Of all the questions asked so far, this could go some way to give a creative answer…
A touch stone and a book dear to me.
Details simularites in how we appreciate visual art and audio art.
This was written a good time ago and Anton only briefly considers taste - perhaps crucial.
The artistic ability to discern good taste. Which some embarrassingly don’t have, 
Interesting, as the only stress I have ever had from music has been when comparing things, which I keep to a minimum as a non-enjoyable chore, preferring to spend 99.999% of my music listening time doing just that: listening to music, immersing in it, enjoying it, relaxing, entertaining, cathartic when I need it, all positive! Perhaps I’m not an audiophile.
Then it is not !!!
What speakers do you have?
(You might wish to list your system in your profile so people have context for your posts).
I definitely don’t go that deep I (try) to just listen to the music at the best quality I can afford.
Like all hobbies there’s always a chance of it becoming an obsession and becoming more interested in the electronics
The “obsession” part is so fascinating. There is something quite powerful about the curiosity behind listening to music that we are trying to balance.
Curiosity is of course biologically very important. It is the driving force that makes organisms explore novelty, for instance novel environments, even if there are risks associated with that and the outcome and potential reward is uncertain (it makes no sense to fly to Mars, yet we are very curious…). Humans often take a lot of risks to explore for novelty.
When we try out a new cable in our system the outcome is completely unpredictable. The change cannot be estimated. The only aspect that is certain is that the effect will be more or less subtle. And unlike exploring novelty, with music it is often the same piece to which we listen over and over again. Yet that subtle difference is a very powerful source of motivation and curiosity that i have not encountered as such with other media. There is something quite special about music and audiophile listening that does not yet make biological sense to me. What is this type of curiosity good for in a biological sense ? Fascinating…
Maybe it is akin to play, not play fighting as common among animal young, but play fir the sake of it, as humans do, and as do, for example, dolphins.
Why should ‘audiophile listening’ (yeek) be any more beneficial for the brain than just listening/responding to music, which of itself is obviously beneficial?
The benefits of actually playing music or an instrument I get…(mostly 
)
This is a speculative theory, based on my own research on how memory works:
Our memory can do something very remarkable: it can separate the neural coding of similar events (to avoid new memories overwriting earlier similar memories) while at the same time establishing connections between distinct events based on associations. For instance, you can have distinct memories for shopping in two similar supermarkets but may associate that you bought bread in both.
These two memory properties are called pattern separation and pattern completion. Interestingly, the memory region that does pattern separation is the only brain region that produces new neurons throughout life.
The interesting aspect about audiophile listening is that it heavily taxes on both pattern separation and pattern completion. You need distinct memories for very similar sound signatures across different hardware settings, while also being able to pattern complete the effect of a hardware setting across different songs.
This is really quite remarkable. There are not many hobbies that can do this type of training. I even wonder whether this type of listening would not be able to boost the production of new neurons and therefore improve memory function overall.
Specific evidence for many of your assertions is required. Just saying it’s so isn’t enough. It all sounds (!) like the standard audiophile castles-built-on-sand arguments.
Not sure what you mean. I am simply fascinated by the cognitive demands that seem to be required for audiophile listening.
You state that new neurons are created in some unspecified part of the brain. What evidence is there to substantiate that?
The creation of new neurons is a hot topic in brain / memory research. As a neurologist, I am also involved in this reseach. It would bore everyone to death to give an overview of the evidence here. But here is an article in layman’s terms:
https://www.science.org/content/article/atomic-bombs-help-solve-brain-mystery
Fascinating article. Thanks. Not quite sure how it links to so-called ‘audiophile listening’ as a demonstrable phenomenon in real-life situations 
that link is obviously speculative. New neurons are thought to support “pattern separation”, the non-overlapping storage of very similar memories. I think that audiophile listening may depend quite heavily on pattern separation because it requires accurate, non-overlapping memory representations of how a piece of music sounds in different music hardware settings - so forming very distinct memories for very similar sound signatures.
This is speculative but founded on solid science (not sand-castles… 
).
Presumably hippocampal neurons?
This all sounds quite fascinating and thanks for posting.
I’ve actually always been fascinated by the fact that my memory for music, and particularly ‘what comes next’ in music as an auditory stimulus is near perfect superficially unlike text or video.
We can hum along to a favourite or annoying song we’ve not heard for decades. How?
I’m constantly jarred when it comes to classical music listening to different versions of the same composition - we know what’s coming but may love or hate a different interpretation by a new (to us) orchestra/conductor.
Your post reminded me of recent hypotheses regarding dementia risk factor and loss of visual acuity causing atrophy in visual pathways/cortex as they are no longer processing such complex stimuli. Maybe the same with hearing above and beyond loss of visual acuity?
Probably not if you roll one to help it along.
Emrah, my wife who is doc once said to me that performing music is one of the most intensive activities for the brain since so many parts are used for it. She showed me some comparative brain scans (EEG?) and it was active all over the place.
I wonder if there is a relation between (slowing / avoiding) e.g. dementia.
In Michel Faber’s book Listen, on Music, Sound and Us (p. 112 and pp. 113-114) he describes that also when one is merely listening to music, scans show brain activity in multiple places, especially if the test persons are being played music they love. He does not cite any scientific references though. But assuming what he says is correct, I could image that a proper test using a group of audiophiles and a compare group of casual listeners may show whether the brain activity of the audiophiles group shows a significant different response to that of the the casual listeners may provide an answer to the OP’s question. However, the test should be set up in such a way that other potential causes for any such difference are eliminated. So for instance making sure that everyone in both groups listens to a number of songs they had listed as songs they like.
Interestingly, hearing loss in midlife is the one of the biggest risk factors for dementia. The mechanisms why this is the case are unclear. So, there is something special about hearing, and probably listening, for brain health that remains an enigma.
