Can even a Novice hear differences in Sound Qualit

No-one! Then the Girl never gets asked out, and we all become part of the Idiots suffering under a self imposed Illusion! An opportunity for better Sound Quality, quickly slips away, because no-one will grasp it in time! This is the Audiophiles Plan for better Recorded Sound Quality, delude yourself into believing that a lesser Format will have adequate Sound Quality! And the next lesser Format after that, same thing? Why bother calling yourself an Audiophile, why not just call yourself a Beggarphile! I don't want to be an Audiophile anymore, because I don't want to be a self imposed Loser anymore! Audiophile- someone who spends an inordinate amount of money on Audio Gear, while looking for the cheapest, and lowest quality Format to play on it! An Oxymoron-heavy on the Moron! Someone who desperately seeks lower quality Formats, while obsessively chases ever Higher Quality Audio Gear to play it on! An Enigma, a Contradiction, a fool who enjoys and embraces futile attempts to improve on ever lower Quality Formats! I have decided, that these words will no longer pertain to me!

Yes, but that alone doesn't mean that they care enough or can afford to drop 10s of thousands of dollars into a SOTA audio system.

Lets be real, this stuff is a luxury, not a commodity. You have to be able to hear, then care, then pay.

Nice rant on behalf of audio buffs though!

Again with the Hardware, as a convenient distraction from the severe lack of Sound Quality in the Format! Lets be real, Mapman, dropping 10s of thousands of dollars on any System, in a vain attempt to make up for the severe lack of Sound Quality in the Format itself! Suprise that one finds yourself actually admiring how pretty, and expensive the System looks, as opossed to actually listening to it! Format drags your $10,000.00 System down to the point of sounding like garbage, to the point that you can't even stand listening to it! You only just show how expensive it looks to your friends, you don't dare play it for them! You can't stand listening to it yourself, you just use it for Eye Candy, or for Expensive bragging rights! Again, you harp on the Name, the Hardware, the Cost, all at the expense of even concidering the slightest increment in increase of Sound Quality in the Format itself. What is exactly your point, you want garbage for 10s of thousands, I can give you all of my garbage for half that, and even save you the expense of $5000.00. You don't drop 10s of thousands of dollars into a SOTA audio system, you don't drop 50s of thousands of dollars into a Digital System in a vain attempt to make up for that Formats shortcommings, you simply don't drop the ball on the Manufacturer spoon feeding you the next garbage Sounding Format! It is not the drop of 10s of thousands, but the drop in the Quality of the garbage that you are feeding this behemoth. No amount of money spent on the back end, will ever make up for the amount of garbage that is being force fed on the front end! You can go ahead and drop 5s, 10s, 20s, 50s, 100s, and it will only make the smallest increment of improvement, if any at all! If you are going to spend that much, why not just buy your own Record Company, for crying out loud, save yourself the money, and stand a half-wits chance of actually getting some better Sound Quality? So we spend so much on this stuff, just to look at, and not to listen to! Well, that is a helpful peice of information, when next deciding to drop 10s of thousands of dollars on a Luxury Audio System!

If you are a hiker, you have scaled false peaks that reveal other false peaks before the summit. The big questions of "What does the CD format really sound like?" or "What does vinyl really sound like?" are not answered at the false peaks. Climb thee higher oh pettyofficer, for I fear that such answers are not revealed at sea level.

Petty, you sound like the old guy down the street from my childhood home that wore a white T-shirt, plaid shorts, black socks, and sandals and yelled at us young hooligans..."get off my lawn"!!!
Stop taking things so seriously---life is too short.