I lately wonder why I’m an Audiophile.

Given the posting history of the OP, I suspect that his latest conversion to “The music is the thing, the gear doesn’t matter “ school of thought will be short lived.

  The only new component that I’ve bought in the last few was the $100 Wiim Pro, because I am pretty happy with how my 3 systems sound.  I still consider myself an Audiophile.  It is possible to say “This is good, now let’s play some music “ and not have FOMO that there is 0.005% of improvement that I can make 

@mahler123 

Mahler was also a pessimist.

@laminarman - I'm a photographer and I know what you're saying about gear; a good photographer with an iPhone will get better pictures than a poor photographer with a Hasselblad. Cartier-Bresson of course used a Leica, so he wasn't exactly slumming it.

But I would also say that gear makes a lot more difference to the end result with sound than it does with photographs. 

OP in the beginning you love sound, and music. Then you discover there are gear to be able to transform the sound and music? You got excited by the sound of high end components, and even how they look. Unfortunately it cost your time money and etc. you went for the journey of this hobby, and you enjoy it. Are you audiophile then? It’s up to you to do the labelling if indeed you are audiophile. After putting up good system buy more music you like and enjoy, This hobby has no end.

@macg19 Not sad at all. I listen to music all day at work, this a wonderful student run station at the Univ. of Michigan, WCBN. All genres of music, each dj has a one hour show, brings their own unique play lists and favs for all of us to hear. And then I stream music exclusively in cars. The audiophile rig is meant solely for a totally immersive, transcendent experience, wonderful SOUND and music makes this a totally unique experience. 

As for evaluation, judgement, angst, etc I experienced more than my fair share of this in my audiophile journey. I'd hear these wonderful systems at shows and dealers and want my home system to sound similarly. There were years of equipment chasing and regressive, lateral and progressive movement. In spite of all this I was able to derive listening pleasure, at least for limited time frames from  the systems I did have. This came from both trying to remain mindful of the idea of enjoying the journey, and the fact my system did indeed do some things quite well. 

I'd posit it may not be possible for audiophiles to never experience this evaluation, comparison, judgement phase in growing their systems. Perhaps this all depends on what uses as their reference, my references were very high end so the journey was difficult, I assume a lesser reference would make the journey easier. Perhaps the non-audiophile has it the easiest, no reference for comparison, no evaluation and judgment, this at least for sound. The funny thing is, in conversation with the musician I discovered his achilles heel in listening to music is always evaluating performance, as Roseannadanna so eloguently stated, "Its always something."