Am I an Audiophile, a music lover-or both?

@whart   Right you are!  My latest music purchase was a Chandos SACD of Szymanowski's symphonic works. Up till the arrival of this disc a few days ago, I had never heard any of his works.  But I want to keep stretching the eclectic nature of what I will listen to. Each time I listen to it I open up more to it. At this point in my discovery of his musical approach, I don't know what other composers to liken his music to.  But then maybe he should just be appreciated for his own works and not suffer comparisons to others.  The discovery continues!

Jafant:
To my knowledge, only Hi-Fi Buys offers the high end equipment.  I went on line and saw a couple of stores I hadn't heard of, but it looked as though their brands were few.  Nicholson's  had been around for years, but I think the crash got them.  Hi-Fi Buys is a great place, although they won't let you audition a piece at your house.  

IMO, just because you find yourself specifically immersed in the sound, it doesn't mean much re: audiophile vs music lover.  You may be a music lover that's moved more by tone/tone color than most other music lovers.  Other music lovers may be unusually focused on rhythm, still others on harmony.  I don't see a lot of differentiation there.

A lot of composers of electronic music focus on creating specific sounds as much as/more than melody/harmony/rhythm.  Modern composition software like Omnishpere allows enormous control over every parameter of tone color.  Often, the rhythms in these compositions are layers of "canned" samples.  Melodies and harmonies are frequently quite simple.  These musicians are still music lovers (and music makers).

if you obsess over the "authenticity" of recorded sounds, you're wading farther into purer audiophile territory.  The pursuit of accurate reproduction doesn't mean you're not a music lover, but IMO it does mean that you're an audiophile.  If accuracy is the PRIMARY thing you care about, I'd say you're more audiophile than music lover.

And, apropos the "hat" approach to the topic, there are the record collectors, often folks who don’t have particularly good playback equipment, and in many cases, are buying a record because it is rare and special (and often of considerable value, either monetarily or to those in the know) who really aren’t listening to the records either. Yet another deep hole.
I think we can all explore the different dimensions of the hobby, its extremes, tangents and what may turn out to be dead ends and achieve some balance that is right for us in terms of the proportion of time devoted to each aspect- the gear, the tweaking, the musical enjoyment, the pursuit of the music for its own sake or for notable performances or rare recordings.
I also think that this is not a static thing-- that your focus could be on one thing for a while, then on another. Like I said earlier, it’s a personal journey, everybody has their own priorities, interests and biases. The thing I delight in most is turning somebody on to music that they had always avoided, ignored or thought they ’hated.’ There is this moment of: ’Gee, I should have had a V-8’ (a advertising slogan for a juice drink here in the States). I also have had the same experience- discovering music that I was aware of generally, but dismissed or just didn’t dig into at the time, and then realize how much I enjoy it. Sometimes I wonder if it is a ’time and place’ thing- i.e., something I enjoy now is something I might not have liked 20 years ago, but for some reason, I’m more open to it now. The enjoyable part of the hobby is the mixture of technology and art to yield something that, for each of us, is transcendent. (One hopes- the music that most moves me at a given time, and that can change, really takes me out of my present mindset for some moment in time-- it lets me see life from another perspective, sometimes sad or bittersweet, but touched in a way that few other arts reach me. (PS: I don’t cry at movies). :)

Much Thanks! handymann

earlier this year HiFiBuys reached out to Atlanta for a second operation.
Happy Listening!