Quote Originally Posted by dingus
for me, it was my older brother who used his paper route to finance a decent (for the day) mid-fi stereo. he also bought albums on a regular basis. since i had never had to put any effort into good sound and music, i pretty much took the enjoyment of music for granted, even after buying my very own stereo for the first time.

one day my roommate brought home a new album called "True Colours" by Split Enz. never heard of the group or album before. it was cool right out of the sleeve because the vinyl was laser etched in all these neat geometric patterns, even cooler was how it sounded. i had always enjoyed listening to music, and i liked having my own system, but until this album i had never heard music that really grabbed me an held my attention. for the first time i found myself listening critically, discovering nuance and subtlety, gaining an appreciation for musical skill, talent and most of all, creativity. i havent taken my gear or music for granted since.
You bring up a very key phrase: listening critically. I think that the majority of the world typically enjoys the sound of music, but for some of us, that isn't good enough, we want to study what we are listening to, and it's not always a deep meditative thing, often times the music moves our soul and grabs us, but our brain is also working as well and it's analyzing what we are experiencing and putting that into some type of formula. For audiophiles we learn how to listen to music and we store memory of sounds in our brains as reference points, which most people are not able to do. We listen to certain musical cues and generate certain feelings and emotions that are often expressed in functional forms, but our entertainment of this hobby mainly exists in that never-ending quest to always have it sound a bit better, move us a bit more, grab us a little longer, and for that...we walk this journey without hesitation.