lossless files in Aspies (maybe just in general the whole Autistic Community), than in the NT Community?

It's possible. I hear an incredible range of frequencies (you lose frequencies as you age, so a child should hear sounds a 20 year old cannot, etc), and for this reason the professional audio recordist I live with always asks me to listen to things he's editing. It has it's downsides, since the top high and low frequencies are painful. Oh, and yes, I can usually tell the difference between high quality audio files, and mp3.

Perhaps.

Though your description of audiophile doesn't give me enough to differentiate it from regular musicians.

I'm an electronic musician and while I'm still developing pitch-recognition and chord progression recognition skills, I can use my hearing to analyse aspects of other electronic music and I'm usually right.

I can tell the difference between MP3 and lossless audio. It's very subtle and I can't describe WHY i know they're different, they just are.

I can tell what the audio of a song might look like before actually looking at it.

By this I mean in a lot of electronic music for example, Dynamic Range Compression is used to make the music louder, but thereby crushes the dynamics of a song.

There's also brickwall limiting - putting a limit the max. volume can reach, and the music can't go any higher than that.

When I open the audio file in Audacity, it looks exactly like what I predicted - over-compressed, lacking in dynamic range, and brickwall limited.

I can determine how an electronic sound effect, lead, bass, drums, etc. could have been created.

But, like I said.

I'm not sure if this makes me your definition of an Audiophile, or if I'm just a regular musician with an ear for music and can tell what technical tools and devices and techniques have been used in a song to achieve the sound as it is.

Would love to have the opportunity to blind test people on the "lossless audio vs properly encoded and compressed audio" claim. I'm sure it's possible but I've never met anyone who could actually get it correct all the time. You may have to provide your own very expensive equipment because presumably stuff like my NAD amp and speakers or audio technica headphones aren't good enough to test with. Because the quality is only as good as the lowest quality component in the chain.
Maz

Back in the day an audiophile would be considered someone who preferred tube-based stereo amplifiers, high end speakers like Klipsch, and listened mostly to Japanese pressings of Steely Dan, Dave Brubeck and Chick Corea.

With a glass of chardonnay, of course.

I guess I mean someone who can tell the difference without really having much knowledge on the subject but can still tell that there's something about a sound or a song.

Maybe I shouldn't use the term 'Audiophile', though I'm not sure there's a word for being "more sound sensitive"?

I know that we are usually more sensitive to sound but usually when I see this it's seemingly about volume (dog barks bother me but not others for example) and not things like pitch, or direction, or quality or how they sound differently due to interactions by other sounds or physical objects, or things of that nature.

My personal opinion is that Aspies (or ADHD'ers) can hyperfocus in on something they like much more easily and become extremely adept at something by doing so.

Since music has a way to many people's hearts, it can hook us and keep us there obsessing over and it and observing every last detail of it.

Just my opinion, but I've been called an audiophile on more than one occasion and obsess over music from time to time.

Yes, I'm an audiophile.

For example, I CANNOT wrap my head around people being content putting up their crappy cell phone videos of live concerts and the like. Brickwalling microphones are a major pet peeve! A decent set of stereo microphones (or even a single-point or T-mic is more than sufficient in most cases). Even a decent Tascam, Sony, Olympus voice recorder does the trick. If people took even a few minutes and spent a few bucks to learn about mic sensitivity, they (and everyone else) would be a lot better off.

SNR and dynamic range of microphones is especially important. The higher, the better.

All master recorded or finished audio should be of a high sample rate (24kHz+) and bitrate. MP3s should normally be for personal use only and should be 320kbps or higher. Compressed shared files should always be in FLAC format to save bandwidth and disk space.

That is all. LOL

I'm quite a hi-fi snob, though at my age I doubt that my high-frequency hearing is good enough to tell me whether the delicate highs are being perfectly reproduced. I put my interest in hi-fi down to perfectionism. If I can't hear the treble and bass ends properly, or there are noticeable ugly distortions in the sound, I don't enjoy the recording very much, the imperfections stand out, and I wonder why anybody thought it was acceptable to offer up such rubbish when better recording and replay methods have been around for decades.

Strangely, I'm fairly tolerant of dynamics compression, as long as it's done well and not really extreme. I hate noise pollution from the outside world, and so I feel I'd be a hypocrite if I played my own music very loudly, so at the volumes I use, the quieter sounds would tend to disappear into the background noise, which makes movie soundtracks partly unintelligible, and the ambience and reverb tails in music are lost, so compression for me tends to improve things. Frankly, if it's done well, I can't hear the compression as such, except that the sound is better.

Me, my Aspie friend, and my Aspie Dad all share the same audiophile passion in common. We've never openly discussed it from an autistic point of view. But it's something we naturally had in common. I've never had the same depth of discussion on audio quality with an NT; not that it means anything.

When you think about it, it makes sense that a lot of Aspies would be audiophiles, we all have higher attention to detail, and increased sensitivity to sound. We can't turn off certain sounds in our heads, so I guess we would persue ways of getting rid of "tinny" sounds by persuing higher quality options.

I use Tidal, I have really expensive headphones, I have a headphone amp, and I always download lossless where possible. When I'm out and about, I just use the stock ear buds that came with my phone, because I know that with background noise at college and visual distractions, there is little point in my trying to enjoy my music anyway.

I only listen to music properly at home in my study, when it can just be me and the music.

I too care significantly about music quality. I never distribute my music in lossy MP3 format, I can't afford EQ Neutral studio headphones yet so I'm stuck using cr*ppy 'bass headphones' or cheap earbuds. Most stereos also aren't EQ neutral but pro-bass. I usually avoid listening to them anyway.

The quality difference is extremely easy to recognize probably due to our increased sensitivity while many others can't tell the difference at all.

Even many other electronic producers I know with an ear for the genre don't particularly care about quality and might still use bass headphones and such.

Some argue bass/sub-bass headphones are good for genres like dubstep and drum n bass but that's not true at all. It doesn't enhance anything - it's just turning the bass on the audio spectrum up to 11, to give every song a muffled, wooly and mushy sound.

I want to be able to hear the mid and high frequencies as well! In fact, the mid-range SHOULD be more easy to heart than the bass instead of being masked by it.