At what price is one considered an Audiophile.


Audiophilia, what is is it?

Is it the love of music or the equipment that presents the music.

Or is it both? 

What is the cost of admission?

How much does one have to spend on equipment to be considered an Audiophile, if it is truly the later than the music.

What has membership to this perceived exclusive club cost you?

 

 

jacobsdad2000

There is two kind of audiophiles...

The one who focus on gear measures ( objectivist) and those (subjectivist) who "taste" different brand names and dream about the highest price tag... The two group focus on gear components as tastes or as tools...In the first group, the objectivist hate to be called "audiophiles" and be confused with the subjectivists... 😁

The other kind  or second group as myself who focus on the best ratio highest sound quality / lowest price and the various ways of embeddings controls mechanically, electrically and acoustically and look for the  optimization of any component even using , what the objectivist   will call in a despising way as "tweaks"  or illusions or deceptive placebos, and the subjectivists will call in a despising way too  cheap stop-gaps...

Acoustics experiments matter more for me  than the price level qualified as high end, mid-fi, or low fi INDEPENDANTLY of any acoustic embedding optimization ...

The serious audiophile is able to solve the sound problem at low cost and begin to listen music without being bothered by sound anymore as i am  ...

The superficial audiophile never solve the sound problem as an acoustic problem to be faced , not only a problem about components synergy ,  but call his constant unsatisfaction a desire for "perfection" and enter in a race to the pit of expansive purchases, he  called them  "upgrades", without learning nor music genres and styles nor acoustics... Using his limited well recorded few albums collection as test ...

i Invested way more in music than in my very good system who cost me 700 bucks ,  modified headphones+ modified speakers... And trust me it is more than good... i dont need more...

While people are idealistically saying cost doesn't matter, it is hard to be an audiophile with a $12 pair of Amazon Basics computer speakers.

My actual modified active speakers ( 200 bucks of actual value ) are amazing but i optimized them, they were well reviewed but it was not enough for me at all right out of the box...

i disliked them for 12 years and never used them for music...😊😁

But having no other choices after selling my big house i used acoustics basic science to embed and modify them ... They are so good now i dont need a subwoofer even...

Upgrading them will be difficult around 1000 bucks...

And i dont want more anyway so good they became...

Then between 12 bucks and these there is a margin...

Cost matter less than basic knowledge...

 

While people are idealistically saying cost doesn’t matter, it is hard to be an audiophile with a $12 pair of Amazon Basics computer speakers.

I know of this site, starts with an A where this subject has been debated so many times....