I’m sure we’re all a little bit of both, but where do you the fall on the spectrum?
For me, whenever I’m contemplating an upgrade, or breaking in a new piece of gear, I’m more of an audiophile than a musicphile, which can be both an enjoyable and torturous experience. This hobby is anything but Plug and Play. Having recently upgraded my speakers and transport, I’ve been stuck in audiophile mode for awhile as things broke-in. Most of that time proved to be quite frustrating as I tried to dial things in, like speaker placement and experimenting with different footers under the transport. The end result though has been a very rewarding and satisfying experience as an audiophile, but ultimately I’m more of a musicphile than audiophile. Time to kick back and just enjoy the music.
I’ve moved over the years from musicphile towards the audiophile end of the spectrum if I’m being honest. But I still lvoe music so much, need it, and spend more on music than equipment when all is tallied.
I hardly ever turn the tv on. Music is playing almost always when I’m home and awake–or even not awake. Does that make me a “musicphile”?
But almost always, when I’m listening to music, I’m enjoying some aspect of the sound quality; listening for things I’m happy with or maybe critical of. “Audiophile”?
For example, I just switched amps from my Decware to Pass Labs. Same Wes Montgomery cd which I think is some of his best playing (musicphile), but with the Pass amp, I can clearly hear the skin of his thumb across the strings, playing his octaves (audiophile). I guess for me it’s a blur.
When the world isn’t being ravaged by a virus we go out quite a lot, perhaps 150 shows per annum, give or take. Includes theatre and the cinema. I know people who go to live music almost every day, sometimes more than one performance, and have no interest to listening to music at home at all. I had 11 performances booked in the 14 nights from the first night of lockdown. It took a long time to recover. So I swing from thinking home audio is a complete waste of time to really enjoying it and start having dangerous audiophile thoughts. I normally recover. I’m not a tweaker, I have a system that the family use and most this week one of my kids has been home, listening to hip hop and rap most evenings with basketball on mute.
I’m sure there will be people who will listen to an SACD of Uuno Klarni’s Violin Concerto just because they want the sonic experience. Not me, it’s a pretty dreadful piece of music and I don’t have SACD player or native DSD anyway.
I see no reason why people should not collect audio equipment because of a love of electronics rather than a love of music. They may be in a minority, but it’s a free world (sort of) and I see no reason to be judgmental and put them in a box with a label on it.
The main benefit of audio is being able to listen to jazz musicians who have shed their mortal coil.
I’m a music nut realizing (for me) that the audio quality of it makes a big part of the emotional perception and the understanding and appreciation of the music. That makes me an audiophile I’d say. The amount of music I have and the focus on music quality doesn’t make me a typical test track listener at least.
It was interesting to read in Keith Jarret’s interview, that he’s meanwhile a professed audiophile for the same reason and regrets that such a lot of his music, due to the bad sound quality, is emotionally transported way beyond its potential.
