I mean there is way harder to explains hobbies out there.

This is definitely not it.

I first need a way to explain it to myself

Some people collect shoes, I collect anime merch headphones

I don’t go the multiple headphone route, for the most part: I have three pairs for specific use cases (main, travel/OTG/, and exercise).

However, when it comes to cost, I justify it by arguing it’ll make more sense in the long-run. You make the big purchases looking ahead 5-10 years, by which time it’ll have paid off.

Why do some car nerds have more than one car? A sports car or vintage classic doesn’t take you to work any faster than a VW Golf.

Why would anyone get a fancy camera with nice lenses when it’s so much more convenient to use a phone to post to Instagram?

Why does anyone pay money to go to a nice restaurant, or take the time to make an intricate dinner when you can get most of your needed nutrients from a basic bean salad?

Audio and music is like wine or whiskey. You don’t need any prerequisite knowledge or experience to get wasted on a bottle of Jack Daniels. But when you start to notice the finer details, you might end up with new appreciations for it, and maybe the desire to learn more and try new and different experiences.

You don’t, you hide it like a drug addiction. Deception. Lies. Smoke and mirrors. Blackmail.

Don’t display them. If you buy pairs that look similar they’ll rarely notice. If a romantic partner questions where the money is going, say you have a sick relative that used to work for Sennheiser or Focal you’re giving money for surgeries and medication to that repays you in headphones. If someone finds out your secret, silence them by obtaining damning evidence of their own unsavory conduct and threaten to expose them if they tell anyone you’ve purchased 120 pairs of headphones in the last six months.

Just throw my 800S on their ears and they understand. Not ahrd.

I don’t… I’m a grown ass person and I can do what I want with my $$… unless you’re my wife… then I just come up with the most convoluted reasons

Hobbies are for our senses, pleasure, and well-being.

I explain that experiencing music in new, stimulating ways is giving me a lot of satisfaction and sparking my own creativity and ambition (I’m a hobby musician).

At that point, people usually stop asking. They probably get bored, but one or two friends actually got curious and asked me for headphone recommendations. You never know whom you might infect. :)

Ever see a golfer with one club in their bag? No, because you don’t drive with a putter, and in the sand you’re going to reach for your wedge, not your driver.

Crystal Method - I’m going with Empire Ears bass cannons. Neko Case - a sweet mid tuned Oriolus or Tanchjin.

I let them try my IEMs if they want. They either get it, or they don’t. So far, most have got it - but I think I have an easier time converting people who like bass.

Simple, exploit their lack of knowledge by not telling them how expensive my headphones are. My HD600s? $120 I think. My Moondrop Variations? $80 or $100 I can’t remember.

I just tell it like it is, I’m a fucking addict ¯\(ツ)/¯

I find it’s pretty simple once you connect with one of their sensory hobbies. My wife isn’t an audiophile, but we’re both foodies, so she understands my comparing of headphones in the same way she compares the French fries that we get at different restaurants. One restaurant has thick-cut fries, another has thin fries, a third fries them twice for that extra crunch, a fourth has normal fries, but a really good curry dipping sauce (Brasserie Beck in Washington DC, for those curious). Just like she loves evaluating the fries at restaurants and compares their flavors and textures, she understands that headphones are objects - or experiences - that I evaluate in a similar way.

For other people, it’s like keyboards. One of my friends really got into mechanical keyboards and built a whole bunch, many for himself, but also some as gifts for friends. He’s all about the sound and the feel, the clack or thock, the resistance or springiness of each key. I never really got into keyboards in the same way, I’m fine with a Topre for work and a tactile gaming keyboard for play, but we understand each other’s hobbies because we both understand the appeal of the underlying sensory experience.

I’ve never held a gun in my life, but from talking with people who have used guns, recreational shooting can be a similar sort of experience. Each gun has its own sound, its own recoil feel when fired, and its own action. Then there’s also ammunition and lots of different aspects to the experience of shooting.

Yet others enjoy the feel of driving. I’m not one of those people, but I can understand how people enjoy the experience of controlling a fast-moving machine, making it stop and go, and directing its motion using your hands and feet. Once you compare the sounds of different headphones to the different driving feels of different cars, they can understand more easily.

I think the vast majority of people have some sensory experience that they enjoy and can discern quality in. Food, alcohol, cast iron pans, coffee, keyboards, cars, films, the list goes on and on. I think reasonable people can understand that headphones and audio are the sensory experiences that you enjoy and discern even if they don’t discern them in the same way.

To anybody who actually cares (and whose opinion I care about enough to warrant explanation), I just explain how each pair has a different use and why that pair is better for that use than any of the other ones.