What is an Audiophile? Am I am Audiophile?

 Well, according to dictionary.com, an audiophile is "a person who is especially interested in high-fidelity sound reproduction".  Okay, so count me in - but not so fast.  Audiophiles have a reputation of paying obscene amounts of money for things qith questionable benefits.  

Shunning casette tapes and 8 track cartridges in favor of records due to the difference in quality seems reasonable enough.  Taking a hard pass on poorly encoded low bitrate mp3s created by outdated software seems equallys upportable.  Spending thousands of dollars on speaker cables and springing for wooden knobs for your hifi equipment with the espectation that it will inprove your sound is... dubious at best.

Like with smart phones and computers, audio equipment is a land of diminishing returns.  Spending $40 on a pair of earphones will for sure allow you to get headphones that sound more than twice as good.  I would argue that spending $500 on headphones will for sure allow you to get headphones that sound twice as good as those that cost $250 in many cases.  Here is the question, though: Do $2500 headphones sound 10 times better than $250 headphones?  And if so, what does that even mean?  How would you determine that?  

I actually own various pieces of audio equipment at various price points, and I enjoy all of them.  Even the cheaper ones have their place.  

A good example would be my Sony WF-100XM4's.  (I know, catchy name, right?)

They sound great, and they are small and fit in my pocket.  They are wireless, have noise cancelling, and the battery lasts a long time.  I am sure they same could be said for the Airpods Pro.  

Are they as good as my wires earphones or IEMs when compared purely in terms of sound quality?  No, no they're not, but think about what is inside of them.  There are drivers to actually make the sound, microphones to aid the noise cancelling, radio circuitry to receive and transmit data, processors to decompress the compressed audio stream and execute the noise cancelling, drivers to actually make the sound, and finally, batteries to power it all!  My wired earphones have: drivers to make the sound.  So when you compare a $300 pair of wired headphones to a $300 pair of wireless headphones, the wireless headphones necessarily have cheaper drivers!  

I'll go into the differences between wired and wireless audio in another entry, but suffice to say that the difference is real.  Does that mean that wireless headphones should be looked upon with distain?  I don't believe so.  Convenience is important, and more convenient audio means more people enjoying music.  

For that matter, while I would highly encourage most people to upgrade their earphones or headphones, not everyone can afford to do so, not all products are offer good value, and some people just can't afford it.

To me, it's actually very sad that while some people can afford to spend thousands of dollars on speaker cables, others can't even afford basic food and shelter, much less upgrade their $20 earphones to $40 ones.  

I don't see the point of being snobby, so I take the same attitude with audio gear as I do with coffee.  I appreciate espresso from Italian chains like Segafreso, but in a pinch, a $1 cop of cofee from the likes of Mr. Donut is fine as well.  

to that end, I take great enjoyment in the higher end gear I have been able to afford, but I would sell it in a heartbeat if I needed it to pay for a friend's medical procedure or something like that.  

There is nothing wrong with enjoying music and audio gear, but I do think we need to remember that it should be about fun, and not obcess with thoring endless money into a black pit just to chase that last 1% of quality when the listening experience is subjective anyway.