Why Don't More People Love Audio?

Hey little soulgoober, the first taste is free.....! Just kidding, some better equipment will enhance your enjoyment of music. Certainly nothing wrong with that. There's a lot worse stuff to spend your money on. Certainly, you can spend a fortune if you can or want to but it's not absolutely necessary. The absolute cutting edge state of the art (as in most things) is very expensive but a lot of musical enjoyment can be had without going that far.

I do part-time work for a computer audio lab at my local University and am astonished to find my colleagues, and even my professor, have no idea about high-end audio reproduction or just don't seem to care.

I too was young when I heard my first audiophile system and I've been hooked ever since. There's something incredibly therapeutic about being able to sit for hours on end listening to your favorite music, sipping on a cognac, and not once having the urge to crank the volume or go and do something else. I'm sure if more people were exposed to the aural pleasures of high end audio, they'd be hooked as well.

What it comes down to is convenience, exposure and of course, cost. Most people want something to listen to while riding on the bus or doing the dishes. I found it amusing how people used to brag about the convenience of their 100+ multidisc cd players without once questioning how WELL the disc's played. Or later the convenience of the MP3 and how the mid-fi magazines toughted them as "near cd-quality" at a fraction of the size. Now we're able to conveniently store our entire collection of music onto a tiny player and carry it around wherever we go at the sacrifice of quality...and no one seems to care except for us audiophiles who have seen the light.

if enjoyment of music is the basis for our hobby, a modest stereo system, costing under $1000 is sufficient.

i believe many feel that a $200 personal stereo can provide all the "sound" that a person needs to enjoy music.

A lot of people love music, but simply do not listen critically to the quality of the playback. As audiophiles, we require the best quality playback - within our budgets - to enhance our enjoyment of the music and assembling our playback equipment is part of the enjoyment. It's a hobby for us. Most, however, can get the same enjoyment from music by listening over a car radio or boombox. For example, I cannot understand why someone would buy a Rolex watch, when a $10 Timex does the same job. I can afford a Rolex, I just don't see the point.

Hitman,
I like the "near CD quality" sticker! Figure, CD was hyped as "perfect sound, forever" so "near CD quality" must mean "almost perfect sound, for a long time".
You gotta love marketing.