Am I right for this forum?

@snilf 

I am not familiar with the actual equipment that is listed for your system, however, I am familiar with some of the brands listed (NHT, NAD, Maranzt) and you have a TT and a DAC and a line conditioner . . . I am thinking you got some pretty good bargains to get all that for 4k?

Of course you belong as much as anyone else does.  I would ignore the Stuart Smalley comments.

Stuart Smalley?

@larsman  , I vaguely remember that character . . . wasn't Al Franken the one who portrayed him?  What I was wondering was how Stuart Smalley got into the conversation?

@immatthewj - Stuart Smalley was a character on Saturday Night Live in days gone by.... 

@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.

the cost of one’s equipment is not the main criterion. Concern for sound quality is, however one strives to achieve that goal.

Unfortunately, sound quality usually improves as the equipment improves, and as the equipment improves it unfortunately usually costs more.  Sad but true.

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.

How do you define state of the art?

Another sad fact:  "Garbage in/garbage out."  Garbage in an accoustically treated environment is still garbage.

@immatthewj someone commented “cue Stuart Smalley”.  The OP wrote that the comment stung a bit.  I responded that he should ignore them.

Ah.  Okay.  I take it that the original Stuart Smiley comment had to do with positive affirmations about a system that did not cost a ton of money?

The 'Art' is reproducing recorded music.  The best it can be done with electronic boxes, today,  is very low on the price pole.  The Marantz Yamaha thingy.

@rok2id  , in my experience there is equipment that reproduces music much better than equipment low on the price pole.  I am going to leave it at that . . . except to say that I am not familiar with Yamaha's line of equipment but I know for a fact that some of Maranzt's equiment can get relatively expensive.  Meaning that 'expensive' is another relative term.   But to that point, would you consider the Maranzt SA10 SACDp to be expensive at around 7k msrp? 

Garbage out of speakers in an acoustically treated room is still garbage. However, in this context, ’garbage’ is a relative term.

To the OP’s topic:

Using "definition of audiophile" as a search engine seems to yield this definition (or the equivalent) from about all the hits that came back for me, "a person who is enthusiastic about high-fidelity sound reproduction."

To me that means that although someone who listens to a system consisting of significantly expensive electronics and speakers may find the sound of a system consisting of much cheaper gear to be (if they are being honest) garbage, the person listening to the more affordable system can still meet the criteria of an audiophile because the definition of enthusiasm is not dependent solely upon the quality the of gear (and therefor the SQ) one is listening to, but how critically one is listening and how appreciative one is to the actual SQ one is listening to.

However, one who is enthusiastic about high-fidelity sound reproduction will quite likely take steps as often as possible to increase the quality of his or her play back which will, among other things, include upgrading the quality of his or her gear. Some will be more obsessive than others in this endeavor.

@chrshanl37 

@Immathewj you are of course correct it’s cue not “que” and I knew that, not sure why I did that but whatever.

I believe you have mistaken me for someone else.  I do not recall ever commenting upon that. 

You must learn to take a few of the posters here with a grain of salt. Many of them don’t or never will have the gear that they claim to have. Did you ever notice that they never show their systems? My guess is that they are full of Poop!

The reasons I've never posted pics of my system is:

a) compaatively speaking, I've never considered it anything to brag about

b) I am functionally illiterate as far as internet technology goes, and I don't know how.