An audio enthusiast is someone who cares enough about listening to music that owning a superior stereo system is essential. He may go to unusual lengths to obtain a better and better system, but will at least live with something for a while and appreciate its merits. He can hear the differences between this and that.
An audiophile is someone who has crossed over to really caring more about the stereo equipment than the music being played, much of the time. He too can hear the differences between this and that, but he finds himself listening only for those differences, much of the time. He is one whose perspective and sense of relativity has become warped by what Freud termed "the narcissism of small differences" (though Freud was applying it to how people judge one another).
An audiophool is someone who cannot really hear the differences between this and that, but imagines he can, doesn't really know what he's looking for, but eagerly buys into every new thing that comes down the pipe.
Most of us probably skate a fine line between audio enthusiast and audiophile; in my book the latter is something ideally to be resisted...as irresistible as it can certainly be.
And I agree that live concerts often disappoint. But it sounds like everyone is referring to amplified concerts. Acoustic music is the best benchmark for audio enthusiasm and high fidelity reproduction, imnvho. Happy New Year everybody...
