I've met many people who I thought were snobs at the time. As I've aged and looked back, I think they were simply unwilling to devote the needed time and effort to educate me on things that were either too complicated or involved for me to grasp within a brief amount of time. If an unwillingness to offer their time without compensation for my benefit qualifies as snobbery, then they were snobs. I suspect they were simply protecting their value of time.

Some things simply have to be learned through experience  to appreciate and understand.

Btw, good to see you, Jim. It's been a  long time.

Monty

  I also enjoyed Art's -As We See It . I always get a chuckle from his eloquent and tactful way of conveying his thoughts .

  His mentioning the snob aspect of the hobby hit home as a few years ago I experienced a taste of the above .

  After much soul searching I made a decision to scale down the size ( not the quality ) of my audio system , mostly because the equipment was taking over much of are house . Since my analog source was the biggest part of the problem I conceded in retiring it . I tryed to scale down the analog part , but it just wasn't working . I gave my daughter ( 13 ) one of the turntables , a cleaning machine, some set up gear and a few hundred LP's , as she had a small LP playback system in her part of the house . A friend purchased most of the other gear and a few thousand LP's , shelves etc , etc ,etc . Three truck loads and many tears later the deed was done , luckily this long time analog diehard is able to hear the equipment on occasion .

The snobbery part of it showed up when members of are audio club showed up for some cable A/B tests . Although this bunch of folks had conceded that my digital source was on the same level although different than the analog riggins , these fellows spent most of the evening heckling my decision and joking and commenting that I was no longer a real audiophile . At first it didn't bother me as i've done my share of bad audio jokes over the last four decades . But eventually it sounded like these fellows were serious but trying to do it in a friendly way .         

After much more soul searching I decided that it was going to be harder to do without my analog audio buddies than it was to do without that part of the play back system . The wife had overheard a small amount of the ruckus and was in disbelief that after wining and dining and entertaining these people that they could be so rude and was adamant ( a rarity ) that i refrain from entertaining them in are home again . I had to agree .   

So unfortunatly snobs do exicst in audio circle's but in my experience it was the analog junkies that were discrediting this great hobby .

Interestingly , there was one lady audiophile/music lover in this bunch , she was the only one that was respectful of my decision and was visibly embarrassed by the response . She was welcomed back .