Who is an audiophile?
I used to think I was. I have always appreciated “quality” sound based on my general perception of clarity and a pleasing musical reproduction with no significant distraction from any “noise”. From my assessment, a true audiophile is someone who appreciates the nuances of music and musical instruments, and puts a major priority on having the musical piece reproduced as accurately as possible relative to how it was originally heard in a concert hall (from the “best seat in the house”, a.k.a., the “sweet spot”) if it was a live piece, or to how it was originally heard by the sound engineer in the studio. Any artificial additions (e.g., echos, over-accentuated bass, noise, etc.) or deletions (e.g., sound data lost) in the recording/transcoding process is normally unacceptable to them. I do not have this kind of priority for my music recordings, and thus, do not consider myself an audiophile. The purist standard: immaculate analog recordings. Based on my assessment of an audiophile above,
