Audiophiles... Why Men? Any woman here?

All my friends enjoy music.
They all have 'well under $500 total' setups.
I am the only female I know personally who goes for the better electronics.
The stuff is just all "toys" once you get past a few hundred dollars in electronics.
For one friend I have found at thrift shops:
Marantz 2270... $35
old JBL speakers... $20
NAD CD... $6
Dual TT... $8
This setup is great for her needs.
Also..
Most musicians do not go for "audiophile" gear. They can listen to the music right through the crappyist system and hear the tunes just fine.
Audiophiles are just anal-retentive types. Audiophillia is just thier chosen perfectionist sport.
(Personally I got in young by accident... then dropped it all for a long time... then about 20 years ago decided to go for it some more. I have only a modest system, and usually change stuff only when it needs replacing.)

All those cables and cords scare me, and those tubes might be hot! :-)

Thank goodness they don't embrace our hobby, how many divorces would their be to get custody of our systems !!!

Elizabeth has a good point,

I find it amusing that some of the most discriminating musicians have the worst system. Whats even funnier is they use a lot of the technical jargon we do, like Tmbre, pace, rhythem, etc. Those are musical terms but when a audiophile says "this speaker has good pace" and a musician says "this work has good pace" I guess we mean two differnt things.

Women need to be doing at least 3 things at once, so to get them to focus on just music for more than 20 minutes without cleaning something or straightening something up is almost impossible. A lot of women like music only as "background noise". They keep it low while they're doing something else, and don't really pay attention.

Beyond that, they are practical and very "thrifty". I think many of them wouldn't mind if a man bought them an expensive system; but they wouldn't buy one for themselves.

Plus, they generally lack physical strength (for moving things around) and the electro-mechanical sense (for hooking components together). Also, they hate all the clutter of the wires, etc. What men see as "cool", women tend to see as "unsightly".

Add to this that the quality of the reproduction is not an attraction to most of them (sad). The difference in sound quality, unless grossly obvious, is not something the average woman would notice or care about. Whenever I insert a new piece of gear in the system I sometimes ask my wife what she thinks. Her answer is almost invariably, "It sounds about the same to me".

I realize my comments may be upsetting to some, and that there will always be a few exceptions, but by and large, that's the way it seems to me.