Audiophilia: Is it the pursuit of audio excellence or just a desire to tinker.

Audiophilia is more political than functional.

why would you thank me for that???

i owe you an apology and an explaination. 

i apologie. i thoughtlessly assumed an audiophile on this forum was asking the question and skipped and missed the piece past the headline.

@jacobsdad2000 is she an experienced, hardcore audiophile? if shes not, and shes an observer of one, thats an excellent question.

so, i delete and do-over, and heres the answer to an outside observer's asking such:

audiophilia is the pursuit and active enjoyment of audio excellence.

tinkering is one of many activities, practices one undertakes in pursuit of audio excellence.

like every other means of advancing quality of sound and performance, one can get enchanted with, stuck on and lost in this activity.
 

It's obviously a personal thing. At first I liked the tinkering part out of necessity to get the sound I strived for and that can last for years. Now that I have the sound my ears wanted, I no longer tinker, at all, I just sit and listen with satisfaction. Only tinkering I do any more is looking for new music on Qobuz :)

Audio life is much easier now, got rid of OCD without therapy.

@cey No she just has the misfortune of being married to me, a gear head, audiophile, engineer. So she is most definitely a casual observer, and the center of my universe along with our children. 
 

I am deleting and doing over my post also as I was being overly sensitive and have not had my coffee yet. 

Being an "audiophile" creates the perfect storm where a profound appreciation of music meets childlike curiosity about how things work, and how to make them better. They say "you can’t blame a compass for pointing north." And you can't blame an "audiophile" for trying "one more thing" to improve the performance of a system.

My granddaugter asked: "Grampa, why are you always working on your old cars?" Me: "Because I’m always fixing things that aren’t broken."

Enjoy the music. And, those zeros and ones, dampening factors, air gap flux densities, Litz inductors, etc.