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A person that wants to appreciate music in all its aspects, that is enjoying music with both heart and mind.
Is it how much you spend or how you spend it? Is it how you organize your priorities when it comes to audio? Is it only a state of mind? Define the word "audiophile."
An audiophile is anyone who engages in the joyful pursuit of listening to music thru their audio reproduction system of choice, with an everpresent & lively appreciation of how their equipment can affect that experience, either positively or negatively.
First I'll state that I'm under no illusion that I have a system that compares to any of the other readers. But, what I have I enjoy to the fullest. I feel that an audiophile is one who has learned to actually listen to music, not just hear it. I enjoy every note that is played, never mind who the artist is. I listen to classical, jazz, folk, R&B, and rock. It doesn't matter who is playing if it's played well and the production is done with care.
It has nothing to do with money and how much or how you spend it. It has nothing to do with organizing priorities too. An audiophile is merely someone who cannot wait to listen to his/her favorite music irespective of the means/hardware in use. Being an audiophile does not necesarily mean rich... it simply means that someone cannot live without music.
When you listen to music at home, and don't mind about "something is missing", but listen to the music and only to the music, not to the equipment , then their are two possibilities: you don't care about the sound or your stereo is audiophile.
Subjective prejudice, irrational opinion driven by aesthetics and price, a desire to be willfully obscure or esoteric, dubious science—all adding up to a fetishistic elitism or cultish exclusivity that combines with an often genuine love of music and a good "ear" to create a charming and reasonably benign basis for countless discussions that never resolve anything to everyone's satisfaction. But, in most cases, harmless.
I think an audiophile is a person deeply involved with music who cares as much about the presentation as the content. You can be a music lover without being an audiophile, but it's difficult to be an audiophile without first being a music lover.
There are lots of negative connotations that have been ascribed to the term, including a pompous disdain for any recording that is less than stellar. However, an audiophile, to me, is one who considers listening to music an activity in and of itself.
A music lover whose respect for the music allows for budget for devices that are designed to faithfully reproduce this music coupled with an affinity with those devices. An audiophile is a lover of sound, while a realistic view of the world should incorporate the love of the gear that produces the sound. The people who love sound for the sake of sound should be in the woods listening to the birds and the leaves, no audio component can match that sound quality.
An sudiophile is someone who understands and appreciates what it takes to accurately reproduce naturally recorded music in a way which will recreate the original performance of the musicians and whose goal is the achievement of that ends.
In theory, it's a person so interested in a 'natural' sounding replay of music that he or she spends a lot of time using (and finding) high quality audio-equipment. In practice however, audiophile's often become technophiles when the search for even more outlandisch, high priced equipment turns out to be their highest—and only—goal. In the end, it comes down to the type of audio-realm the audiophile chooses to live in; High-End hell (suffering from the undocumented but very real condition 'audiophilia nervosa') or a less 'cool' but more liveable—and eventually more enjoyable—situation where a high quality system comprising of non-tweaky but well designed gear serves the audiophile by being what it should be. Since most audiophile's tend to at least lean towards the first realm, "Highendophile" would be a better term.
I think that the Oxford Desk Dictionary definition is spot on: audiophile: high-fidelity sound enthusiast. If one is a true "high-fidelity sound enthusiast" it is possible to find the best value in gear in order stay within you means financially. In other words, I believe it is more than possible to be a "high-fidelity sound enthusiast" regardless of budget.