Should people with no turntable or reel to reel be considered audiophiles?

Sokohgear I've been accused because of the extent I have labored to acquire a  high end system.  It's a putdown of my hobby.  It probably happens to all hobbyists.  

Grado has made quite a few high end and mid-fi moving iron cartridges.  I've heard some very fine moving magnet cartridges.  An audiophile could definitely own either of these non moving coil cartridges for a high quality analog system.

FYI-I read a Q&A on Van den hul’s web site recommending shortest interconnects, so I swapped out my 1.5 M one for  my .5M one. Had to move everything around and unplug it all. Van den hul says every time any cables are moved the wires have to settle down, so keep your cleaning ladies away from it all. I’ve told mine repeatedly not to touch anything, but they can’t keep their hands off thinking they have to dust. They ruined my brother in laws awhile back and he had to replace his cartridge.

This'll probably stir up a fuss: audiophiles are music freaks who have developed a facility for listening to the sound character of the intervening electronic components--when they choose to.

@geoffkait 

>>>>I totally agree. The human bean brain works through impulses. Many audiophiles hear via impulses through the ears but separated In between by the vast emptiness of space.

Oh my I am still laughing 

this thread went from good to bad and back more times than usual.

Fred - there are plenty of audiophiles that are not music freaks - they should enjoy music at a minimum, but are on a never ending quest to get it to sound the best they can. Some are more fanatical than others and are willing to spend a higher % of their net worth to get there. Some self described Audiophiles don't invest the time to understand their components and how they work together and just throw tons of $$ at their system. A stereo salesman's dream customer = always changing and not spending any time learning about the technology and equipment, just spending $$. I don't consider them Audiophiles. Call them Audio snobs if you want.

Plenty of them are also hobbyists and enjoy playing around with their equipment, collecting lots of equipment and experimenting with different tweaks, often of questionable value.

The only question in any of these endeavors should be "Does the change make it sound better"? Not in theory, in reality. Another question for some is whether it is worth the change, considering the law of diminishing returns. Some don't care about that, but most do. What is the point at which "you're there"? That doesn't exist for Audiophiles, because you always need to maintain or replace the cartridge (sorry digital folks).