There have been countless articles here that have started "I'm not an audiophile, but..." as if caring about sound quality is something to be ashamed of.

I'm more than happy to come right out and say I *am* an audiophile to the extent that I'd rather listen to my music on the best possible equipment and in the best possible environment.

I really don't see the point in spending years (and thousands of pounds) collecting music then playing it on second-rate equipment. If you've never heard your favourite music through a decent hi-fi, you've been missing half the music. Book a demo room at your nearest hi-fi dealer and ask him to show you how your CD can really sound. As Fitter Stoke said, it can be an almost mystical experience.

Compared to (say) computers or TVs or iPods, it's cheap as well. Decent hi-fi will last you a lifetime - think of it more like buying a 1950s/1960s Strat rather than a modern one - buy the right amps and speakers and you'll never need to change them.

As soon as I was able, I invested in a pair of QUAD amps and ESL57 speakers - that was over 30 years ago, and I've heard nothing since to make me feel they've been bettered. That £2,000 investment 30 years ago works out as the equivalent of spending less than £70 a year on stereo gear :-)

(rant over)

Why do Audiophiles buy hi-fi magazines after they've got a system in place? If you're like stimpy and have had the same system for 30 years, what's the point of buying a magazine that spends most of its time reviewing things you're not going to buy? It's not as if you upgrade your amp and cables every month...

I'm genuinely curious, btw - having spent a great deal of my youth listening to music on a friend's Pink Triangle/Naim/B&W system, I know how good hi-fi can make a difference. These days I have a cheap & cheerful Cambridge Audio/Morduant Short set-up from Richer Sounds, simply because I never really give music my full attention when I'm at home, and would rather spend my spare cash travelling than chasing diminishing returns from my CD player.

Having said that, I have been considering getting a DAC. Has anyone here had experience of the Cambridge Audio DacMagic?

if my life gave me lots of downtime to sit in a sound room and listen. As it is an ipod in the gym blocking out the pumped trance from the speakers or a burnt CD in the car with all the external noise supplied by engine, traffic, family etc are the best listening enviroments I can hope for.

I have an Arcam amp and CD player in the lounge with decent interconnect cables and speaker stands. Not top end audiophile, but sounds nice and natural and cost a couple of grand maybe 5 years ago. I play CDs and vinyl through it and even if chatting or doing other things it is lovely to have music that sounds great. A cheap stereo will give you some reasonable sounding background noise but that isn't good enough when I love music so much.

MP3s are fine for portability but don't sound anything like the source items through a decent system, which cannot replace the vast amount of information which has been removed.

But if a cheap system playing MP3s suit syou, why not. Just wouldn't suit me.

does a lot to help the inevitable listener fatigue that MP3s always cause if played on anything other than headphones and even then quite often with headphones

hi fi is better - how can it be argued other wise hi fi is -high fidelity or more accurately higher fidelity than other stuff

you can pick up rather good second hand amps on ebay or some hi fi shops as buffs often trade up ,buy a cd player or even a blu ray and shell out for new speakers

doesn't have to cost thousands a la stimpy but better than a boom box with a docking station

even if you are casual listener doing other stuff at the same time the difference will be noticeable and you will probably end up listening more with the better sound

I've got quite a reasonable hi-fi in the living room (Cyrus amps/PSX-R, Arcam CD player) but in truth it doesn't get used enough to justify its existence, which is truly sad. Like several others, most of my listening is done in the car with engine and road noise blocking out most of the lower frequencies.

It's kind of ironic that, I've actually got more out of listening to my iPod (admittedly on some nice Sennheiser HD650 headphones, rather than white earbuds) than anything else recently. Sat in the garden on Saturday afternoon, enjoying the sunshine and marvelling at The Boxer Rebellion's album ('Union'), I was thinking it doesn't get much better than this.

Sometimes it's the environment you listen to music in, rather than the equipment you use, that matters more to your enjoyment...

Do audiophiles actually enjoy listening to songs on these systems, or do they pick certain bits that sound good?

And, going one step further, purely as devil's advocate you must understand, do they proudly play their friends those same snippets, saying things like, "Check this bit out!", when they really mean, "Aren't I great? Please love me."

I'm in Mike Hull's exact position - the main system languishes pretty much unused in a room (the 'good room' as it's known in Ireland) with an open fire and a big-ass comfy sofa. Despite our repeated declarations of intent to move in there in the evening and read biographies and histories of the Crusades and let '30 Rock' accumulate on Sky+, the damn thing gathers more dust than Morrissey's balls in the early to mid-1980s, save for the one morning a week when I clear the tubes of a Guinness/Donk fug with the stylings of top beat combos. I won by a ballhair what have become known chez moi as the Home Cinema Wars of 2006 - B & W Mini Theater 30 in the AV room, booyah - so I can't quite persuade Hitler's Sexy Granddaughter to allow me lump the system into the main living room (Rotel amp, Meridian CD player, B & W CM5 speakers)despite my thrall to the siren song of some 12 feet of empty, shiny sideboard boasting nowt but a skinny pair of lamps. Curse that remorsely chic aesthetic!

I do kind of talk like that when I'm out and about, the perils of a classical education, I'm afraid. The Donk thing arose from a podcast where Mark 'DeGeneres' Ellen mentioned there to be few finer things in an amateur dipso's life than a glug of Tia Maria dropped into a pint of the black stuff - a kind of boilermaker for the chattering classes. The combination of the stout and the liqeur does tend to cloud this man's mind quicker than Lamont Cranston* next morning, hence the pre-breakfast music.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shadow

I still have and use my "proper" Hi-Fi system - I wouldn't class it as high end audiophile but as a very reasonable mid range system (Marantz CD 63 KI signature / Audio Alchemy DAC / Audiolab 8000A amp and Monitor Audio Gold Speakers). It sounds good to me and I see as good enough for the listening environment I have. I have set up in the study alongside the computers and so listen whilst working etc etc.

Having said that, I have converted all my CDs to MP3 and do listen a lot to them on the iPod in the car / when travelling and also streaming to the main room & bedroom via an airport express.

I guess it comes down to when I want to just listen to music (i.e on the beanbag, close eyes and just listen) the Hi-Fi wins hands down but when Its just background, the convenience of streaming around the house certainly has its benefits.

Mostly the TV wins the day. Sometimes that's my fault because I enjoy a good bit of TV as much as anyone, but sometimes when my wife's favourite programmes (e.g. Celebrity Masterchef or something really shite like Gok's Fashion Fix) are on, I just have to fuck off upstairs and listen to iTunes on the computer and make inane postings on the Word Website! What else can you do?

would be sharpened and find unerringly the eyes of the gift giver