The thing that gets to me about it a bit (leaving aside the audiophile gear industry, which is a whole other thing) is when people get obsessive over some unatainable “perfect” sound. I mean, I can (could) hear a lot of detail in audio that most people don’t, but unless it’s a trade thing (mastering, acoustic design, that sort of stuff) I really don’t understand the impulse to rank it. If anything, I’d rather listen to stuff on the medium and equipment that’s representative of what it was originally produced for*. The “ultimate fidelity” type audiophiles remind me of most of people I’ve known who had true perfect pitch but can’t enjoy most music it sounds “out of tune” (even though being “out of tune” is usually one of the things that makes it sound good). I’m glad that I have really good relative pitch but I’d never want perfect pitch, it seems like a curse to me.
*Since I mostly listen to music released before I was born and worked at oldschool record shops for a decade, I’ve got a respectable but not too high end 1970s hi-fi system pieced together - Tehcnics SP-15 turntable, Technics SA-700 reciever and a pair of second version, plastic-badge AR-2ax speakers. Whole lot cost me $80 plus trading in a pair of EPI speakers that I had paid about $70 for a year earlier and about $20 for the kit to replace the woofer surrounds in the speakers. Not counting the cost of cartridges and a replacement for the midrange driver I blew out back when I couldn’t afford good monitors and did all my mixing through the stereo.
