Should people who can't solder, build or test their speakers be considered audiophiles?



  So, if you bought that Porsche but can only drive it and not fix it do you really understand and appreciate what it is? I say no. The guy who can get in there and make it better, faster or prettier with his own hands has a superior ability to understand the final result and can appreciate what he has from a knowledge base and not just a look at what I bought base. I mean sure you can appreciate that car when you drive it but if all you do is take it back to the dealership for maintenance and repairs you just like the shape with no real understanding of what makes it the mechanical marvel it is.
  I find that is true with the audio world too. There are those who spend a ton of money on things and then spend a lot of time seeking peer approval and assurance their purchase was the right one and that people are suitably impressed. Of course those who are most impressed are those who also do not design, build, test or experiment.

  I propose that an audiophile must have more than a superficial knowledge about what he listens to and must technically understand what he is listening to. He knows why things work and what his end goal is and often makes his own components to achieve this. He knows how to use design software to make speakers that you can't buy and analyze the room they are in and set up the amplification with digital crossovers and DSP. He can take a plain jane system and tweak it and balance it to best suit the room it is in. He can make it sound far better than the guy who constantly buys new components based on his superficial knowledge who does not understand why what he keeps buying in vain never quite gets there.

  A true audiophile can define his goal and with hands on ability achieve what a mere buyer of shiny parts never will. So out comes the Diana Krall music and the buyer says see how good my system is? The audiophile says I have taken a great voice and played it through a system where all was matched and tweaked or even purposely built and sits right down next to Diana as she sings. The buyer wants prestigious signature sound and the audiophile will work to achieve an end result that is faithful true to life audio as though you were in the room with Diana as she sings. The true audiophile wants true to life and not tonally pure according to someones artificial standard.

 So are you a buyer or an audiophile and what do you think should make a person an audiophile?
mahlman
How many engineering credits and technician apprenticeship hours were required prerequisites to join this forum again?...I forget.
It may be fitting to note poster @mahlman's last paragraph above ends with a question: what do we think defines an audiophile? The man simply shared his opinion, to which he's entitled, and then went on to invite us into the same inquiry; kudos for doing just that - quite a few could learn from it instead of only telling others what to do and how to think. 

And besides: audiophilia arguably needs a shakeup. Maybe it's time for the sense of entitlement as an audiophile to give way to what's more purely an exploration, whatever the hell we call ourselves on this journey. Let's be audio anarchists rather than catering to the industry and what's neat and tidy, and oftentimes very expensive. I'm provoked rather than offended..
The OP seems to think that only those who can afford to waste money on audio gear are the same as those who can’t build or appreciate the music. Is that another way of saying that save for the ability of being able to build some piece of gear, one cannot appreciate the results?

Or is it another way of saying I couldn’t afford to buy something nice so I went and made it and it’s better than what one can buy, since I built it?

I, for one, would never spend $60K on a pair of cables and yet cannot build a thing and yet, appreciate fine gear that makes fine music that doesn’t cost a fortune. Why is it that when subjects like this come up, it’s mostly about the extreme costs of some gear being conflated with anything that costs more than something you could buy at Radio Shack?

I come from the days when everyone worked on their own cars and only a few thought they knew it all because they got something to run for a week or two. Big deal.

All the best,
Nonoise
A trolling, a trolling, a trolling I will go, hi ho the dairy o, a trolling I will go. 🕺🏻
mahlman,

I am shocked not by your post, but how the intended sarcasm went over so many heads :-)