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
One look at your page, mahgister, tell's that you are serious about this stuff ...... and on a whole other level. 👍
 millercarbon: 
  If you could only see the worlds I’ve seen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JjJzMBGUwo


  What a shame! All the comments, deep thoughts and moments we've all shared on this inexplicably long and inane thread will be lost in time, too, like tears in the rain.
  Alas for mercy's sake, perhaps it's also time for this thread to die?

   Uh oh, gotta go. I'm late for solder practice.

Rutger Hauer    


No true Scotsman, or appeal to purity, is an informal fallacy in which one attempts to protect a universal generalization from counterexamples by changing the definition in an ad hoc fashion to exclude the counterexample.

I'm with noble100. Kill this thread.
"No true Scotsman, or appeal to purity, is an informal fallacy in which one attempts to protect a universal generalization from counterexamples by changing the definition in an ad hoc fashion to exclude the counterexample."


Quite sagacious, erudite and pithy I must say.  Once you get done digging in wiki for all that highfalutin jargon of yours check out what started it all. The pretentious nonsense offered in all seriousness by some here is mind boggling and worthy of satire. One of the things most entertaining with this thread has been the serious studious responses to what I said but the dismissal of the basis for which I said it. It's kind of like ignoring what you can see if you look so you can hurry up and and sound all serious highbrow audiophile like. Thanks for your contribution!


https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/should-people-with-no-turntable-or-reel-to-reel-be-considered...
He put in his thumb, and pulled out a plumb, and said:
"What a good boy am I."