Am I right for this forum?

@snilf , I am not sure what the criteria is for being an audiophile. I’ve got some equipment that, all things being relative, I don’t consider cheap. But I don’t think that, if I am an audiophile, it is my equipment that makes me one. If I do meet the criteria, I suppose it would be because of my desire (an obsessive desire at times) for a better reproduction of music from my system.

If being an audiophile was only dependent upon how much one’s gear cost, I am not sure where the bottom of the threshold would be. As I just typed, I don’t consider my stuff to be cheap, but compared to a member who I have read posts about his speakers that cost 30k (which is more $ than the entire system I am listening to) I guess my stuff would be considered cheap and I definitely would not be an audiophile. And if those were the parameters one needed to be within, that would probably eliminate a lot of members from the audiophile club.

However, although I don’t think that it is the price or quality of gear that makes one an audiophile, I also believe that the better the gear is--the better the sonic performance usually is.

@snilf 

And a correction, by the way. As my overlong narrative concludes, $4,000 is a more accurate estimate of what I paid for the components in my system than $3,000. I guess I should read my own words more carefully. 

Sand bagging by over 30% were ya?!  😉😂

So...am I an "audiophile," or not? Do I belong here, or not?

I know what you mean.  On this site, forget anything you read about gear.  Stick with the music.  The best thing about this forum is the age of the participants.

Considering the current state of the art, $3000 is spot on.  The state of the art can be found at the Yamaha, Marantz, Denon, Polk, etc.... level.  All else is hype and eye candy.

Do you belong here?  Yes.  But, think of it as being in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on a raft with no water.

Cheers

What has changed is how people now interact after the advent of social media. It’s not limited to any one group or hobby. Our culture is now more about presenting a certain image online than actual discussion and substance. Don’t take it personally. Culture, morals, humility have all but faded away. It’s all about showing people what you have that they likely can’t afford now. 

What makes one an "audiophile" seems to have got stuck on how much one spends on audio equipment. I’ll grant, that’s certainly not irrelevant. But, as several have said (notably, mahgister, who sounds this theme regularly on this forum), the cost of one’s equipment is not the main criterion. Concern for sound quality is, however one strives to achieve that goal.

But my post was meant to raise issues with even that quest, which is why I wondered aloud, as it were, whether or not I belong on this forum. Yes, I care about and delight in sound quality! To that extent, obviously, I’m an audiophile. But my deeper concern is that such attention is really misplaced. Enjoying certain recordings, despite their being musically insipid, just because they are well recorded...well, now that strikes me as misguided (and I am guilty of it). Very few of the musicians I know care much at all about sound quality.

So I’m kind of conflicted. That’s where the Stewart Smalley comment strikes home. Get over it! Stop whining! Enjoy the music, or enjoy the sound quality of your system, or both—who cares! I get that.

The fact is that, although I have loved audio equipment most of my life, I haven’t been in a position to afford really good stuff until relatively recently. And, furthermore, the kind of conversations that dominate our audio club meetings, and this forum, I’m not really able to contribute much to. I just don’t know enough about the equipment that’s available, much less about the electrical engineering principles that goes into it. For me, it really is all about the music.

To say "it’s all about the music" is, of course, a commonplace among audiophiles. But this isn’t really a forum about music. The only threads about "the music" I’ve found interesting are those that suggest especially good-sounding recordings, not those that discuss matters of interpretation (in "classical" music) or those that share enthusiasms for this or that genre or artist.

Megabyte's comment is one of the things that worries me here...