[SoundGame]

IMHO you are an Audiophile if you have "one" of the following:

1) Sit in the sweet spot and listen to MUSIC or your SYSTEM

2) If your goal when purchasing equipment is the betterment of your system and listening experience

3) If one of your main hobbies or pastimes is involving yourself in the selection of gear, and or acoustic treatments (dead give away) to make the experience or system better

4) Spend time associating with other like-minded hobbyists with the same goals

5) Spend a disproportionate amount on gear compared to the average person

6) Evaluate gear based on SONIC PERFORMANCE rather than the way it looks.

I know there other qualifiers, but if you have one of the above, you are likely an audiophile and finally;

If you are still reading this, then you are either an audiophile or want to be.   

Love this John - rings with me on a number of points. 

There a those that love music and/or listening to music and would do so in any way, iPod, OEM car stereo, transistor radio etc. Then there are those that not only love music but care about the quality of it's reproduction.  If you spend any more then the norm on ensuring the quality of reproduction i.e. the media or the hardware, then you are down the audiophile road.  From there it's just a matter of degree e.g. novice, undergrad, master, grand master, jedi.

[Pez]

You forgot Sith Lord. 

[nnck]

I think anyone who is on this site and checks 'no' has some serious denial issues and isn't being honest with themselves. Sorry, but no amount of justification or word spinning changes the fact that you love audio, equipment and music, you're an audiophile. Deal with it.

I agree in general. If we are spending a lot of time on this site and others like it, I guess we've got to call ourselves audiophiles at some level.

But I still agree more along the lines of what I think Laundrew is trying to say. A more interesting question is this (at the expense of perhaps mincing words a bit):

Are you more of an Audiophile or a Music-Lover? I suspect there are many of both on these sites.

Audiophiles: one who loves his audio hi-fi system, or what used to be called "stereo" [to the stereophile], the hobbyist, the gear fanatic, one who searches for pure sound , unspoiled, completely devoid of contamination, uncorrupted, unaltered

Music Lovers: what the French call "mélomane", or what other have called "musophile" or "musicophile"

I good test of this is simply determining where you are putting more of your money - the gear or the music? A long time ago, a good friend of mine who considered me to be a big time audiophile and gear-head finally got a look at my music collection and it suddenly clicked for him. "You're not really an audiophile at all, you're a musicophile" is what he told me. That really rang true and stuck with me.

I dont know about all of you, but personally I find it a bit skewed to spend SO MUCH on audio equipment, at the expense of the actual recordings and media. For the past year and a half or so, I have been doing some pretty serious upgrades to my audio equipment (much of it was getting quite old, quite honestly). When I read this thread, I suddenly got nervous thinking perhaps I was spending too much on the equipment to be considered a music lover. But a quick check on the calculator shows that I am still firmly in the 'musicophile' camp - in fact, several fold more spent on the music still.

Guess I can still upgrade a little bit more

[Laundrew]

There you go. Audiophile. 

D.D.

 

Be well...

[Laundrew]

I finished that sentence for you Laundrew. 

That is so uncanny   

Be well...

[Pez]

If you are an audiophile you are a music lover. If you are a music lover you are not necessarily an audiophile. One of my best friends LOVES music. More than anything he loves music, he is who I go to to find new bands and trends. He is all over it. Yet he listens on his iPhone and computer. He has no interest in fidelity at all. He does love the way my system sounds, but never once expressed an interest in going down that road. He rips albums to his computer at 128 AAC and sells the cd. That is certainly someone I would call a music lover exclusively. I doubt there are more than a curious handful of those types on this site. They are either A. intimidated by us, which I find a lot of my friends are, just because all the stuff I have done. They often say things like 'I have to do ALL that just to get this kind of sound? B. Genuinely not interested in fidelity.

[nnck]

If you are an audiophile you are a music lover.

Hmmm...maybe? But your statement sounds a little too 'unconditionally true' for my liking. I've noticed some folks just get thier panties in a bundle about the gear that they just cant seem to just sit back and enjoy the actual 'art' aspect of this. Maybe some of those folks in the the video? But idk, I try not to pass judgement without really knowing them.

Another question I often wonder about 'audiophiles' vs 'music lovers':
Can you bring yourself to buy and enjoy lesser quality (even lo-fi) recordings? Or would you just criticize them and dismiss immediately.

Again, I think this is all a bit of an excercise in mincing words. Of course we are all 'audiophiles' and 'music lovers' to some extent. To me, the interesting thing is which one are you MORE of. Personally, I find it a bit out of whack to spend more time and money on the gear than on the recordings. But that's just me and my priorities, I guess.

It seems I might align myself more with the friend you have that you mention in your post. I just LOVE listening to music and finding new music (and by 'new' I also mean discovering old music I hadnt come across before). I exchange ideas about artists with my my kids and some of their friends. But I have my feet firmly in both camps. Because I defnitely think my enjoyment of the music goes up a huge leap for me when because I am using what I consider to be a pretty excellent sound system.

[jimdgoulding]

IMHO you are an Audiophile if you have "one" of the following:

1) Sit in the sweet spot and listen to MUSIC or your SYSTEM

2) If your goal when purchasing equipment is the betterment of your system and listening experience

3) If one of your main hobbies or pastimes is involving yourself in the selection of gear, and or acoustic treatments (dead give away) to make the experience or system better

4) Spend time associating with other like-minded hobbyists with the same goals

5) Spend a disproportionate amount on gear compared to the average person

6) Evaluate gear based on SONIC PERFORMANCE rather than the way it looks.

I know there other qualifiers, but if you have one of the above, you are likely an audiophile and finally;

If you are still reading this, then you are either an audiophile or want to be.   

Well, seeing how you put it that way, that would include everyone here, I expect, and certainly me.  It's just that I'm not obsessive/complusive about gear.  Been there, done that to the extent of my means, but these days about all I have to replace is record cleaning fluid.  My recent purchases have had to do with clean power.  And, music, of course.  It lives and breathes in my humble abode.  For me to get excited about new gear, I'd have to first have a larger room.

[acresm22]

As someone mentioned previously, buying room treatments is a dead giveaway...you're in the club.
I would say the same applies to power conditioning.

[Rclark]

That video scared the crap out of me for a moment. But then I realized it's no different than people who like home theater and go balls out with that, or people who like fishing and have the best bass boat, and a room full of high end rods, tackle, other gear, with us it's music and the best reproduction of it we can get. Of course, some of us have other hobbies too.

It's OK to be an audiophile.

[BobRex]

I good test of this is simply determining where you are putting more of your money - the gear or the music? A long time ago, a good friend of mine who considered me to be a big time audiophile and gear-head finally got a look at my music collection and it suddenly clicked for him. "You're not really an audiophile at all, you're a musicophile" is what he told me. That really rang true and stuck with me.

I dont know about all of you, but personally I find it a bit skewed to spend SO MUCH on audio equipment, at the expense of the actual recordings and media. For the past year and a half or so, I have been doing some pretty serious upgrades to my audio equipment (much of it was getting quite old, quite honestly). When I read this thread, I suddenly got nervous thinking perhaps I was spending too much on the equipment to be considered a music lover. But a quick check on the calculator shows that I am still firmly in the 'musicophile' camp - in fact, several fold more spent on the music still.

Guess I can still upgrade a little bit more

But here's the trick - Suppose you are one of the one percenters (to get a little political here), or maybe even a ten percenter.  Your disposable cash is sufficient and you love music and audio. Unless your last name is Peshkin, or you collect music just for the sake of having it, a large collection of music would number in the low thousands (and growing).  It may span multiple genres, or not, no matter.  The collection is sufficiently large that, given your free time, you cannot possibly listen to every piece more than once a year or two.  So instead of increasing that which is already un-managable, you concentrate on extracting the most information out of what you have, and in the process end up dropping something north of, oh, say, 50K (spent over a number of years).  Oh, and said person has tried multiple cables, footers, and all sorts of tweaks.

Given that, has the above mentioned person become any less of a music lover?  At what point does one cross this threshold?  And more importantly, who makes that decision? 

In other words, isn't this dividing line just bullsh&t?

[SoundGame]

But here's the trick - Suppose you are one of the one percenters (to get a little political here), or maybe even a ten percenter.  Your disposable cash is sufficient and you love music and audio. Unless your last name is Peshkin, or you collect music just for the sake of having it, a large collection of music would number in the low thousands (and growing).  It may span multiple genres, or not, no matter.  The collection is sufficiently large that, given your free time, you cannot possibly listen to every piece more than once a year or two.  So instead of increasing that which is already un-managable, you concentrate on extracting the most information out of what you have, and in the process end up dropping something north of, oh, say, 50K (spent over a number of years).  Oh, and said person has tried multiple cables, footers, and all sorts of tweaks.

Given that, has the above mentioned person become any less of a music lover?  At what point does one cross this threshold?  And more importantly, who makes that decision? 

In other words, isn't this dividing line just bullsh&t?

I'm think there are a few categories here:
1) music lover (pure)
2) music lover who's an audiophile
3) audiophile who loves music
4) audiophile (pure)

#1 loves music and couldn't care less what it's recorded on or played back through.  A music lover just the same.
#2 loves their music but believe that utilizing better sound equipment can help them enjoy that music more.  If they could not afford the gear, that would be fine, they would still listen and enjoy the same amount of music.  THE MUSIC DRIVES THEIR INTEREST IN THE GEAR but the HEART is the MUSIC.
#3 love the gear and everything that goes with it, fiddling and playing with it to get perceived improvements - they also love music but would not nearly listen to as much of it, if they couldn't have a good playback system and source files.  So the amount they listen to music and the time they spend with music is based on or driven by their fascination with the gear.  Though they love music, THE GEAR DRIVES THEIR INTEREST in MUSIC.
#4 A rare breed, more focused on the great then anything else and spend little time actually listening to the music.

I believe that 2, 3, and 4 are audiophiles but that you can to a more pure definition at the ends of the spectrum.  I find myself between 2 and 3 with a slight lean to 3. 

[Rclark]

2

[Pez]

Haha you guys are complicating things in ways that don't make sense. Pure audiophile? Pure music lover? What is this?

[nnck]

Given that, has the above mentioned person become any less of a music lover?  At what point does one cross this threshold?  And more importantly, who makes that decision? 

I understand you can always create exceptions to every scenario. I'm just creating generalizations for the sake of discussion. I'm just saying that in general, there seem to be people who are interested more in the music (or in collecting the music) and those that are more interested in the gear. But it's not always black and white.

I know several people like myself, who are mainly into the music and music collection part of this, and what you say is sort of true. There are a lot of recordings I only listen to a couple of times and then set aside. I usually get around to listening to them again eventaully, but sometimes it's not for a long time. Others I listen to quite a bit more often, at least for the next several months. Or one of my favorite passtimes lately is just listening to the archived internet radio shows of particular DJs I really like who will usually come up with completely new stuff I have never heard of.

In other words, isn't this dividing line just bullsh&t?

Dividing lines are always bullsh*t at some level. If you want to call it that, then labeling someone an 'audiophile' is equally bullsh*t.

[nnck]

I'm think there are a few categories here:
1) music lover (pure)
2) music lover who's an audiophile
3) audiophile who loves music
4) audiophile (pure)

I think it's a good scale, and your descriptions of the categories should help people to place themselves accurately. I'm pretty sure I'm a number 2.

[genjamon]

Yeah, why does this audiophile thing even need to have anything to do with whether someone or how much someone loves music?  To me, audiophile is a general attitude of improving quality and fidelity of sound output.  Hell, there could probably be some audiophiles out there solely interested in high quality reproduction of recorded speeches, etc.

The point is, when I sit down in my sweet spot after work with a glass of scotch (the combination of which is something  hardly anyone except audiophilic music lovers do anymore), I certainly am listening to and enjoying music, but that's not what makes me an audiophile.  What makes me an audiophile is the analytical mindset that comes along for the ride and constantly bugs me with the question..."what if I did...?"  Fill in the blank.  It's a tinkerer's mindset, always reaching for the next potential improvement, regardless of where I am or how good things currently sound.  An audiophile is never really at rest, at least in the mind. 

It's an attitude toward improvement, whether or not the audiophile has the financial or other means to act on that interest. For some, that leads them to DIY.  For others, it leads them to reaching up into rarified ultra exotic components.  For others, it leads to endless swapping of components and trying different system design philosophies.  For poor college students, it leads to scouring pawn shops and garage sales for hidden treasures on the cheap, and super deals if possible on Audiocircle and Audiogon classifieds and such.  For a few, it leads to wistfully looking at living rooms full of the wife's knick-knacks and wondering what it would look like with equipment racks, speakers, and acoustic treatments instead. 

To me, the music is irrelevant to whether someone is an audiophile or not.  Of course almost any audiophile would say they're a music lover or enthusiast, but it has nothing to do with that unquiet urge for improvement within.

[ricko01]

where does the guy who checks the LP label and wont buy one when the dogs tail is pointing down cause the one with the dogs tail pointing up was pressed at record plant XXX or from an earlier generation master fit in?

No more a nut than a guy who like silver cables rather than copper or his isolation cone with ceramic points rather than stainless steel.

None of this matters (in the sense of "does it make a difference" or not)... if you obsess about ANY aspect of music reproduction (hardware/software/acoustics) then you are an audiophile.

If you read ANY material (print/online) or post online...even if your view is that all you need is zip wire for speaker cables  and MP3's are all you need then you are an audiophile (ie even an anti-audiophile is one cause they are obsessively anti-audiophile)

Peter

Peter

[Rclark]

Does anyone sell the Victrola "Dog listening to his master's voice" (pooch listening to the horn of an early record player) as a sculpture? I'd love to have one.

[PRELUDE]

Hi
I like my hobby and enjoy it more when I learn more.
People call it audiophile and I have no problem with that.
http://www.matrixhifi.com/ENG_index.htm