Can you be an audiophile if you don't own "great/expensive" equipment..?

That's exactly how I feel. My gear I got from BestBuy and doesn't run into the thousands. My lovely wife and kids are what make me happy and what's most important and I simply cannot go out and spend huge amounts with our income. I'm still able to hear differences and enjoy what I hear.

 

If you’re willing to argue with your wife about whether absorption panels belong in your living room, you might be an audiophile.
If you care more about your music collection than what car you drive, you might be an audiophile
If you spend hours working on the placement of the speakers you picked up at the thrift store, you might be an audiophile
If you own more than one pressing of a record or cd, you might be an audiophile

(Apologies to Jeff Foxworthy. I never liked his humor but his “might be a redneck” routine worked here.)

 

If you stay away from turntables/carts/phono stages etc., and focus exclusively on CD's, it's possible to achieve a good level of audiophile sound (if you have a standard and not too big listening room, and you're free to place the speakers wherever you want) for about or little less than 1000 USD if you buying brand new (and of course if you select carefully your components, and be patient to wait for some deals/discounts). If you buy used of course the price would be lower. By my experience this is the minimum (around or little less than 1000 USD) that can provide you audiophile quality. But if you have to fill with good quality sound some bigger space, and using vinyl as a source, then the things become financially grim.

 

Being an audiophile literally means being a lover of audio. So, do you love audio? Do you think about and read about and talk about and devote some part of whatever resources of time and money and space you do have to your loving relationship with sound reproduction? Do you pop open the hood and care about how the recording and playback gear does what it does? Do you do what you can within the context of your fiscal constraints to make sure whatever sound gear you have access to is performing at its best? Do you love sound reproduction such that it's a priority over some other things in your life (not everything of course, but not nothing either)? Do you love audio and how do you express and engage in your love for audio? Those are the things that will determine whether or not you're an audiophile.

It's no different than any such enthusiasm. An oenophile might not be able to afford a 50 year old Chateau Lafitite Rothschild, and certainly may not have a cellar full of them. But they are very interested in wine and how wine is made and different terroirs and vintages and vintners and they so spend some part of their resources drinking different wines and going to wine tastings and maybe visiting wineries, etc. Someone else may drink wine with dinner every day, and not do or care about any of that, that latter person might drink a lot of wine in a year, but probably isn't properly called an oenophile.

 

Of course - my turntable is an old 80s one made in Poland that I got for free, cleaned, bought a new cartridge for (within my limits, of course... got an OM5 for 15 bucks and that was my choice, at least for the moment), connected to my dad's wonderful Pioneer amp. So, of course there are better options available if you want to go for the best sound possible, but yet I feel like my quest for the best-sounding versions of albums already proves successful on this rather basic setup - whenever I put on my UK 1st of Chicago Transit Authority that would easily achieve a NM playgrade I just LIVE the music, FEEL it in my bones because I love the sounds that I can hear coming out of the speakers - and that's what audiophile research is about, after all. So yes, I think you can be an audiophile without owning a 5000$+ turntable, and as many posters have already said: audiophile only means sound-loving - and I think we all here love the sound coming out of our speakers, headphones, soundbars, etc., right?

 

I don’t know. Different people seem to have a different definition of the word “audiophile”. I don’t have anything expensive nor can I afford it. It would be nice ;however, I deal with what I got and I am thankful for it.

If you desire to have the best quality you can get then I suppose you can be an audiophile.

 

I actually think in the context of how we think about audiophilia, it's more "lover of audio" than "lover of sound," audio in the modern commercial sense of sound reproduction. Lover of sound might mean you love going outside and listening to the sounds of nature, or an instrument builder might also love the sound of the instruments they build but not care at all about sound reproduction. I think when we use the word "audiophile" we're talking about "audio" in the sense of the Merriam-Webster definition #2a: "of or relating to sound or its reproduction and especially high-fidelity reproduction." It's something separate from loving music. But it's also something separate from loving whatever sound comes out of whatever device you're listening to. It's about having a deep, abiding interest and involvement in sound reproduction.

 

The best way to be an audiophile is to regularly go hear live unamplified acoustic musicians and singers in a live space, including by making music yourself and with others.

No recorded music will ever have as high fidelity as that.

 

This.

My audio equipment would probably make most posters cringe lol.

But I'm happy to have it anyways because it's what I can afford.

 

Why do you want to be an audiophile? Great sound I'm sure has it's legitimate merits. I have achieved better sound than I once knew and it's exciting but I do not expect to ever experience "GREAT" sound from my gear because 1] too expensive and 2] not all that important.

Can you appreciate this?



To me it's more important to me moved by something like that than something lesser that has perfect sound.

 

I'm inclined to say "no," too.

Yeah, you can be a musician or photographer if you don't have expensive gear, but those terms aren't about particular gear. They're just about making music or taking photographs.

And you do need to take photographs (via some means) to be a photographer. You can't be a photographer if you don't take photographs.

Being an audiophile without having experience with and access to high-end audio gear is like being a wine connoisseur who only has access to Boone's Farm and Thunderbird. It's like being a steadicam operator without access to a steadicam, where you've only used a video app on a smartphone instead. The conventional connotations of the term aren't broad enough to simply cover "someone who cares about sound quality, even if we're only talking about the differences between transistor radios." It requires experience with and access to certain sorts of gear, in addition to certain sorts of attitudes about sound quality and gear.

I'm not an audiophile, by the way.

 

On the contrary, when I imagine a stereotypical pretentious audiophile without actual taste, I see a person with the finest (or a least the most expensive) sound system that money can buy and a crappy music collection.

 

Not really.



Sorry, I just wanted to be a smartass, because I don't care for Daniel Johnston. No offense to anyone who does, but he doesn't click with me. It's not the sound quality that bothers me (although the sound quality is pretty bad--but I can appreciate plenty of poorly-recorded bootlegs). I just don't care for his songwriting. To me it comes across like any random 13/14-year old who has been taking piano lessons for 2-3 months and who wants to write songs.

 

Heck, I'm happy to listen to music on an Amazon Tap. That's good enough for me for leisure listening.

 

Or you can be musically aware enough to know that "audiophiles" use the terms "tonality, rhythm, dynamics, and pace" in metaphysical ways that have nothing to do with how musicians and music scholars have used those terms for hundreds of years, and thus make guys who like to trot out their expensive gear sound completely delusional.

 

Perfect.

 

I haven't read every post in the thread yet, but obviously (it should be obvious, at least) the term "audiophile" has nothing to do with musical appreciation per se. It has to do with sound quality "in and of itself."

I wouldn't say there's any correlation between being an audiophile and appreciating music.

And it's not that rare to run into audiophiles whose primary concern when it comes to musical appreciation is sound quality--the focus is on how well it was recorded, mastered, how good it sounds on their system, etc. That's by no means all audiophiles or even the majority of them, but it's not that rare to run into those folks.

 

Good point. Maybe it was tongue in cheek.



When do you reach the point where you no longer hear the music, and when you start looking at all the dials and junk (that's tech talk), and to what all those little dials tell you various junk about each album's junk?...audio signals or whatever...? Sorry, I know I'm talking above most of your heads here, but anyway, you may have reached audiophile nirvana with your $$$$ system. But have you lost the joy of just hearing how good your newest music purchase is, way before any other audio-techy considerations?

I'm just sayin'...we do love our music.

 

And am I an audiophile because I am listening to SPARKS on my MacBook in the iTunes library with my headphones. Oh wait. No. Because I don't even know which brand of headphones I am using today.

Maybe we need a Mac-Phile thread!

 

Yeah, and philosophy "literally means" "love of wisdom."

But "love of wisdom" doesn't actually match up with what "philosophy" refers to very well. Philosophy isn't actually about an emotional disposition towards wisdom. And someone could have that emotional disposition towards "wisdom" where they don't now jack$h|^ about philosophy.

You can't just go by etymology and pretend that's all there is to--or that it's even a necessary aspect to--a term. Conventional connotation/denotation don't work that way.

 

Autofellatio. Sounds good to me I'd still rather subcontract though

 

I am a musicphile.

While I prefer the sound quality of anything I hear to be as high as possible, I would rather listen to duophonic I Want To Hold You Hand playing on a mono transistor radio than a Steve Hoffman mastered CD of many lesser acts played on a $10k system.

 

Daniel Johnston specifically isn't really the point. He's just one example of an artist that HAD to make music and did what was necessary to create and distribute it. This is what music is all about, imo. SQ is secondary.

 

If you have crap playback gear you could always collect hi rez music as long as you didn't play it. Nice stockpile till you have better gear.

 

this

the enemy of wonderful is better


although I have met audiophiles who are so obsessed with sonic reproduction - sometimes not even naturally sounding - but ear tickling who have few only stellar recordings

their collection is mofis, half speed masters, 45 rpm, nautilus, Sheffield labs, etc
some of which don't even sound that good

sad