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

It's about mindset, not money. I have friends that have built most of their systems from scratch or kits. I also have friends that have paid $250K+ for a dedicated room and electronics. I consider both groups audiophiles.

Some people have a lot to time, some have a lot of money and some have a lot of knowledge and skill. Any of them that commit a significant amount of their time, money or knowledge/skill toward better audio reproduction could certainly be considered audiophiles.

World War II had almost nothing to do with accurate (whatever that means) reproduction of sound. I would bet on that.

erik_squires,

It is just me who noticed improvement (at least what seemed to be an improvement to me) with increase of the price of some component. I give it benefit of the doubt that it may not be always so, but examples are hard to find. It is always vague for some reason.

Of course, I am also not talking about $50 Bluetooth speaker vs. $200 000 speaker although it would be another example of "expensive happens to be better". I have been to a show, or two, and have also compared a few systems in the same store. Naively, more expensive ones were better. To me at that time.

If you can get Luxman 509X to hear at your home, you might like it more than your current one. The difference in price may be noticeable.

bretmcee,

There is no doubt that room has a lot to do with final performance. I suspect that the world's most expensive speakers may not sound as the world's best speakers once placed in the mountain cave, but overall the price does follow "quality". There may be items that are slightly better ("better" being "I like them more") while slightly less expensive than others. Still, this thread is full of generalizations and not many examples.

By the way, this definition may have, a fatal flaw...

"...to increase the enjoyment gained from the reproduction of sound in ones own private listening space."

It would exclude anyone who listens, or tries to improve something, anywhere else but in own private listening space. Concession should be made for headphone listening in public transport, I guess.

Also, do not forget that just owning a pair of speakers, not a Bose radio but separate pair of speakers, is a luxury in many/most of the people's minds. It is, to some extent, a wasteful indulgence. A hobby of those spoiled few who do not care about money. Spending $500 for a pair of speakers is about the same as spending $500 000. Unnecessary in a grand scheme of things. Number is different, but anything is too much anyway. Add prices of all three pairs of your speakers (or how many more you have) and you will get the actual price of your "speakers" for the purpose of "cheap vs. expensive" argument and socio-economic debate raging here.

@glupson 

“Fast-forward into the mid-nineteen-forties. The Second World War had just ended. Americans were picking over the technological remains of German industry. One of the things they discovered was magnetic tape; the Nazis had been using tape recording to broadcast propaganda across time zones. It was a remarkable invention. ”

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/how-bing-crosby-and-the-naz...