A light-hearted essay on loving music vs the audiophilia obsession

Very fun to read and to feel the empathy! You put into more words the adage that many audiophiles use music to listen to their system. And you also nailed how Audiogon (and USAM) completely enable many of us, as you wrote, go from recreationally using to full-blown addiction, helped by Paypal Credit and Affirm financing. 

Your first example of commenting on the sonic clarity is akin to someone watching a video clip of a particularly poignant event of movie commenting on the video quality.

Or like when someone posts a link to a piece they wrote that details an experience many of us here on this forum have had, only to have many members smugly snark about a social media site. 

And you also nailed how Audiogon (and USAM) completely enable many of us, as you wrote, go from recreationally using to full-blown addiction, helped by Paypal Credit and Affirm financing.

One has truly crossed the addiction Rubicon when they start paying triple digits (or more) for things like speaker wire and DACs.

Thanks hilde45 for providing a link to the article. In any case, yeah, it's a common trope that audiophiles are more interested in chasing quality of sound than quality of performance, but that's a pretty unforgiving perspective. In any case, I ain't one of  those "sound-o-files.". It doesn't hurt that I have more than a few recordings that give me both. Not only can I have my cake, I can regularly eat it, too. Having both is an unadulterated treat.

 In any case, yeah, it's a common trope that audiophiles are more interested in chasing quality of sound than quality of performance, but that's a pretty unforgiving perspective.

@edcyn  Agreed. It's equivalent to asserting that audiophiles cannot walk and chew gum at the same time. It's a derogatory comment, dressed up in jargon.