Why Do You Love Being an Audiophile?

I don't love being an audiophile. Don't hardly even like it. At all. What I love is music. Specifically, the cathartic pleasure that some music brings. It just so happens that even as hard as this is (building the kind of system that can deliver this), I get a whole lot more of that from a good system than by running around to concerts hoping for a good performance.

No. I do not live being an audiophile. Being an audiophile has required that I learn physics, acoustics, psychology, electronics. Woodworking. Soldering. Sheetrocking and sewing. I've had to learn more stuff about more areas of science than most actual scientists. And then after learning all that science to listen to the most whackily unscientific nonsense - because it sometimes turns out to actually work. 

Being an audiophile means walking into a store and asking to hear something and instead of "sure" and they actually let you listen you have to endure 5 minutes of questioning the likes of which you can never be quite sure how much they're trying to one-up vs actually help you.

Being an audiophile means having a system the whole reason for which is to disappear leaving only the music, only to have people who experience this magic want to talk about nothing but the system.

I do love sharing it with them though. And when I'm listening to it myself. The two times when I have to say its not so bad being an audiophile. 

Audiophile?  Not really......MusicphIle assuredly. Unfortunately getting to the best music reproduction for your ears requires you to graduate from audiophile academy a long and ardeous curriculum. And it's never ending education. When you think you got it you find out you are mistaken.
I do not give my opinions on equipment, everybody hears different but will ask for advice when something is bothering me with my system. Continous education!

You must be a musicphile as precursor to audiophile

 The chicks....

My grandfather pieced together a synthesizer that worked with tubes and he waved his hand over it to change sounds. He kept tubes, wires, capacitors, diodes, flux, soldering irons and many interesting things in two large flat metal boxes under the bed. I was fascinated by all of this, as a small child, and today I think I am the only adult in my neighborhood with a home audio tube amplifier.
Although I liked audio and might think myself a music luver, even an amateur audiophile, I think many audiophiles knowledge is not a lack of expertise, but they treat topics that are highly subjective as “ yes I know what is the best” and I don’t like the arrogance some of these same people have, including myself sometimes, about the subject. Blowhards, including sales people, are really irritating. The fun, easygoing and healthy exchange of ideas on websites like these are what I enjoy very much. High end Audio is just fancy boxes of wires that sometimes sound great, one should not take it too seriously. Great music is much more meaningful, but still even that is very subjective.