Audiophilism is a hobby

Very good description! thanks ...

These anxieties resulted in my own experience  from the inability  and incapacities to face the problem  save throwing money  and more upgrade toward an acoustic ideal the consumers had no idea about conceptually and experimentally...

 It is why acoustics  is my cure and the only cure to upgraditis... ( acoustics knowledge is not passive treatment of room but a science about sound experiences)

Fred is actually enjoying the beauty, wonderment, emotional richness, mental stimulation, perhaps even transcendence that music provides.  
Billy is a ball of anxiety, angst and minutiae-scrutinizing madness.
That’s the issue and “the angst.” 

@rvpiano I understand your rebuttal but still cannot convert to the wholehearted or exclusive "hobby" idea.  I and many others, I think, join and follow forums like this one primarily for two reasons.  One is to learn more about and stay abreast of the various components and products on the market, past & present, and to continually improve our knowledge of the more technical aspects of evaluating various pieces of equipment and products.  This provides some degree of guidance when one happens to be in the market for an upgrade, at some point.  The other reason, of course, is to reciprocate by sharing whatever expertise we've acquired over the years and experiences we've had, in an effort to provide similar guidance to other audiophiles.

Audiophile Billy is sitting there fretting about the distortion, the transient accuracy, the imaging, the soundstage, on and on and on and on….
Billy is a ball of anxiety, angst and minutiae-scrutinizing madness.
That’s the issue and “the angst.”

Billy is a great rarity or doesn’t exist at all. A strawman to use for the sake of argument.  

You can keep an eye on what's going on in audio and do upgrades from time to time and still be very happy with the sound you have now.  I think that audio is progressing and it makes sense to keep  up with what's new.

Upgrading without ever learning about acoustics is  very often deluding ourselves...

Billy is not a strawman it is an existing  character... It is who i was before learning and experimenting ...

My name was Billy ...😊

He described me.😁 Are you saying that i was the only one Billy here?

Reading audio threads there is a crowd of Billy here who are like i was not so long ago  ...

Many upgrade because they dont know what else to do to improve what they own already which is good but not enough when you read marketing stuff without reading about acoustics, and mechanical and electrical working dimensions controls which are the optimizations solutions not buying a costlier piece each time ...

Billy is a great rarity or doesn’t exist at all. A strawman to use for the sake of argument.

You can keep an eye on what’s going on in audio and do upgrades from time to time and still be very happy with the sound you have now. I think that audio is progressing and it makes sense to keep up with what’s new.

@mashif: Fantastic, thank you SOOO much! I read No Depression for years (I have a complete collection of the original---pre-online---run of the mag, but I obviously need to catch up with their current issues).

For those who read the article mashif provided a link to, that should give you an idea of how special Julie and Buddy Miller are. As is Iris DeMent. And Lucinda Williams.