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Well in my "circles", audiophiles are usually laughed with.
Why?
Because usually, people referred to as audiophiles are the kind of people that spend gazillions on custom gear, buying specialized cables (the manufacturer of the cable said it would make the sound more "sugarlike" and bring out the "grainy, yet slight spicy flavour' of the violin in one of the compositions of Mozart), boasting they have the best gear that has ever been made, but of which the manufacturers are horrified by the idea to publish specs that are actually ACCURATE. Boasting they can hear a fly fart in the original Telefunken studio recordings on their ultra precise speaker system, but fail to hear they INVERTED THE POLARITY on one of their speakers (oh boy, this really happened)!
Yes such people exist, sadly enough. And it's usually those that call themselves audiophiles. Bleh.
A real audiophile for me is someone that tries in all ways to achieve good sound, and tries to understand why (not just because some geek in Stereophile told him so). It's those people that make technology advance, and those people that are responsible for the great, dynamic recordings that still remain. I try to be an audiophile in that definition, though it's not always easy.
But nowadays, you could put it even more easily. For some people, being an audiophile can mean one thing : someone that actually takes time to listen to music, and just that. Not doing something and hearing the music in the background. Not take a listen for 30 seconds and then skip to the next track. No, actually sitting down, playing the music, and critically listening to it.
If it's for the last two definitions, I try to be. If it's the first, please, if I ever become like that, someone has to shoot me.
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for the production forum.
