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How rare is an audiophile

I’ve been extremely busy lately and not had a chance to sit back and listen to music  on my system for a few weeks. I’ve streamed my favorite music in the car and on a small JBL Flip-4 portable speaker; which by the way “punches way above its size class.”  I continued to enjoy music whenever, wherever, and however i can during this “dry spell.”

So now its 5 am Sunday morning. I know i’ll be spending most of the day listening on the JBL when my wife and I drive out to a lake house we bought recently and are furnishing and getting ready for 4 generations to enjoy lake life this summer and for years to come. 
I’ve let my system warm up and hit play on my CD player. I now find myself in total bliss listening to Chris Standing’s newest CD “The Lovers Re-mix Collection.”  The effect of the quality of the sound of the music my wife and i are enjoying right now with a cup of coffee is hard to explain, but it brought literal tears of joy.  

I started thinking, how many people are like us?  What % of the population are audiophiles (whatever your definition of an audiophile is)?

I know the answer is heavily dependent on which country you live in. I live in the US along with ~332,000,000 fellow citizens (please, lets not get political on the meaning of population or citizen). 
Are we the 0.1%ers?  Are there ~332,000 audiophiles in the US?

i’d be interested in what others think about how rare our species is.

ezstreams
christianb5s4
230 posts
 

One of my favorite parts of having a decent system is having people curious listen to their favorite songs and realizing a different appreciation for music. And I've since gotten my parents and several friends on the train.

 

Everyone appreciates quality music, and sharing that is part of the hobby in my view.

grislybutter
2,244 posts
 

several audiophile youtube channels have 300K subscribers. I assume they are audiophiles or interested to become one, why else would you listen to those presentations.

Based on the average user profile here (close to retirement/old, male) which is about 13 million people in the US and also affluent, which is about 10%, - that would make 1.3 million people to have the potential (time and money) to be an audiophile. But of course very few are interested, maybe 1 in 10. So around 130K people.... The other angle is the size of the audio business, which implies  a similar scale. 

wolf_garcia
6,600 posts
 

I'm not into rare audiophiles as I prefer them well done.

jmalen123
141 posts
 

You and your wife sound like music lovers first and audiophiles a close second. When the two meld together, great things happen. Thanks for sharing your experience. Tonight, listening to GoGo Penguins / A Humdrum Star has hit me straight in the feels. That kind of talent astonishes me. 

clearthinker's avatar
clearthinker
1,582 posts
 

Whilst there must be doubt about actual numbers, what can certainly be said is that we are getting rarer..  Gen Xers, Zers and Millennials are not at all interested in the quality of sound, that's how MP3 and all the other competitor low-grade systems got going.  Not to mention digital broadcasting and listening in cars and on computers and handphones.

Almost all audiophiles are Boomers and we're fast dying out.

 

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