An Audiophile is Anyone Who Loves Audio Regardless of Monetary Status. Agree?

I have never heard an item that was more expensive than the other one while sounding worse.

Jesus, really?? Because I have. I’ll just start a firestorm if I start naming labels. I’ve heard much worse, or equal with a wide discrepancy in prices.


I'm talking about gear within similar performance envelopes here.  I'm not comparing a small desktop monitor to a mega speaker.

Maybe a sports team would make a better analogy.

Yes, there are people who buy a sports team as a vanity project. Hell they may not even care about the sport at all, but they need to be part of that exclusive club.


That doesn't mean that the person who has been following the team for 20 years is any less a fan. In fact, he/she may be a better fan and know more about the game, the team, and the play than any of the owners.


I am going to beat this story to death, but having watched a guy go into a store, listen to a badly set up pair of speakers (mismatched polarity, and juiced crossover settings) and go "How much are they? i like them, i take them." proves to me that you can buy the gear, but only love and experience makes you an audiophile.

In that analogy, the musicians and producers are the race car team. The rest of us are just observers in the stands.


Otherwise, audiophiles are reduced to consumers of a particular type of product. How miserably impoverishing that POV is to me.


"Sorry you lost your house Frank, but hey, I don’t have to listen to your miserable take on cables since you no longer matter." is not a place I want to be.


As I posted in another thread, in the late 1950's, early 1960's audiophiles were not consumers, they were inventors, innovators, and enthusiasts.  DIY built this hobby.


Lets make this a big tent with room for different points of view and needs, as opposed to an expensive one.

As many of you probably know, my principles are:

• Price is a poor predictor of performance.
  
• To your own ears be true

As a result, I have zero interest in seeing "high end" equated with megabucks. Not to mention, lots of audiophiles are apartment dwellers, or on modest incomes. They can get great sounding systems for their spaces on a budget and we should encourage them.

Best,
Erik