> I hope you are saying that partially in jest. Not at all. "An audiophile is a person who is enthusiastic about high-fidelity sound reproduction." That descri

> I hope you are saying that partially in jest. Not at all. "An audiophile is a person who is enthusiastic about high-fidelity sound reproduction." That describes me fairly well, IMO. Those who spend thousands on silly things are a sub-group of the larger group. It may seem self-defeating to assign myself a label so sullied by marketing sillyness, but I'm beyond being bothered by that. I love audio. > By the time the music has been recorded and reproduced it is so far away from the original I'd like to offer a counter point to this. Just like Charles M. Russell's photographs, the raw recording does not reflect the final vision of the artist. Even the sounds heard at a live rock concert have been manipulated by effects pedals, digital synthesizers, overdriven analog amplifiers, and so forth. So in a way, the final mix as heard through studio headphones or monitors and approved by the artists is the most authentic version of a song available. As such, what I need to do to hear their version is merely reproduce the equipment they used (which doesn't require a ton of money).