I could (but don't) call myself an audiophile -- I love the world of sound around me. I notice the aural qualities of every room I enter; when I'm in a small s

I could (but don't) call myself an audiophile -- I love the world of sound around me. I notice the aural qualities of every room I enter; when I'm in a small space with hard walls, I hum a bit to identify the pitch that will make the room resonate. (I'll bet some with perfect pitch could measure the space between two walls quite accurately with their eyes closed by learning the wave sizes...). I notice when someone's speech or laugh in my house causes sympathetic vibrations on the strings of my acoustic bass guitar in the corner. Or on the metal cover of the radiator. I've spent decades learning to produce sound, from various instruments including the built-in ones (like whistling, body percussion, various forms of vocal music including Tuuvan throat singing), to making music from objects never intended to be instruments. When I listen to others making music I pick it apart in my head. There are lots of people with better-trained ears than I have, who make better music as well -- so moving on: how much money have I spent on audio reproduction equipment? Probably less than $500 in my lifetime. The music I'm listening to the most right now are performances of the Brandenburg Concertos, from YouTube, played from a Macbook Air speaker in another room, while I march up and down the stairs with a baby over my shoulder. I like the way it echoes up the narrow stairs, and how there's one spot partway up that's more resonant than anywhere else. I can't hear subtle details -- so what? I know what that sounds like already; my brain can fill in the missing bits. And there's no possible playback that can reproduce actually performing music -- imagine tje cello vibrating against your body and filling your ears, the thrumming pushback of the bow against your hand -- and these are the things worth having in your head when you listen to someone more accomplished playing a piece. I'll probably get a decent set of speakers someday (though I can't imagine paying more than I'd pay for an actual well-made instrument), but any playback is unavoidably a shadow of the actual performance; I can't imagine caring deeply about getting a perfectly crisp shadow (as long as I get a reasonably clear one) when I'm just using it to imagine the real thing anyway.