It’s true that audiophiles can get kind of silly sometimes. Voodoo is rampant in the industry, extravagant claims, unbelievably high price tags, etc. Some absolutely swear by LPs (even though they don’t have the frequency response of digital recordings), or tube amplifiers (even though they have much higher distortion rates). It all comes down to taste, really; sometimes folks just love LPs on a tube amplifier due to the “warmth” of the sound, which is probably a combination of emphasized midrange and a bit of background noise.
Fine for those folks, and more power to them. However, I’m much more inclined towards solid, no-nonsense stuff which does the job well but doesn’t require a lot of voodoo. That’s probably why I’m pro-British when it comes to hi-fi equipment; on the whole they have a tendency to make the simplest, and most finely-engineered hi-fi products. So my Arcam amplifier driving B&W speakers, solid British all the way. (OK, the CD deck is a Rotel, which is only sort-of English; it’s made in Japan/China, but the designs are from UK engineers and the originating family is European.)
There’s no questioning fine sound, though, when you hear it. The new stereo system which I installed in the living room is modest by audiophile standards, but sonically it’s gorgeous. (And it is definitely audiophile-class, not consumer-class.) The sound is big and natural, with a palpable sense of the physicality of the instruments and/or singers. Yes, it’s crystal-clear (which is only to be expected), but also there is no shrillness in upper sounds, which often happens with some systems.
It’s really a lot of fun to experience recorded sound like this, with the woodiness of the string instruments as apparent as the fleshy quality of the voice. You just can’t touch that sort of thing in lesser-quality electronics, to be sure.