Music lover or audiophile?

I’m a music lover period.......

I bought mu current very high-end system 7 years ago and I haven’t replaced a single component.  I’ve added a 2nd pair of amps, an atomic clock and a cement rack in year one - did an “A-B test” for each of these, but I haven’t upgraded/changed the turntable, CD player etc. for different ones.

I don’t know or wanna know how al of this works - it’s a black box.  (Just like when I go to buy a new car - salesman always wants to pop the hood and explain everything - I tell him, “don’t bother - I don’t care what’s under the hood - I’ll take a test drive and decide)”

Whether I'm a music lover or audiophile is situational. I've always enjoyed music played on most any old system because I'm not expecting quality sound.

I can become an audiophile at live amplified concerts and audiophile systems. I've always been a critical listener at live concerts, in the vast majority of cases sound is horrendous, way too loud, astringent mids and highs! Too many sound reinforcement companies don't know what they're doing. An audiophile friend owns a sound reinforcement company, he does sound right, it can be done. I suppose the only thing that's ever made the bad sound event enjoyable was the ganja, alcohol and good friends. On the other hand acoustic instruments and minimal sound reinforcement can make for a very enjoyable qualitative experience.  I can also go into critical mode when listening to audiophile systems, its the expectation of quality that lends itself to qualitative judgements. It took many years of system building to get long term musical enjoyment from my own system. In the early years I would be happy with quality for very short periods of time. These periods of enjoyment increased in time as my system got better, to the point where today I'm never dissatisfied with the sound.

Still, despite no longer being dissatisfied, I continue to tweak my basic system, I always think I'm finished, and yet I find another thing to improve. As of today I can't think of a single thing I want to change, but based on past experience I can expect I'll be changing out something down the road.

And so it seems I'm finally a music lover when listening to my system, yet subconsciously still analyzing sound quality.  I suspect many of us are  in the same boat, coincidental music lovers and audiophiles when listening to our finely  tuned systems.

Heroin does take you to a certain place. Where does music take you ? And surely good sound facilitates that.

Neil Young put it best- sound matters. And to what degree one chases the gear to get to the quality being sought- well it's a matter of taste and priorities. To end, it's a blessing when as another wise old musician said-you get what you need!

Prof,

Although I have several versions (sometimes double figures) of the same classical piece, I’ll often pick the best performance over the best sounding one to listen to.