Do you agree with John Atkinson (and me)?

For me, it’s always been about music and enjoying music and finding a system that makes my music sound better. When my parents owned a record store in Denver in the 80s, the gear used in the shop was a couple of run-of-mill turntables, a few receivers, headphones for people to listen to albums to, and basic 2-way speakers for ambient music in the shop. None of that was fancy. Our home hi-fi was a Marantz receiver, bookshelf speakers, a TT, a reel-to-reel tape deck, and eventually, a CD player.

Listening to music was the primary purpose. I have fond memories of putting on the Stones’ Hot Rocks on the TT, sitting in my dad’s recliner and listening with headphones to that record over and over.

Now, I have music playing almost all the time at home with the family. I do dance parties with my kids, stream music for wall-paper purposes, and then when everyone else is in bed, I put my headphones on and do some purposeful listening.

To each their own I say. If you’re an audiophile forever searching for the next magic box that sounds better than the last and you only listen to the same 50 albums from 50 years ago, great. For me, considering my financial constraints of raising 3 young kids and 20yrs away from retirement, a good mid-hi-fi system to enjoy my growing music collection is where it’s at for me.

It is kind of an appalling judgment about people and their situations that you know nothing about...and the idea that streaming doesn't affect the equation ???

Here’s another way of thinking about the issue.  I catalog the jazz lp section of my 750 lp collection on Discogs.  According to Discogs, my 395 lp jazz collection is worth about $10k.  So let’s assume my total collection is worth about $15k.  That’s a decent amount invested, imho.  I also have about $100k invested in my 3 main systems.  But according to the music lover vs. audiophile paradigm, I’d be more of a music lover if I’d only spent $5k on a system.  This is an obvious logical fallacy.

Judging people based on the value of their music collections is a rather appalling prospect. Perhaps some skrimp and save just to have a mid grade audio system, not much left over for vinyl and cd acquisitions. These people don't have enough disposable income to continue to acquire more equipment or hard copy, system and music values are static. This just one example of making bad value judgements. Judging people by comparing values of equipment/music collections no matter the level of expenditure is pointless. Personally, I've never made any value judgements as to what media people use to listen to music or the amount of their expenditures on equipment or music. This may say something about the size of their bank accounts, but as to any readings of principles, ethos, etc, total nonsense.

A lot of the "Vinyl Community" posters on YouTube (they refer to themselves as members of the VC, the younger members undoubtedly unaware that those initials were also used when referring to the Viet Cong) mention how many LP’s they own. I’ve never counted mine, as I feel it is the quality of the collection that matters, not it’s size. That brings to mind the old Blues song "It Ain’t The Meat It’s The Motion". Maria Muldaur included her recording of the song on her second album, Waitress In A Donut shop (it’s in my collection).