The Definition of An Audiophile

it is fulfillment from the knowledge and understanding of music and its reproduction. It can be a very personal experience, and a very special club where only the listener need be present to enjoy its membership.

Thanks for all of your responses, be it critical or not.

I understand some people don't have the opportunity to view a live performance on a regular basis; that's fine. But when you view an outstanding concert it makes me sad that no matter how good a system you could ever build it will never compare.

The main thing I miss is the dynamic spectacular percussion presented in a live event. Part of the reason of that loss of reality, I believe, is due to the recording compression. I'm not a recording engineer, but I don't understand why a live recording has to be compressed so much. Is there someone out there that can tell me why recordings are compressed? I have never heard any recorded music that didn't have any compression. I don't listen to much classical; I only have one classical recording. Are there some classical recordings that are more true to the actual event? Does it come down to a limit in recording technology, or is it something else?

Audia- Here's a decent little treatise that mirrors my opinion on the subject of compression, and will save me a lot of typing: (http://www.woodpecker.com/writing/essays/compression.html)

Detlof,

deeply enjoy what you have but at the same time be open for improvement

I found the description of your life long quest to be very well composed, passionate, and much like my own. Thanks for putting it into words for all of us.

Zargon:
Thanks for your kind words!

Timrhu:
You make a good point, but perhaps there is a misunderstanding here, as well as a lack of a proper definition of what I, as well as many others of the audiophile brood, understand as "live music". This certainly need not be classical, I just took this as an example. It could be any kind of live music, though I personally find, that if you want to emulate the sound of live unplugged guitars, a live event very heavily amplified by all sorts of electronics on stage as well as being fed through several speakers, though it can sound great if on disk at home, would not be a good example. What I would see as a benchmark by which all systems should be measured is the sound of live instruments or voices. This can be any kind of instrument, any kind of music from classical to pop, world music, whatever kind. What matters, if you wish to use the sound of real instruments in a real space, no matter if in a concert or a studio, say an unplugged guitar or the sound of a kick drum as a benchmark for the performance of a similar instrument played by your system, is that you have a distinct memory of the live event(s) for your critical evaluation.
To me, an audiophile is a person who loves live music and tries to emulate and enjoy his love of music in his own home to the best of his possibilities. Whatt kind of music he prefers does not matter.
You are quite right on the other hand in pointing out to us, that most of our software is not from a live event and is highly processed in most cases. Sometimes, though not in all cases, processing in the studio can help, that the facsimile of the real thing comes closer to sound "real", sound more "live"than it would have without being processed. Hence it is quite clear that a record which an audiophile happily might describe as coming close to sounding like "real live music", will certainly not only be thanks to his set up, but also thanks to the long process of recording the event in the studio, processing it and finally, say in the case of vinyl, pressing the record. As we all know, we need next to a decent rig good software, when we want to show off with our system and I believe that we need an absolute, if we want to compare the sound of one rig with the sound of another. The absolute, though necessarily still not at all free of subjectivism would be the "gestalt" of live music, as we know and have experienced it.
Cheers,
Detlof