Audiophilia: Is it the pursuit of audio excellence or just a desire to tinker.

@jacobsdad2000 

😊

For most people in this hobby, it's definitely the latter.

People immersed in this pursuit almost always believe there is something we can do to get "better" sound. Sometimes the means becomes the end, but I think the OP describes the difference between the relatively few who are very serious about this hobby and everyone else. I enjoy my system and have invested a good deal of time and money to improve it over the years. For me, spending a couple of hours in the evening, just listening to music in the dark with no distractions is a very relaxing, rewarding experience. But for most of my friends, music is a background thing. They may listen while they are working out, or have music in the background, while they are doing other things. For this kind of listener, upgrading components, or tinkering with the set up is not going to produce much of a difference in terms of the quality of experience. So they don't really get the point of it. For those of us who enjoy spending extended periods of time, focusing on only the music, even a relatively slight improvement will be satisfying. I think maybe that's the difference between audiophiles and the rest of the world.

....always have had a ’bent’ for technical things, but have either been employed at depicting, designing, and creating physical objects that had a specific concept and use....

Varied from the architectural ’crafty’ through current large scale ’hewn objects’ for the delight and play of children; yours, your angel grandkinder, and the neighbors’ bratty bunch....😏

Audio, other than in the enjoyment of music of many stripes ’n stars and logotypes, has been a ying to the yang...or the reverse, if I’ve got the polarity wrong... ;)

ADD, OCD, nightowl noddles, cast-off silk purses into dB-inducing devices:

"DIY’ng the improbable with not-so-much of such."

If there be my quest, I'm still on compass to Avalon.....

I had just made a post in the Home Theater section that dealt with problem solving.  I find it much more necessary to figure out what goes wrong in a system that complicated.  There is some satisfaction when I solve the issue but it isn’t my idea of a fun way to spend an hour.  
  Two channel audio isn’t about solving problems.  It is how can I make an improvement.  This will occasionally be certain tweaks like speaker positioning but more typically involves auditioning a component in the system and trying to figure out if it’s better (as opposed to just being different) than the previous.  When I had a long term relationship with a dealer  (who wasn’t afraid to let me know when I was full of it, even if it cost him a sale), it was kind of fun.  Just getting something shipped over the Internet, and sending it back if it was unsatisfactory, is a pain for multiple reasons.  So my changes have become rare.