An Audiophile is Anyone Who Loves Audio Regardless of Monetary Status. Agree?

@rbstehno sorry your loss. Thats why certain audiophiles are paying over 20k just for the patricians. Guess they must be deaf

I’ve walked the shows and heard all the $100,000+ gear. If you are proud of that kind of excess you probably don’t really care about ‘the music’ or ‘the sound’ anymore, you are trying to accomplish something else (in your mansion built around your ‘sound system’ [as I’m sure you call it when referring to it from your yacht]).

If your system costs more than the studio gear that originally recorded it back in the day, you might be going overboard. If your system costs more than a contemporary studio, you should put that space to good use and let people record music in it!

I’d say an excellent level of quality and indisputable full-on ‘audiophile experience’ can be had for around 6k to 10k. Part of being an audiophile is the search for how best to spend the money you do want to spend and realizing you don’t have to make all the right choices the first time. Just enjoy the journey! 

And honest, with a little bit of study, lots of patience, some super smart choices and solid room treatment, you can have an audiophile system for much, much less than what I’ve stated above. But a certain subset of audiophiles won’t even talk to you. But all of them will offer at least one or two little, smallish suggestions. 

So dont listen to the million dollar babies... They have spent so much at this point that they could never question their own love, doubt their aural acuity or practically understand the absurd amounts of money they have spent for an experience that will ultimately not get them closer to the truth.

Aaah don’t worry about it...most of them probably rely wholly on suggestions from others for their gear purchase or don’t realize they are being upsold by dealers who stroke their buttocks to get at their wallets.

...and really at what point aren’t they just paying for more gold bricks be placed in their speaker cabinets as the most inert ‘sound dampening’ material.

...and remember, every guy with a sports car thinks he’s a racer. I mean really we all know the guy with the best car, or just really proud of his car and how that all goes. And just because your car is the fastest or the best it doesn’t mean you are the best driver. Some people I guess might need million dollar systems because they really need the help to hear into the mix, but probably more for the boasting. 


The Audiophile...

For me, part of it is loving the music and really hearing into the sounds. Part of it is trying to find what enhances your experience. Part of it is gaining greater context on both the music and sound reproduction by carefully moving music making machines in and out of your system. Part of it is realizing what is of real value to you in your life and making choices.

@brettmcee, I think you’re absolutely right, I think it is all about sound reproduction. Your example of the plane taking off is the perfect illustration. As an old DJ, trained as a sound engineer who worked for most of his life in the audio/video Industry, (and not at selling TV’s for Best Buy), I can say I have a pretty extensive knowledge of what audio is and my take on that is that being a real audiophile depends on many factors that are not only based on wealth. If I could compare quickly to another "hobby", I would say visual Art. Nothing is more subjective than what you can see and how you interpret it. What is your knowledge in the matter, what you can refer to, what you can afford to bring back home, who you will talk about it ... is Art a question of money? yes and no, just like audio gear. Part is fact, part is pure imagination. To judge it, what do you know about writing music? Playing it yourself? Can you differentiate cellos types, identify a saxophone? Would you know what type of mic to use to record an instrument? How to amplify it? How would you be sure that the reproduction is correct? Were you there in the studio? What system was giving the original sound? What single track equalization gave the engineer during the mix? what about the colour, timbre and realism he gave to it? Money don’t buy knowledge, and without knowledge, you can just guess, loaded or not. And at the end, or maybe at the beginning, there are your ears... have you measured seriously what and how they perform? How do they work today? I know mine are not what they used to be anymore, I am conscious of it and this definitely put a limit to what I would spend in any system. Just my opinion... :)

Yeah Tim (@noble100), and the term suggests sound quality comes before musical quality (in recordings). I prefer to think of us all as music lovers who want its' reproduction in our homes to sound "right".

Brett & vinny,

I think that we you are alluding to is the fact that there is an acceptable level of "indulgence" when buying luxury items and that exceeding this level (set by you apparently) is reckless and morally irresponsible.