You know you have audiophile system when...

@wyoboy - As often happens, the responses were not what I was looking for.  In my system I have considered it to be an audiophile system since I first purchased it, but after rolling tubes and playing with power cables and interconnects it because apparent that it was at a very different level.  I think the investment in cables that truly made the difference was about $250 which is relatively insignificant compared to the overall value of my system, but it made a huge difference.

Now you've got me curious about the cables--interconnect or speaker and brand?

My feeling that i had achieved an "audiophile system" was when i invested enough to have constant "wow" moments of "they are here" or "i am there" on live recordings (esp acoustic) and even studio recordings where the engineers attempted to achieve that with the miking and instrument placement.  I wish that could have been achieved with cables only but it required a more significant investment in every category: amplification, speakers, DAC, turntable/tonearm/cart--but other than [possibly] cable tweaks or tonearm/cartridge upgrades i'm done---probably, maybe...

You spend more time listening to your equipment than you do music.

that's probably a fair statement for many audiophiles--but hopefully their goal would be to make music sound, well, more musical ?  It's certainly why i focus almost exclusively on live recordings these days and i'm pretty satisfied with the sound...well, almost, maybe...

When an album is recorded in multiple recording studios & you can hear the difference between tracks.