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What Is An Audiophile?

WillBrink

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Is being an audiophile about spending gobs money on gear to impress your friends, or something else? Here's my take on what makes an audiophile. Agree or disagree?

 

Doodski

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Is being an audiophile about spending gobs money on gear to impress your friends, or something else? Here's my take on what makes an audiophile. Agree or disagree?

I disagree. I think an audiophile is a person that appreciates not only the music but the gear as well. They study new gear and music to determine what is good and bad for their needs and wants and they budget according to their wants and needs and sometimes that might be reasonable or it can be unreasonable over-budgeting. It's a hobby...
 

delta76

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I disagree. I think an audiophile is a person that appreciates not only the music but the gear as well. They study new gear and music to determine what is good and bad for their needs and wants and they budget according to their wants and needs and sometimes that might be reasonable or it can be unreasonable over-budgeting. It's a hobby...
That used to be my interpretation as well. Sadly the industry is so distorted with magazines and forums, now for me audiophile is just a way to sell extremely overpriced snake oils.
 

RF Air

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It started with an AM Radio as a kid in my bedroom, a Christmas gift Multi-band portable radio; to my my first purchase of an AM-FM Stereo with an 8 Track and Turntable. It has progressed though dozens of additions with Cassette, R2R, the first CD Player and the Video Evolution. Each step was an effort towards greater performance-fidelity, with appreciation for finding comfort, reliability and excitement. All of this is the hobby and advocation of investing towards the advancement of environment sounds (and Vision), that is gratifying to recreate for myself and share with pride for others. I claim to be an Audiophile.
 
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bodhi

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The first requirement is the ability to listen somewhat critically and believing that music reproduction has many aspects that can be rated with some accuracy. It seems to be an on/off-switch: before it gets flipped a person just doesn't get why anyone would care that much about hifi equipment. If system goes loud and has good bass it's good from non-audiophiles point of view.

And I don't think it's the better way at all. That's how things go with most hobbies: for some reason or another you decide you want to look into it more and it's downhill from there.
 

AudiOhm

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I prefer to term "Audio Enthusiast"...

Ohms
 

kemmler3D

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The definition of audiophile probably depends on what you need the definition for.


I think for most situations it ought to be "Someone who is willing to spend extra money to get better sound quality", since questions around buying gear drives most discussions of sound quality.

However, "enthusiastic about better sound" is also good IMO. The literal meaning would be "audio lover", no? So that fits.
 

DVDdoug

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Technically it means "lover of audio" but to me it has negative connotations because most of the audiophile community is nuts!

I like good sound and I'm a "picky listener". I grew-up with vinyl and the "snap", "crackle", and "pop" always drove me nuts although it didn't seem to bother most people. But I knew I didn't have "golden ears" and I didn't have the budget to qualify as an audiophile. Maybe I would have considered myself an aspiring audiophile... Or when I did have the money I wasn't going to spend it on something unless it sounded better to me. I'd spend money on better speakers but I wouldn't buy a better turntable when I wasn't hearing any defects from the one I owned.*

Now that I know about blind ABX tests I realize that most golden ear audiophiles aren't hearing the things they claim to hear (or think they are hearing) either!



* I was always upgrading, or wanting to upgrade, my phono cartridge and maybe it made an improvement. I always thought so but the real limitation was the records and I knew that but there were some (relatively) good sounding records. I gave-up on trying to improve my vinyl setup when I got my 1st CD player. I knew I could never achieve "digital quality". And when I had replaced most of my vinyl with CDs I stopped playing records altoghether.
 

antcollinet

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Since we now know that Chat GPT is the last word on audio knowledge, this is what it has to say on the subject: :facepalm:

What is an audiophole?



An audiophile is a person who is enthusiastic about high-fidelity sound reproduction, and has a strong interest in the technology used to achieve it. They often prioritize sound quality over convenience or cost, and are willing to invest in high-end audio equipment to achieve the best possible audio experience.
 
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Timcognito

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I guess I'm not a audiophile because all I buy these days is music. I find that I have to explain to others that trip-hop is different from hip-hop. But I do have systems in three rooms. My HT 2010 center channel is sounding a bit muddy and after my sub blew up I bought a new one of those. This whole DSP thing has has got me thinking I should upgrade after helping a friend with his new MiniDSP Flex. Also, I spend most of my time on the Call For Humor thread when here at ASR. I got banned over there for making a George Santos joke, and trying reform from political humor and lurking more on topics like this. I'm a want2b audiophile and have been since I bought my first system at Pacific Stereo in San Francisco in 1971 and still love 20 of the 55 CDs in my Decca Blue Box now on my NAS. I'm listening to French Kiwi Juice as I write this.
 

antcollinet

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I guess I'm not a audiophile because all I buy these days is music. I find that I have to explain to others that trip-hop is different from hip-hop. But I do have systems in three rooms. My HT 2010 center channel is sounding a bit muddy and after my sub blew up I bought a new one of those. This whole DSP thing has has got me thinking I should upgrade after helping a friend with his new MiniDSP Flex. Also, I spend most of my time on the Call For Humor thread when here at ASR. I got banned over there for making a George Santos joke, and trying reform from political humor and lurking more on topics like this. I'm a want2b audiophile and have been since I bought my first system at Pacific Stereo in San Francisco in 1971 and still love 20 of the 55 CDs in my Decca Blue Box now on my NAS. I'm listening to French Kiwi Juice as I write this.


And then:
What about people who prefer to spend the money on the music?



Such people can also be considered audiophiles, as they place a high value on the quality of the music they listen to. They might prioritize purchasing high-quality recordings, such as vinyl records or high-resolution digital files, over investing in audio equipment. An audiophile's focus can vary from the source of the music to the equipment used to play it, but the common thread is a dedication to achieving the best possible sound quality.
 

redstang

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I prefer to term "Audio Enthusiast"...

Ohms
Agree because the term Audiophile has come to have a negative connotation for me.

Too often it's the case that an audiophile has an irrational sort of a religious faith that believes in the infallibility of human hearing. EVERY debate comes down to the question "but did you listen to it?" If you haven't, then no amount of science or objective knowledge will carry any weight. If you have, then either your system isn't "resolving" enough, you don't know how to listen, your hearing is bad, or you're trolling.
 

Newman

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I like this simple definition:

"An audiophile is a person who is enthusiastic about high-fidelity sound reproduction."
That would exclude everyone on ASR who owns a turntable, because as I keep getting told here, nobody here claims that a TT is a path to very high fidelity.

Actually I like your quote, but at the same time I think it is back to front and should read, A person who is enthusiastic about sound reproduction is an audiophile, which is not the same statement BTW.

My personal idea of an audiophile is a bit more broad-church, along the lines of “someone who actively pursues access to recordings of soundtracks, especially music, and who has an interest in enhancing their pleasure from listening to these recordings via the choice and application of equipment.”

It probably still needs a tweak because I don’t want to exclude people who simply collect old hifi gear and love it to death even though they never play 90% of it.

Or, we could be more modern and define it as “anyone who would find something of interest if they read hifi discussion boards.” ;)

cheers
 

kemmler3D

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To the point about people who love / collect / seek out music. We have a word for that, it's "music lover" or "musophile" if you want to use another made-up word. Audiophiles care about sound quality independently of what music they listen to. You can be one without being the other.

I also agree that "high fidelity" isn't part of the definition so much as "(subjectively) good sound quality". Plenty of self-described audiophiles spit on the notion of objective fidelity. Heck, that's why ASR exists!
 
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